There are easier ways to make a living than bombing into a tight, pothole-strewn street corner in the dark and hoping to come out the other side upright. But since 1980, cyclists the world over have come to do just that in downtown Athens. This year the Athens Twilight Criterium is set to take place this Saturday, Apr. 25, and the race’s organizers will be celebrating its 30th running.

The decades worth of back story on the event are a blur of adrenaline-fueled days for promoter Gene Dixon. When faced with recounting anecdotes about Twilight’s history, he’d rather have the people who lived and raced the event tell its story, although it was his idea that brought it about in the first place.

“One day he told me, ‘You know… I have this great idea,” says Linda DePascale, who helped Dixon get the race off the ground initially. “[Gene said] ’I want to put on a bike race in downtown Athens. We’ll shut the streets down to traffic and do it at night under the streetlights and it’ll be free. It’s something called a criterium’ - which I had never heard of before. But he was really effective at painting a picture of an event which sounded to me like it had a lot of appeal just across the general spectrum…. [And] it was a time when the downtown area was suffering.”

At the time, commerce was taking its leave of the city center and was heading for the mall. To DePascale, Dixon’s idea seemed like a reasonable way to combat the commercial malaise that was settling in over downtown, but the challenge would be in finding a backer who would unfurl a bankroll large enough to make the event happen. In stepped the Heyward Allen Motor Company.

“The company was being managed then by Buddy Allen, and if it wasn’t for him, we never would have gotten the Twilight started,” DePascale recalls. “My hope was that I could convince Mr. Allen on a new way of spending marketing money at a time when event marketing was not really understood. He took a huge chance and was the first person to commit money to try this new concept.”

Because of Heyward Allen’s standing in the business community, others followed, and slowly there was enough financial momentum built to launch the project. The first year, turnout was staggeringly high - well over 10,000 spectators. And that number spiraled upwards as the years went by.

“It quickly grew to be more each year… 20,000, and at some point we got up to 40,000,” DePascale says. “Because it was free and you didn’t have ticket sales, it was hard to tell, but you could just look. It was amazing.”

With the big crowds came some of the biggest names in the sport. Australian Olympic medalist Danny Clark won the first two events, but names that would become pillars of American cycling would also put their mark on the race. Most of the riders from the legendary 7-Eleven team would at one point or another participate in the Athens Twilight - men like Davis Phinney, who would go on to be the first American to win a stage of the Tour de France.

“Athens is such an all-time great race,” Phinney says. “Just going into that first turn in the dark with your shadow going off in four different directions, it’s just wild.” Phinney, who now heads up his own foundation to fight Parkinson’s disease, which with he was diagnosed with at age 40, won the 1986 edition of the race after lapping the entire field.

“Just re-living those images in my mind, even now, just gives me chills. That’s what American racing is all about. It’s dangerous, yet exciting, and fast and competitive.”

Phinney’s former teammate Steve Bauer, an Olympic medalist and Canadian road champion, has similar recollections of the race. “It’s pretty much ’Attack from the gun, and stay in front.’ Because it’s in the evening, you want to stay out of trouble and drive it from the front, while being fast through the corners. It’s intense.”

Gord Fraser, the only man technically to cross the Twilight’s finish line in first place three times (he was disqualified on the first of those three occasions, however), concurs. “I was excited to go every year,” he says. “It’s a special atmosphere, and the one race a year where you’re looking around and guys are kind of shaking because they’re either pumped up or nervous or a little bit of both. It really plays havoc with your vision because you have shadows passing you all the time. If there was one crit that you want to win, Athens was at the top of the list.”

“You get so keyed up from that incredible race, that you could literally not sleep until 4 a.m. the next morning,” says Robbie Ventura, a professional Tour de France commentator and former teammate to Lance Armstrong. Ventura won second place in 1999 behind teammate Frank McCormack.

“You not only have to be really fast, you have to be strong,” Ventura says. “If you get shuffled back a little too early, the energy that you spend trying to pass to get back up to the front is tremendous. I’ll never forget turn one, because there’s so many people on the inside of the turn and the outside of the turn, you can’t see the exit of the turn, so you go into it a lot of times hoping that you’re on the right line and that the person in front of you is not going to kill you.”

Micah Rice headed up the local Jittery Joe’s team for several years and assisted Dixon in organizing races for half a decade. He’s seen many events try to replicate the vibe of Twilight, but he feels no one truly comes close. “When anything gets close, all they do is compare themselves to Twilight,” Rice says. “The Athens Twilight is always the benchmark. People can copy it, but it’s the show and there’s really nothing like it.”

