Website by Ed Collier Photography

Fitchburg Cycling Club / P.O. Box 923 / Fitchburg, MA / 01420

Marketing Director / Bill White / wwhite @ longsjo.com

Executive Director / Ed Collier / ecollier @ longsjo.com

General Questions / info2008 @ longsjo.com

Photo by J.S. McElvery

Our Champions, Their Stories

Have you won the Longsjo? If you have, then you are one of a handful of elite cyclists to make your mark in our history. We want to hear, read, and see your story. If you’d like to share your memories, please contact Executive Director, Ed Collier.

Lyne Bessette - ’99,’00,’01,’02

I always seem to have found my racing legs just in time for Fitchburg every year! That race was almost a hometown race for me. My parents would drive down, even my uncle and aunt came one year.

In 2000 on the downhill there was a huge crash and I remember the ambulance.... Racers were saying that it was very bad. At that time I didn't know the guy, but it happened to be Tim Johnson who had hit a sign post at full speed. We met that next January in California at the Saturn team camp. He is now my husband!

Bob Simpson - 1968

In 1968, I was just 19 years old. I had a good sprint and was a good bike handler, so I did well in the criterium races that year. The previous year,  I had placed well in the Fitchburg Junior race and it seemed that the circuit was one that I was happy with.

In the 1968 Art Longsjo Classic, François Mertens, John Aschen, and I attacked simultaneously to break away. We got a good rhythm going and held off the main pack. Aschen, who was not the best sprinter, led out the final kilometer and François and I jumped past on either side of him in the sprint to the finish line. My good acceleration and the fact that Francois waited for me to go, making it a short sprint, worked in my favor and I won by a couple of bike lengths.

The prize for first place, that year, was a console colour TV which John Gromek and I stuffed mostly into the trunk of our ’55 Chevy to take back to New Jersey. We must have somehow put our bikes in the back seat of the car we didn’t have a  roof racks in those days. On the drive home from the race, we were stopped by the police who wanted to check to make sure that we hadn’t stolen the TV that was hanging out of the trunk.  The next year I couldn’t attend the race, but the winner, Jocelyn Lovell, won a car for first place if I remember correctly!

At the time, only the ninth running of the race, I was the youngest to win, at 19 years old.

When I raced in the Fitchburg Junior race the year before, I remember watching Sammy Watson, who had won in 1966, prepare to drive away after his race with all of his equipment, bikes and bags, packed inside of his Volkswagen Beetle.  I was greatly impressed by his ability to squeeze everything into that little car.