Dave Blase is an American cyclist whose story served as the inspiration for the film Breaking Away .
Dave Blase is an American cyclist whose story served as the inspiration for the film Breaking Away .
Blase attended Indiana University Bloomington in Bloomington, Indiana from 1958 to 1962. In his freshman year, he started cycling and joined a team for the Little 500 bike race. He quickly became a dominant rider and was recruited by the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. However, eligibility rules for the race were changed to require transferring team members to sit out one year. Blase continued to ride in outside races waiting to become eligible to ride for Phi Kappa Psi, a move which precluded him from competing the following year when a new rule was enacted requiring those who participated in outside races to wait one year to become eligible. Blase spent that year off campus and returned to ride in the 1962 Little 500. Blase led Phi Kappa Psi to a victory, riding 139 of the 200 laps himself. [1]
Breaking Away was written by Steve Tesich, an Indiana University graduate who served as an alternate rider on the Phi Kappa Psi Little 500 Team in 1962. He was teammates with Blase and used him as an inspiration for the Dave Stoller character in the film, and for the overall story. Like Blase, the Stoller character developed an appreciation for Italian culture and the Italian cycling team.
Blase cycled professionally after leaving college and became a high school biology teacher in Indianapolis, at Thomas Carr Howe Community High School and Arlington High School. [2]
Track cycling is a bicycle racing sport usually held on specially built banked tracks or velodromes using purpose-designed track bicycles.
A velodrome is an arena for track cycling. Modern velodromes feature steeply banked oval tracks, consisting of two 180-degree circular bends connected by two straights. The straights transition to the circular turn through a moderate easement curve.
Breaking Away is a 1979 American coming of age comedy-drama film produced and directed by Peter Yates and written by Steve Tesich. It follows a group of four male teenagers in Bloomington, Indiana, who have recently graduated from high school. The film stars Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley, Barbara Barrie, Paul Dooley, and Robyn Douglass.
Marshall Walter "Major" Taylor was an African-American professional cyclist. Even by modern cycling standards, Taylor could be considered the greatest American sprinter of all time.
Paris–Roubaix is a one-day professional bicycle road race in northern France, starting north of Paris and finishing in Roubaix, at the border with Belgium. It is one of cycling's oldest races, and is one of the 'Monuments' or classics of the European calendar, and contributes points towards the UCI World Ranking. The most recent edition was held on 17 April 2022
Stojan Steve Tesich was a Serbian-American screenwriter, playwright, and novelist. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1979 for the film Breaking Away. Tesich is also credited as the inventor of the term "post-truth".
In road bicycle racing, a domestique is a rider who works for the benefit of their team and leader, rather than trying to win the race. In French, domestique translates as "servant". The use of the term dates back to 1911, although such riders had existed before then.
The Little 500, is a track cycling race held annually during the third weekend of April at Bill Armstrong Stadium on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. It is attended by more than 25,000 fans each April.
Road bicycle racing is the cycle sport discipline of road cycling, held primarily on paved roads. Road racing is the most popular professional form of bicycle racing, in terms of numbers of competitors, events and spectators. The two most common competition formats are mass start events, where riders start simultaneously and race to a set finish point; and time trials, where individual riders or teams race a course alone against the clock. Stage races or "tours" take multiple days, and consist of several mass-start or time-trial stages ridden consecutively.
Six-day cycling is a track cycling event that competes over six days. Six-day races started in Britain, spread to many regions of the world, were brought to their modern style in the United States and are now mainly a European event. Initially, individuals competed alone, the winner being the individual who completed the most laps. However, the format was changed to allow teams, one rider racing while the other rested. The 24-hours a day regime has also been relaxed, so that most six-day races involve six nights of racing, typically from 6pm to 2am, on indoor tracks (velodromes). Six-day events are annually hosted in London, Berlin, Ghent, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Manchester, Melbourne and Brisbane.
This is a glossary of terms and jargon used in cycling, mountain biking, and cycle sport.
The Women's Little 500 is a bicycle race held annually at Bill Armstrong Stadium on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington. The race is modelled after the men's Little 500. The race has been run the Friday before the men's race, since its conception in 1987. It consists of half the distance of the men's race: 100 laps around the quarter-mile cinder track (410-meters) at the Bill Armstrong Stadium. Racers usually compete in teams of four, but teams can be as few as two, as long as that was the number of team members with which they qualified for the race. These teams usually have a common bond such as living in the same residence hall or being members of the same sorority, or they simply are an independent group with common interests. Each team is only given two bikes on which to ride and therefore, must compete in a relay-style that is rare in other races.
Bill Armstrong Stadium is a 6,500-capacity soccer-specific stadium and velodrome located in Bloomington, Indiana. The stadium is home to the Indiana Hoosiers men's and women's soccer teams. It also hosted the NCAA Men's Soccer Championship in 1988, and is home to the annual Little 500 cycling race, which was featured in the 1979 Oscar-winning movie Breaking Away.
Seamus "Shay" Elliott was an Irish road bicycle racer, Ireland's first major international rider, with a record comparable only to Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche. He was the first Irish person to ride the Tour de France, first to win a stage, and first to wear the yellow jersey, and first English speaker to win stages in all the Grand Tours.
Jimmy Michael was a Welsh world cycling champion and one of the top riders in the sport for several years.
Vincent Denson is a former professional racing cyclist who rode the Tour de France, won a stage of the Giro d'Italia and won the Tour of Luxembourg in the 1960s.
James Howard Pollak Jr. is a retired cyclist who competed in the 1992 Summer Olympics.
The definition of ultra-distance cycling is far more vague than in ultra running or in ultra-triathlon. Any bike race or ride longer than a century ride, which is 100 miles (160 km), is sometimes considered to be ultra-distance cycling. However, such events are relatively common, so using a longer distance to define the category is more useful, such as any race or ride that is longer than 200 kilometres (120 mi), 300 kilometres (190 mi) or even a double century, 200 miles (320 km).
One Day in April is a 2015 feature-length documentary produced by Life Is My Movie Entertainment. The film follows four teams of college cyclists as they prepare for the Indiana University Little 500, a collegiate bicycle race held each year in Bloomington, Indiana.
Gravel cycling, gravel biking or gravel grinding is a sport, or a leisure activity, in which participants ride bicycles mostly on gravel roads. Sometimes, specially designed gravel bikes are used; in other cases, any bicycle capable of covering the terrain can be used.