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Bob Roll

American cyclist (born 1960)

Summary

American cyclist (born 1960)

Field	Value
name	Bob Roll
image	Bob Roll DC 2003.jpg
caption	Roll at the 2003 Tour of Hope in Washington, D.C.
birth_date
birth_place	Oakland, California, U.S.
discipline	Road
role	Rider
proyears1	1985–1990
proteam1
proyears2	1991
proteam2
proyears3	1992
proteam3

Bob Roll (born July 7, 1960) is an American former professional cyclist, author, and television sports commentator. He was a member of the team until 1990 and competed for the team in 1991. In 1992 Roll moved to Greg LeMond's Z team and added mountain biking to his racing accomplishments. Roll continued racing mountain bikes professionally through 1998.

He has written Bobke: A Ride on the Wild Side of Cycling, Bobke II, and two Tour de France Companion volumes. ("Bobke" is Southern Dutch for "Bobby".) He has also had many columns published in VeloNews.

Cycling career

Roll started cycling in 1981 in his home region of Northern California. He spent two years in the States racing before heading to Belgium to race. Two years later he became a professional cyclist for : his first race was the 1985 Giro d'Italia. During the 1988 Giro d'Italia Roll's job as a domestique pushed him to the limit, causing him to pass out at the finish and his heart to stop beating.

In 1998 a young Lance Armstrong, continuing to recover from testicular cancer, had recently dropped out of the Paris–Nice cycling race. Armstrong's training coach, Chris Carmichael, invited Roll to journey to Boone, North Carolina, to talk with Lance and do training rides with the young Armstrong for several days. Armstrong was extremely discouraged by his recent European cycling results and was close to retiring. Armstrong was refocused after eight long days riding in the rain with Roll, whose tale of the ride is in Bobke II; Armstrong's is in It's Not About the Bike.

Post cycling

Roll continues to enjoy riding road and mountain bicycles for recreation, and is a member of the veteran cable television broadcasting team (along with Phil Liggett, MBE and the late Paul Sherwen) who serve as road cycling expert-commentators for the NBC Sports Network cable network's coverage of the Tour de France, Vuelta a España, Giro d'Italia, Paris–Roubaix, Tour of California, and other international cycling road races.

Roll has appeared in a series of Road ID Tour de France television commercials as himself, riding a bus along with "Tour Mania" (a costumed-disguised rowdy faux rock group played by well-known professional cyclists, such as George Hincapie).

Major results

Bob Roll wins stage 1985 Coors Devils Cup [[Mt Diablo]].

Sources: ;1985 : 10th Overall Coors Classic ::1st Stage 9 ;1986 : 1st Stage 3 Rocky Mountains Classic : 1st Stage 3 Vuelta de Baja California : 1st Stage 3 (TTT) Redlands Bicycle Classic ;1987 : 1st Affoltern am Albis Criterium : 6th Eschborn–Frankfurt : 7th Overall Milk Race : 8th Tour du Nord-Ouest ;1988 : 1st Stage 3 Tour de Romandie ;1990 : 1st Stage 2 Tucson Bicycle Classic ;1992 : 5th Overall Tour of the Adirondacks ;1997 : 1st San Francisco Hill Climb ;1998 : 1st San Francisco Hill Climb

Grand Tour general classification results timeline

Grand Tour	1985	1986	1987	1988	1989
—	—	—	—	—	—
78	—	—	61	114	—
—	63	DNF	—	—	132

—	DNF
Did not compete
Did not finish

Bibliography

References

"The Durango Telegraph".
(8 May 2012). "Former bike racer Bob Roll rolls into TV career with offbeat wit".
(2005-07-25). "Coach Remembers When Armstrong Almost Quit".
Litsky, Frank. (1999-08-01). "CYCLING; Finding His Missing Desire in the Mountains". The New York Times.
(2006-05-26). "Blog Archive » What About BOB?". MissingSaddle.
Lance Armstrong, Sally Jenkins: ''It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life'', Chapter 5, ({{ISBN. 0-425-17961-3), Putnam 2000.
"Bob Roll".
"Bob Roll".
"Bob Roll".
"Bob Roll".

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

american-male-cyclists 1960-births living-people american-sports-commentators american-color-commentators cycling-announcers american-mountain-bikers sportspeople-from-oakland,-california cyclists-from-california 20th-century-american-sportsmen

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