It’s a sentiment that Davis Phinney agrees with to this day. Phinney’s son Taylor is now a world champion track cyclist and a member of Lance Armstrong’s under-23 Trek-Livestrong squad. His father admits to wanting his son to ride the Twilight one day, despite criterium riding not being on the young star’s radar. “I’m afraid if he goes to Athens and tries it, that’s how he’ll want to spend the rest of his career,” Phinney says.

In fact, this year’s Twilight might have been a good year for the younger Phinney to try his hand at the 80-lap contest. 2008 champion Rahsaan Bahati will not be returning to the field, and without a truly dominant squad rolling to the starting line, this could be the year that a relative unknown walks away with the $7,000 first-place prize. There’s no telling, but Phinney feels that just bombing around the course and feeling the thrill of having tried the race at all is a satisfaction unto itself: “Every American rider should experience coming down the home stretch in Athens and hearing the roar of that crowd.”

JoE Silva

Athens Twilight, Turn-by-Turn

with Race Commentator Chad Andrews

Turn One (Lumpkin Street at Clayton Street): Beneath the warm fluorescent glow of the Georgia Theatre’s marquee is where it’s all gone horribly wrong for many a Twilight rider. (Hence the nickname, the “beer, blood, and bales” corner, from one participant.) Spectators crowd out the area, which is padded with hay bales for safety. You wanna see fast? Be there for the first lap when riders begin their quest to win the $400 first lap bonus prize or “preme,” Andrews says: “What happens is that you’re coming off that long home stretch, and typically everyone is full throttle because it’s flat and people have just gone through the start/finish area hunting for preme money. If you’ve got guys coming down the street then at 30-plus miles an hour and misjudge that turn, they can easily wind up in the barriers.”

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Turn Two (Lumpkin at Washington Street): Strong riders who can punch out of this turn near the front of the field have the best chance of not losing momentum going up the hill on Washington Street. “The hill is deceptive, because when you go over a few times, you don’t think too much of it. But after 90 minutes, it starts really taking its toll. Sometimes winning moves are launched from that hill.”

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Turn Three (Washington at Thomas Street): At the top end of the course, teams with enough men still in the game look to start positioning their strongest man for the win here. If they can establish a solid “lead out” (where one rider tucks into another rider’s slipstream), then the teammate going for the victory can use that momentum to launch himself out of the final turn. “That turn is the least formidable of the other three, because you’re not carrying a lot of speed going into it after the hill. If you are lucky enough to have a teammate with you at this point, then it’s best that the two or three of you just try and nail the cornering and set yourselves up for turn four.”

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Turn Four: (Thomas at Clayton): Being first through the final corner doesn’t necessarily guarantee a win, but it helps. It is still a long long way from the finish at this point, and if you come through turn four with a lot of serious competition, then you have to conserve your final burst of speed for the last 100 meters of road between you and the finish line.

“It’s a lot further than you think it is. You want to be one of those first three guys. You’re coming out of the corner so fast, you have some momentum, but you have to start your sprint as soon as you can unless you’re in a breakaway, where the speeds can be up to 15 percent slower. If it’s not a breakaway situation, then it’s harder to gauge who has the most strength left. There are too many people at that point, and you just have to pedal as soon as you’re upright out of that last turn.”

Twilight Schedule - Saturday, Apr. 25

• 8:00 a.m. Twilight A.M. (North Oconee River Greenway, Willow St.)
  
• 8:30 a.m. 5K Run/Walk
  
• 10:00 a.m. The Gambler
  
• 11:30 a.m. Kids' Criterium and Big Wheel Race
  
• 5:45 p.m. Amateur Finals
  
• 6:30 p.m. Handcycle Criterium
  
• 7:15 p.m. Kids’ Parade Lap
  
• 7:45 p.m. Women’s Pro Criterium 
  
• 8:45 p.m. Men’s Pro Criterium
  

Times subject to change. Unless otherwise noted, events begin on the Twilight course downtown, where the outdoor stage on College Square also plays host to the Twilight Jazz Festival, noon–9 p.m. on Friday, Apr. 24 (followed by a jam session at Ciné) and 10 a.m.–6 p.m. on Saturday. Find more information at www.athenstwilight.com and at www.uga.edu/music/jazzfestival.