Once world-class bicyclists, pair left racing behind as family
grew
Robert Phillips is a materials manager for Morgan Hill-based
Custom Chrome. His wife Therese is an elementary school teacher at
Ladd Lane in Hollister.
Today, they don’t think or talk much about there former lives.
Some 25 year ago they were pursuing careers in cycling that led
Robert to the 1980 Olympics and Therese to 13 New York State road
racing and velodrome titles beginning in the mid-1970s.
Once world-class bicyclists, pair left racing behind as family grew
Robert Phillips is a materials manager for Morgan Hill-based Custom Chrome. His wife Therese is an elementary school teacher at Ladd Lane in Hollister.
Today, they don’t think or talk much about there former lives. Some 25 year ago they were pursuing careers in cycling that led Robert to the 1980 Olympics and Therese to 13 New York State road racing and velodrome titles beginning in the mid-1970s.
“I don’t compete anymore at all. I miss competing but I don’t miss all that it takes to compete,” said Therese, who met her husband in the early 1980s at a cycling event in New York. “I stopped in 1984 because I didn’t really enjoy riding a bike. I did it because I have always been a competitive person and enjoyed the competition.”
Robert’s career in cycling happened almost by accident. When he was 16 years old he landed his first job at the Raleigh Bicycle Company in Dublin, Ireland, as an intern designer of bikes and a tester for the company.
“They were always giving me free stuff,” he said.
Before long, he was recognized for his ability to ride the bikes he was testing and was given time off by company executives to train on the bikes and use them in road race competitions.
“I was winning a lot of races almost instantly,” said Phillips, who still has his Irish brogue. “I seemed to have the natural talent. And the more I won, the more I was getting the attention of the selectors – the group that put together teams to represent Ireland and the Olympic team.”
Two years after he began road-racing Phillips won the 75-mile World Junior Road Racing Championship in 1976.
In 1979, he captured the Pernod International road race in Northern Ireland, which was part of the Olympic qualifying process.
That year he also won a major, five-day international event.
“I went on kind of a whirlwind that year,” said Phillips. “Everything kind of clicked that year.”
Two weeks after winning the international race he won again and was named to the country’s Olympic cycling team.
The following year he would wear his country’s orange, white and green jersey at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Although Ireland formally boycotted the games, Phillips was still allowed to compete as an individual from Ireland.
“I wore the jersey of my country but the games were not sanctioned by the country,” said Phillips, who raised money from private investors to send him to the games. “Any time you put on a shirt for your country it’s always an honor.”
A year later in March of 1981 Phillips was invited to come to New York in order to race for Team Brooklyn – a renowned racing club that was one of the best in the country.
“Team Brooklyn competed all over the United States. I still miss those days especially when I see it on TV,” said Phillips, who still holds Irish citizenship. “I have a lot of good friends who are still in the sport. I miss it because for so long I ate, slept and drank bicycle racing.”
While competing for Team Brooklyn that first season he met Therese at an event where both male and female athletes competed.
At the time, Therese was also an accomplished cyclist, who competed in a number of road races and half-mile velodrome events called match sprints. Velodromes are banked tracks specifically built for bicycle racing. Track cycles are pared down to the barest essentials, lacking even brakes. Cyclists slow them by applying backwards force to the pedals, since the bikes also lack a mechanism that allows them to coast. Match sprint races are tactical duels in which competitors vie for favorable position by slowing, even stopping their cycles between furious sprints.
Therese started cycling at the age of 11 and, like her husband, enjoyed success early on.
From 1975 to 1984 Therese won 13 New York State Championships. Her first state title in velodrome racing came in 1975. Two year later, she captured her first New York State road racing title.
In 1980 she finished fifth at the U.S. National Velodrome Championships. The following year, she represented the U.S. in the World University Games in Edmonton, Canada while a student at Long Island’s C.W. Post University.
She also competed in criterium races, which sends a large group of riders through city streets. Therese continued to compete through college then stopped in 1984 at the age of 21.
Her husband would continue to compete with Team Brooklyn for a few years after he married Therese in 1985.
But with a new bride and a young child on the way Phillips would soon take a sales job with Mongoose Bicycles at its corporate headquarters in Long Island.
In the summer of 1996 Bell Sports in Santa Cruz bought out Mongoose. Phillips was one of 10 people from the company who came to California in the transaction.
The couple settled in Hollister that summer where they continued to raise their three children. Before long, however, another move was in the making when Phillips’ division at Bell Sports was sold to the Wisconsin-based Brunswick Corporation.
That’s when Phillips opted to stay in California.
“I said that’s it, I’m not moving anymore. We were almost ready to move to Ireland before I took the job with Custom Chrome,” said Phillips. “I didn’t want to go to Wisconsin.”
Today, the 47-year-old former cyclist from Ireland still finds time to ride when he can, often riding in and around Tres Pinos, out to Pinnacles National Monument or along Cienega Road, and into the Hollister Hills area.
But most of his spare time now is taken up by his 10-year pursuit of karate. Recently, he just earned his third-degree black belt from the Hollister Martial Arts Academy.
“Right now all of that racing stuff is like a lifetime ago for us,” said Therese. “We still have boxes and boxes of trophies but they’re all in the garage or in the attic. We don’t compete anymore, but we both enjoyed it.”
