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Wayne Stetina Interview - Part 1by Matt Howey
Published: 11/30/2006PART 1 | PART 2 | more coming!
SpokePost: I have Wayne Stetina on the line today. Wayne is an icon in the sport of bicycle racing with ten national championships and hundred's of wins under his belt. Good afternoon, it's a pleasure to speak with you. Where are you right now, Mission Viejo?
Wayne Stetina: I'm at my office. It's only 3 O'Clock here.
SP: Are you planning on riding today?
Wayne Stetina: Well, I rode in. I ride to work everyday. It's a minimum 8 miles in, and since it was raining this morning, I did the minimum. That was good because I got to test some new rain clothing.
SP: Very good. Very good. Is this Shimano's rain clothing?
Wayne Stetina: Shimano has started a project to make some cycling clothing, I don't know when we'll want to introduce it here in the states, but it's become very rapidly extraordinarily nice, high-quality clothing, like Assos clothing at Pearl Izumi and Descente pricing.
SP: Beautiful. I'd take Assos clothing any day, and I guess if it's that quality, sure...
SP: So you rode in, what's the weather like out there? You said it was raining?
Wayne Stetina: Oh, no, it passed. That's what I like about living in California. Actually, I never thought I'd want to live out here. When I first came out to interview in November of '84 and it was 90 degrees out, I quickly realized that I would never have to drive a car to work. What's the worst it can be, you know, 55 degrees and rain? How many times do you pray it would get that warm as a bike racer?
SP: ...I hear ya...
Wayne Stetina: You know, 20 miles to go.
SP: I'm talking to you from Upstate New York here, so you can imagine, we're heading into some bone-chilling...
Wayne Stetina: We had some very cold weather yesterday, I had to do the ride with long-sleeves and knickers. It was aaaa....low 60's.
SP: [jealous laugh] ... man, I don't know how you did that...
Wayne Stetina: Yeah, and I think it will be back into the mid-70's or low-80's here...it will normalize again. It got cold and rained for a couple hours, and now it's nice again.
SP: That's some rough weather.
Wayne Stetina: I'd say it's probably into the upper-60's now.
SP: See, but when you southern boys get in the cold weather, you don't know what to do, right? Get on the bike...
Wayne Stetina: [laugh] We don't ride bikes then. In the cold weather you go snowboarding or something like that...
SP: ...a little downhill skiing...
Wayne Stetina: Yeah... [laugh]
SP: So where else have you lived, I know you're in Mission Viejo now...
Wayne Stetina: I was born in Cleveland Ohio, and I grew up in Northern Indiana, just north of Fort Wayne. Then I moved out to Indianapolis, in junior highschool.
SP: I was actually saving this question for later, but now that you're mentioning the mid-west, I thought I'd talk to you about the movie "Breaking Away" for a minute. So I've heard that the movie was based on your story? [chuckling]
Wayne Stetina: Nahhhh, that's incorrect. There are similarities. Actually, the guy that wrote it was a Phi Si and he knew Dave Blase, who was a really good local racer. I think Dave had the most laps ever ridden until the first year I rode a hundred and fourty-some laps. I rode the first 60 laps without doing an exchange. They changed a lot of rules after I did two races there...
SP: The rumor is that you single-handedly won the race...
Wayne Stetina: ...the second year I rode we had a team that had three other riders who got into the Little-500 Hall of Fame. They won pole positions in qualifications and I didn't even go to qual's...that year I only rode 92 laps. I think I was 144 laps the first year if I recall correctly, but the second year we were arguing about who was going to go back out. The first year I had no idea what to expect, so I spent a fair amount of time getting used to the track and trying to figure out how to ride it...
SP: What was the surface of the track?
Wayne Stetina: It was a cinder track. It was before they had gone to a faster track with narrower tires. It's an artificial surface now, much quicker. We were on loose cinders in an old stadium that they would pack with maybe 35 to 40 thousand screaming spectators. It was quite an interesting venue to ride a bike. The second year I went to the [fraternity] house and I said, "Do you guys want to win by one or two laps this year?" and they said, "You can't call that!" I said, "Listen! We could win by 3-laps, but it would be really hard, but one or two laps is pretty easy." -- I'd gone out and I did one practice session at the track that year and rode about 40 laps just to see how the fields were riding. With the team that we had, and the way I felt...
SP: So what year would this have been?
