{"id":17263,"date":"2023-08-18T10:10:43","date_gmt":"2023-08-18T17:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bikeroute.com\/NationalBicycleGreenwayNews\/?p=17263"},"modified":"2023-10-18T19:58:34","modified_gmt":"2023-10-19T02:58:34","slug":"velo-sport-founder-peter-rich-rip-8-3-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bikeroute.com\/NationalBicycleGreenwayNews\/2023\/08\/18\/velo-sport-founder-peter-rich-rip-8-3-23\/","title":{"rendered":"Velo Sport founder, Peter Rich RIP 8\/3\/23"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peter Rich, Berkeley bike shop owner who launched Tour of California, dies at 83<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Sam Whiting
\nAug. 17, 2023<\/p>\n

Peter Rich racing in Italy in 1961. A decade later when he was back in the Bay Area, he founded the Tour of California, a 685-mile road race.<\/p>\n

Peter Rich was a Berkeley bike shop owner and former police officer when he came up with an idea big enough to pedal him into the wider world of endurance bicycle racing.<\/p>\n

Operating out of his small storefront called Velo Sport, he organized, promoted and paid for a 685-mile, 10-stage race he named the Tour of California. Staged in 1971, it is credited with being the first international stage race in the United States.<\/p>\n

The eight-day race, which brought in 80 riders on teams from Mexico to Germany, lasted just one year (though the concept was revived as\u00a0the Amgen Tour of California<\/a>\u00a0in 2006). But Velo Sport lasted for 50 years and was central to the evolution of Bay Area cycling, as the home of\u00a0Velo Club Berkeley and a newsletter that became Bicycling Magazine.<\/p>\n

Rich, whose enthusiasm for distance riding overflowed into the equally brutal sport of endurance trail racing on horseback, had used a wheelchair since suffering a stroke 10 years ago. In June, he fell and broke his femur, which led to pneumonia. He died Aug. 3, at Kaiser Permanente\u00a0Walnut Creek, said his daughter, Julie Peterson. He was 83 and just three months shy of his induction into the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame, to be held at a ceremony in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeter spread the culture of cycling to a receptive audience at the beginning of what today is known as \u2018the bike boom,\u2019 \u2019\u2019 said Joe Breeze, who rode that boom by\u00a0creating the modern mountain bike<\/a>, the\u00a0Breezer, in Mill Valley. \u201cAt the inception of\u00a0Velo Sport, the bicycle in America was pretty much a kid\u2019s sidewalk toy. Peter\u2019s passion brought European cycling culture to the Bay Area and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than a bike shop owner and race promoter, Rich had been a successful track racer himself, competing in Italy. He came just shy of making the U.S. team for the 1960 Summer Olympic Games in Rome.<\/p>\n

He opened Velo Sport in 1962 and became a coach for Olympic aspirants in both track racing and road racing. Among his innovations was cross training, which included chopping wood, lifting weights and doing lap work on the velodrome around the Polo Field in Golden Gate Park.<\/p>\n

Rich bought a van and painted it in the livery of Velo Sport, and transported his riders to the park. At the end of the session, he would tell his riders he\u2019d meet them back at the shop and drive off, leaving them to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge and up to San Rafael, then hitchhike across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, and ride back to Berkeley.<\/p>\n

When they reached the store after this harrowing journey, Rich would say, \u201cOh, you\u2019re back.\u201d Or in George Mount\u2019s case it was, \u201cOh, you\u2019re home,\u201d since Rich let riders live above the shop.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeter contributed in a way that moved the sport of bicycle road racing forward,\u201d said Mount, a cyclist from Walnut Creek, who was coached by Rich to a sixth-place finish in the 112-mile road race event at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. He was the first American to crack the top 50 in modern times.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout Peter, I wouldn\u2019t have even made the team,\u201d said Mount. \u201cHe could take raw talent and create world-class athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n

But his influence in the world of bicycling went beyond road racing. His shop first opened on university Avenue but soon moved to Grove Street where it became a hangout the way\u00a0Tower Records was for musicians<\/a>\u00a0and record collectors. Velo Sport was so cool that\u00a0graphic artist David Lance Goines depicted it<\/a>\u00a0in one of his limited edition posters that are now collectible.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe word on the street was that Peter Rich and his\u00a0Velo Sport was the place to go,\u201d said Breeze, who saw the poster and went to the shop in 1970. Breeze later opened the\u00a0Marin Museum of Bicycling and Mountain Bike Hall of Fame<\/a>\u00a0in Fairfax. An orange road bike with the blue Velo Sport logo on the down tube is in the window display, with a descriptive placard.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeter Rich helped bring cycling back to America for the first time since its 1890s Golden Age,\u201d said Breeze. \u201cPeter was on the next wave, and all other cycling followed, mountain biking included.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Peter Rich at his bike shop\u00a0Velo Sport in Berkeley\u00a0in 2002. The shop, opened in 1962, remained in business for 50 years.<\/p>\n

