George Hincapie is known as a gentleman of cycling and rightly so. If it weren’t for a certain Lance Armstrong, Hincapie would have probably been the pre-eminent American rider of his generation. As it is, George seems content with what he has achieved, though it doesn’t stop him wanting a bit more, specifically a certain cobblestone trophy. A member of eight Tour de France winning teams, George lives in Greenville, South Carolina after being raised in New York. He has raced the Tour deFrance 13 times and finished all of them except the first. He placed second at the 2005 Paris-Roubaix and has represented his country at no less than five Olympic Games. Bicycling Australia met with George for an exclusive interview at the Tour Down Under where, once again, if it wasn’t for Lance Armstrong, he no doubt would have been the star attraction. But this doesn’t seem to faze George at all. Despite his obvious jet lag and still being in the process of adjusting to summer in Adelaide, he was courteous and softly spoken. We ordered coffee and you can probably tell from the length of the answers when it began to kick in. He wasn’t excited by the distant past, perhaps not wanting to be reminded how long ago it was, but there was never any sense of hiding anything. Rather his maturing of a cyclist was also the time of his maturing as a person who is open as well as honest. But the two things that ignite him the most passionately are talking about his family and of course, Paris-Roubaix.
