Stephen Foster
When I started racing the French Grand Prix in 1996 I was star-struck. Yet it wasn’t because Simon Lessing was on the start line every week. I sort of, half knew him, kind of from Nice the year before.
I was more a fan of Stephen Foster. At the 1988 Chicago USTS he sent Mike Pigg home devastated and then two weeks later he finished 3rd in the Unofficial Worlds in Kelowna.
On the weekend between Kelowna and Chicago he got 4th in Vancouver.
Images: Tri-Athlete Oct/Nov 1988. Triathlete November 1988.
Two weeks before Chicago Foster also won Leon’s Triathlon in Hammond, Indiana. This race used to be a big-deal and billed itself as the World Age Group Championship. The race organiser was Leon Wollek.
These were the days when we could see the world’s best athletes going head to head three times in three weeks. With the WTS and Ironman-isation of the sport we don’t get that anymore. Shame.
Foster missed the first official ITU World Short Course Championships in Avignon in 1989 but came back to get 3rd in Orlando in 1990, 8th in the Gold Coast in 1991 and 4th in Muskoka in 1992.
Foster also won a draft-free World Cup in Embrun in 1993 (bottom) and was still truckin’ in the FGP in 1996, racing for Aix-en-Provence. Here’s some race results where we both feature.
He was an excellent cyclist for a smaller guy and I loved his bike. You can see it a bit on the Kelowna coverage at 08:40 and Embrun at 21:55. A hand-made steel Hillman made by Gordon Hill out of Melbourne.
Image: Triathlete November 1988
