Good research Roy-- I was wrong yesterday about the German rider who did the illegal switching during the final sprint and was relegated to last, it was Klaus Peter Thaler. Braun was the pursuit rider on their team that year; both went on to professional careers.
In addition to being a very good rider, Mount was also an extrovert with a good sense of humor and theatrics. An example of this was one year at the Berkeley Hills road race, a really tough circuit used for national team selection on the West Coast. The race course was out in the boonies and we all parked along the roadside near the start/finish to prepare for the race. There were no toilet facilities then; race entrants used the nearby bushes if needed. Since the race started very early in the morning, the bushes got quite a lot of use.
Another competitor, who had earned quite a reputation for being a world-class moocher as much as for his racing prowess, spied Mount leaving the bushes and heading back toward his parked car. This fellow called over and asked George to use his roll of toilet paper.
Without missing a beat, Mount called back and gesture with his thumb, "No problem, XX, I left you some back in the bushes; I only used one side." He then flashed that big smile of his. Those of us in earshot fell over laughing as the unfortunate fellow went around begging to use someone else's roll of TP. :-)
Bill Bryant Santa Cruz, CA
on 1/12/03 8:27 PM, Roy H. Drinkwater at roydrink@ptd.net wrote:
> From 'The Bicycle Racing Book" by William Sanders, 1979.
> Page one, Chapter one:
>
> "Introduction
>
> July began as a clear day in Montreal but then the clouds
> came in. By the time the riders of the 1976 Olympic Games bicycle
> road race had started the tenth lap of the gruelling, dangerous Mount
> Royal course, the rain was coming down in great slanting gray sheets,
> making the already treacherous turns and high-speed descents as
> slippery as old soap. Ten laps out of fourteen - 128 kilometers out
> of 180. 80 miles out of 112 - and the pack had come apart under the
> pressures of the rain, the constant crashes, the incredibly steep
> mile-and-a half (2.41 km) climb each lap, and the hammering attacks
> of the leaders.
>
> Up front a little group had broken away and was steadily
> putting distance between themselves and the shattered pack. Bernt
> Johansson of Sweden, Giuseppe Martinelli of Italy, Mieczysi Nowicki
> of Poland, and close behind, fighting hard to join them, West German
> Peter Thaler and a slight, bespectacled rider in a stars-and-strips
> jersey whose face seemed permanently split in a grin that was now
> only a rictus of pain and fatigue. As the two pursuers caught the
> break, ABC-TV suddenly switched its coverage to the road race, and
> all over North America, millions of family television screens flashed
> the electrifying picture of the small determined figure, the
> star-spangled jersey now sodden with rain and sweat, the grin
> unbroken, up front -
>
> - and two thousand miles away, a certain cycling journalist
> leaped to his feet, spilling beer and potato chips all over the
> living room floor, and screamed, "My God, it's George!"
>
> George Mount, Berkeley, California, was on his way to
> becoming the first American to crack the top ten in Olympic road
> cycling. Top ten? Nobody could remember when the United States had
> a man in the first fifty. All over the United States bikies stared
> at their TV screens in gibbering disbelief.
>
> It was finally happening. In a sport where European
> supremacy was just about taken for granted, the U.S. team was at last
> out of the cellar.
>
> American cyclists had ben a joke in the world of
> international competition for more than half a century. Especially
> on the road, where it was widely believed and openly stated by
> Europeans that there was some inherent lack of moral fiber that made
> U.S. riders unfit for real racing, whatever they might do in those
> silly affairs of their own. When John Allis won a race in France in
> 1963 his French manager kept mumbling, "Incredible, an American," all
> the way home; an official in his own club asked him bluntly what sort
> of dope he had been on - obviously he felt that an American couldn't
> have won a French race without illegal stimulants of some kind. In
> fact the overall attitude was not unlike the arguments advanced the
> "prove" that black athletes were inherently unsuited to certain
> sports.
>
> They weren't laughing any more...
>
> ... George Mount came streaking across the finish line in the
> middle of a nine-man bunch sprint to finish sixth overall and a mere
> 31 seconds down on the winner..."
>
>
>
> From "Hearts of Lions", Peter Nye, page 251, detailing events in 1978;
>
> "In major amateur European events, the powerful Mount was
> often at the head of the pack. Mount won two races in Italy and
> finished fourth in the Tour of Britain. He won a stage of France's
> pro-am Circuit de la Sarthe and finished first in the Tour d'
> Auvergne. Under revised rules governing amateurs, he won $4,000 when
> he captured the Apple Lap, the seventy-five-mile race through New
> York City's five boroughs, and set a national record for seventy-five
> miles on the way. At the 1979 Pan American Games in Puerto Rico, he
> helped power the four-man team in the 100 -kilometer (62.5 -mile)
> time trial to a gold medal."
>
> Page 256:
>
> "Since turning professional in May 1980 after President
> Carter's boycott kept Americans out of the Olympics, Mount had been
> racing in Italy on the Benotto racing team. In 1981 he entered the
> Italian big time when he competed in the Giro d' Itaila, the
> country's three-week stage race that rates second only to the Tour de
> France. Mount finished a respectable twenty-fifth place after
> working for his team leader."
>
>
> Roy "a slight, bespectacled rider myself" Drinkwater
> Lititz, "2-cold" PA