Wayne Stetina: That was, let's see, the first year I rode was '73, so it was '74. We won by two laps and then I helped a friend of mine make sure he got second. He had the flu that day and wasn't feeling strong, but normally he would have been able to stay with us...
SP: You were a relatively accomplished bike racer at this point, no?
Wayne Stetina: I came back from the '72 Olympic Team and started school a couple weeks late after getting back from Munich. I graduated a year early and I stayed out of school for a year just to train on ice skates and then cycling to try to make the '72 Olympics, which I did at the age of 18. Dave Chauner was on the track team, I was the youngest guy on the team...I really enjoyed reading your interview with Chauner...
SP: That was an interesting interview...he certainly has some good insights into cycling...
Wayne Stetina: Olaf Moetus was another one of the top riders from Indianapolis that I grew up riding with as an intermediate and a junior. He was an incredibly talented athlete...
SP: This is good stuff. Most cyclists realize that the Little-500 wasn't just in the movie. They probaby don't get the scope of it when you say 30 to 40 thousand fans...
Wayne Stetina: That was filmed in the stadium that I raced in. The movie was in 1978 and my brother Dale and I were at the World's at Neuremburg Ring in Germany. We went to the Tour of Switzerland, then raced the world's in Germany that year. My two younger brothers and my dad were extras in the road race scenes. One of my former roommates from Delta Chi was the double for Dennis Christopher. Everytime you see the really muscular guy, that was supposed to be the star going fast...that's Gary Ribar, he's a Hall of Fame rider. So when you see the guy in the small chainring, behind the semi...that's the "star". When you see the guy that's really going 60 mph, that's Gary [chuckle]. He was frequently top-10 on a nation level.
SP: Sound like your entire family are cyclists as well...?
Wayne Stetina: Of course, my brother Dale was on two Olympic teams and I was on three...
SP: I've heard of Dale of course...
Wayne Stetina: I've got brothers Joel, and Troy. All of my brothers at one point or another, were national champions. Joel was a top track rider, who competed very successfully against guys like Bruce Donagee and Mark Whitehead out at Trexlertown. He had more speed than anyone else in our family, but not enough endurance on the road. He was a great tactical rider, scratch race, madison rider...
SP: You're kind of known as a technical rider yourself, right?
Wayne Stetina: Well, I tried to be smart enough to win races when I was in an opportunity. Bike racing is pretty simple. The only way you can be sure to win is by yourself, but of course, that's really difficult to do. The key is to breakaway with people that you can out-sprint. That's as obvious as saying that the key is to cross the finish line first or if you're a sprinter, you want to be in second or third or fourth place out of the last turn depending on how far it is to the finish. When everyone else wants to do that, then the execution gets a little bit tricky. I was usually one of the better sprinters, especially because I was a guy who could get over the hills. If we had a hard road race, as long as I got over the hills, the chances were slim to none that anybody leftover would outsprint me.
SP: The big guys were way off the back at that point...
Wayne Stetina: The sprinter types...the really fast guys. The guys that are really fast, like Roger Young...Mike Neal was an exception because he could climb really well and John Howard was just so strong...as Eddie B would say, "He was strong like a fox." You wouldn't think he was that strategic, but his sprint was the same after 25 miles or 125 miles, it really didn't matter. That's what was strange about LeMond. Here was a guy that could time trial, he could climb with anybody in the world, and yet, when he was a first and second year senior, he would occassionally beat Davis Phinney in a criterium sprint in the Coors Classic...
SP: [laughs]
Wayne Stetina: ...that just not right [lauging]...you can't race that, it's just way too much talent.
SP: Wayne, you were on the first G.S. Mengoni team, right?
Wayne Stetina: I rode for a lot of different teams. I did race for Fred back in '81, as did my brother Dale. Then he retired. Then he went pro for a while. I think retired again...I raced for Fred Mengoni through 1984...
SP: Was that the first Mengoni Team?
Wayne Stetina: Yeah. That was with Harv Nitz, Steve Bauer....we were up against the 7-Eleven team. We used to beat them pretty regularly at first, and then finally, they all got so good. At that point, Harv and I would be trying to help Bauer beat Davis Phinney.
SP: Who were the big guys on 7-Eleven at that point? We had Phinney, Schuler....
Wayne Stetina: Jeff Bradley, Ron Haymon, Greg Demjen - he won nationals in '82...
Part 2 Will be Linked Here When Available...
PART 1 | PART 2 | more coming!
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