Celebrating Mount’s 1976 Olympics Ride: 50 years later

George Mount’s Breakthrough in the 1976 Montreal Olympics Road Race: The U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame Celebrates His 50th Anniversary Performance

By Peter Joffre Nye

For decades after the 1912 Stockholm VI Olympics where U.S. cyclists scored two bronze medals in the 196-mile road race around Lake Mȁlaren, pedaling one-speed fixed-gear bicycles with wooden-rim wheels, American riders were hard-pressed just to complete the courses. The lack of cycling medals went on so long, while swimmers and gymnasts were hauling home medals, that U.S. Olympic Committee members considered culling the sport. 

Going to the 1976 Montreal XXI Olympics 110-mile road race, George Mount of Berkeley, California had the confidence—and results to prove it—to promise a top-twenty finish. “In the Olympics, I knew all the riders and all the teams, including the Poles and the Soviets,” said Mount, now seventy-one, in a recent phone interview. 

The Montreal Olympics drew 425 U.S. Olympic team members joining more than 6,000 men and women athletes from ninety-two countries marching in the opening ceremony. On the sunny Monday morning of July 26, Mount and three teammates lined up at the start of the road race: fellow Californian Mike Neel, Dave Boll of Hackensack, New Jersey; and John Howard of Springfield, Missouri. They had ten-speed bikes with front and rear hand brakes.

The race consisted of fourteen laps around the 7.9-mile Mount Royal course, named for the steep 764-foot-tall Mount Royal, west of downtown Montreal. The Union Cycliste Internationale governing body had officially sanctioned Montreal’s course for the 1974 worlds road race championship, 163 miles long; Belgian Eddy (The Cannibal) Merckx consecrated it by edging Frenchman Raymond (The Eternal Second) Poulidor for the title. This September, the UCI will hold its 2026 world road championship in Montreal as part of the city’s fiftieth anniversary of the Montreal Olympics.

Mount’s strategy was to keep among the top five riders. On the first assault up Mount Royal, about thirty of the 134 starters dropped off the back of the peloton. Lap after lap, Mount kept busy chasing breakaway attempts. Constant forays off the front of the peloton and the chases that ensued kept the speed high. 

“I made sure that if one of the attempts succeeded, I was in the breakaway—that was important,” he said. USA teammates Neel, Boll, and Howard remained in the hunt at the front. Mount’s alter ego, Neel, offered support in reeling back some breakaway attempts. 

On the seventh climb up Mount Royal, a height equivalent to an eight-story building, Mount and six others fled from the peloton. Another seven riders—including Bernt Johansson of Sweden—pursued and caught the breakaway by the time they crossed the start-finish line to begin the eighth lap and the second half of the contest. Mount rode among the fourteen leaders.

In the meantime, Montreal’s sunshine turned cloudy and grew dark. When breakaway riders launched their eighth lap, a light rain fell, then turned into heavy rain with falling temperatures. The breakaway led by 1 minute 20 seconds—about a half-mile.

“Sheets of water fell kind of heavy on the road,” Mount recalled. “Montreal is a major city. The streets had lots of metal grates and manhole covers. It wasn’t like riding in the countryside. The city’s roads were very slick from all the tour buses driving all day, every day, over the streets. We didn’t expect the rain.”

Water mixing with oil residue on the pavement caused Howard, in his third Olympics road race, to crash on the ninth lap. Neel and Boll also fell. Neel suffered injuries that forced him to abandon. Howard and Boll got back up and chased. 

Mount stayed in the breakaway as their number dwindled to ten. “It was a hard and miserable race because it was raining,” he said. “Rain always makes racing worse. The rain was fairly cold. We wore new thin Lycra jerseys, one of the first generation of Lycra jerseys. I also wore an undershirt in case of a crash, to have another layer of protection.”

“The cold water was nasty,” he added. “You get hot riding uphill, then you freeze going downhill. The conditions were rough.” 

On each descent, riders had to negotiate a corner with a smooth manhole cover, which caused Mount’s rear wheel to slip, although he kept his balance. Up the fourteenth and final climb of Mount Royal, Bernt Johansson of Sweden, a competitor from the 1972 Munich Olympics, attacked at the summit and opened a gap as he plunged downhill. 

“Johansson was new to me,” Mount said. “The Swedes had a different race schedule and preparation for the Olympics.” Mount was near the rear of the tight paceline. “I saw him go, but I had no gas left in the tank. It was a very smart move on his part.”

Mount waited to contest the sprint for the remaining two medals. News reports indicated that 72,000 spectators packed around the course and cheered. 

Johansson soloed to a decisive victory. Thousands of people standing behind steel barriers hailed him with a thunderous ovation as he sat up and waved both arms high to acknowledge the audience as he crossed the finish line.

Thirty seconds later, Mount and fellow breakaway riders were snaking at speed, cutting the tangents from one side of the rain-slick road to the other. 

Mount placed sixth. Howard, in the peloton, came in 42nd, seven minutes behind. Boll finished 56th, 18 minutes later.

“I represented a new generation of American bicycle racers,” Mount said. “Mike Neel recovered from his crash in the Olympics and flew to Italy, joined a professional team, and finished tenth in the UCI world road race championship in Ostuni, Italy. He was five places behind Merckx.”

Mount followed Neel to Italy and became the first U.S. professional to finish one of the sport’s Grand Tours, the three-week Giro d’Italia. He won more than 200 races in the United States, Europe, and South America. In 1997 he was inducted into the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame. He serves on the board.

“I still have the jersey I wore in the Montreal Olympics,” he said. “It shrunk. I can’t get it on anymore.” 

Peter Joffre Nye writes more about George Mount’s career in his second edition of “Hearts of Lions: The History of American Bicycle Racing” (University of Nebraska Press). 

A YouTube link to television coverage of the 1976 race can be found here.