\n

Peter\u00a0Starke Rich was born July 25, 1940, at Children\u2019s Hospital in San Francisco. His father, Charles Rich, was an educator who left the family when Peter was 8. He and an older sister, Robin, were raised by their mother, Thelma, a preschool teacher. They lived in a square saltbox on Russell Street in South Berkeley. Rich attended Le\u00a0Conte Elementary School, Willard Middle School, and began his long affair with bicycling by delivering both the morning and afternoon newspapers on a\u00a0Schwinn Black Phantom.<\/p>\n

At a 40th anniversary celebration at Velo Sport in March 2002, Rich recounted that he was one of three students among 2,700 at Berkeley High School who were uncool enough to ride a bike to school. He graduated in 1958 and enrolled at San Francisco State. Because people could not ride across the Bay Bridge, he moved to Half Moon Bay, a quick 30-mile commute by bicycle.<\/p>\n

His riding to class outlasted class itself, as he dropped out to become a road racer in Italy. Upon his return, in 1962 he opened Velo Sport and soon met JoAnne Parchen, a student in comparative literature at UC Berkeley. She needed a quiet place to study, and Rich gallantly offered up his shop, which at that point was mostly empty of customers. They were married in 1963, and their daughter, Julie, was born six months later.<\/p>\n

They lived in the unincorporated Contra Costa town of Canyon until the marriage ended on Christmas Eve 1965, said Peterson.<\/p>\n

Rich\u2019s marriage to the shop was a main factor, and Rich decided to switch careers by becoming a Berkeley police officer, leaving the shop in the care of a manager. But his three years on the force, 1966-69, were tumultuous years in Berkeley, and he eventually returned to the shop.<\/p>\n

In the mid-1970s, Rich became interested in horses, thinking it would give him something in common with his daughter and bring them closer together, Peterson said. It didn\u2019t really work, but it did bring him to his second wife, Rose Marie Hoffman, a Berkeley trail rider out of Grizzly Peak Stables.<\/p>\n

They started riding together, then moved in together and were eventually married. Ever competitive, Rich rode in the Tevis Cup, a grueling 100-mile horseback race through rugged Sierra Nevada backcountry trails. He finished that race five times, while raising Arabian horses at an 8-acre ranch he and Hoffman established in the Orinda hills bordering Tilden Park.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Peter Rich, competing in the Tevis Cup in 1986, completed the 100-mile endurance trail-riding race five times.<\/p>\n

In 2004, Riche moved the shop back to University Avenue where he had started. He closed it in 2011 to turn his full attention to the stables. His stroke, in 2014, left him paralyzed on his left side, and he never walked again.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeter was always a very positive, looking-forward kind of person,\u2019\u2019 said Hoffman. \u201cHe loved helping people, and even following his stroke he maintained his love of sport and community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rich\u2019s induction into the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame, in Pennsylvania, will be followed by a memorial Oct. 21 at the museum\u2019s showroom in Davis (Yolo County). Mount, who serves on the museum\u2019s board, will lead a memorial bike ride for his old coach and a tribute at the museum downtown. He expects hundreds of riders, including a cohort who will ride from Berkeley, 80 miles away, some wearing their old Velo Club jerseys, a gesture Rich would appreciate \u2014 though he would not appreciate their plan to take the train back.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeter would make them ride home,\u2019\u2019 said Mount, who now lives in Grants Pass, Ore. \u201cBut he\u2019d probably find some Italian mother to throw them a spaghetti feed at the halfway point.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter Rich, Berkeley bike shop owner who launched Tour of California, dies at 83 Sam Whiting Aug. 17, 2023 Peter… read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3VuuR-4ur","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":915,"url":"https:\/\/www.bikeroute.com\/NationalBicycleGreenwayNews\/2011\/06\/13\/laughter-filled-podcast-with-ride-sponsor-bicycle-man-one-of-nations-biggest-bent-dealers\/","url_meta":{"origin":17263,"position":0},"title":"LAUGHTER FILLED PODCAST WITH RIDE SPONSOR, BICYCLE MAN, ONE OF NATION’S BIGGEST BENT DEALERS","author":"awakeagainmartin@gmail.com","date":"June 13, 2011","format":"audio","excerpt":"February 26 2011, 3:42 AM\u00a0\u00a0by Martin & Virginia Krieg Listen as we\u00a0have great fun with\u00a0Peter Stull\u00a0at his huge bike shop in\u00a0Alfred Station, NY.\u00a0 In the words ahead you will hear how Peter wanted to be a bike shop owner from the time he was 11 years old. 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