Bob Zumwalt passed away on April 19th after a long battle with cancer.
Richard Hughes spoke with Ted Kirkbride about Bob’s life in San Diego as they were contemporaries. Here are a few bits and pieces:
Bob competed in the 1953 junior national championships. Bob was the 1954 National Junior Champion. (United_States_Cycling_National_Championships_(historical))
In 1954-55 he was one of the top riders in Southern California. He was number two in the Best All Around Event, which was 90 miles. He was an excellent sprinter going toward the finish line he was hard to beat.
Prior to working in the bike shop, Bob worked at Rohr a military aircraft production during WW II.
Also competed in the 1960 Olympic Trails in NY.
His mom and dad owed Zumwalt’s North Park San Diego Cyclery. When they passed, both Bob and his sister Shirley inherited the business. Bob eventually sold to his sister and moved to the State of Washington for a while until moving to Springfield.
Here’s a glimpse of what racing was like in SoCal in the “old Days.”
by Ian Fuller
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU7U13Wz158 This was about the time road races transitioned from track bikes (fixed gears) to derailleured bikes. At the very end of the video the sprint is being led out by Bob Z. At the finish of the road race Bob is beaten by Bob Tetzlaff, a really outstanding road cyclist of the time. He had trained in Belgium for a time and just wasn’t very often beaten in a sprint. This race was about two years before I got into active racing. In all of my SoCal racing I only beat Tetzlaff one time in a RR. Bob Z and I rarely matched up in races. Most of the road races were hilly and my forte, not Bob’s. We weren’t matched up in any track races that I remember. If so, Bob would have beaten me. I was a 16 yr old 6′ 150# scarecrow with no ability to accelerate quickly on the flat ground. A different story going uphill. Another thing, Bob remembers races he was in with clarity. For me, it was done and gone. I have no rememberances of races that Bob and I might have been in together. We did a lot of epic training rides in the back country of San Diego County. Bob’s dad made him go on training rides with me because they were fairly long and required going uphill a lot. We rode unpaved mountain roads on our skinny tubular tired ten speed bikes. We were (had to be) good bike handlers on crappy roads. We used to hitch rides behind trucks and greyhound buses. Diesel engines didn’t have turbochargers back then and couldn’t accelerate quickly. We’d sit in behind up to 30-35 mph enjoying the draft and fumes.
Another favorite was busy El Cajon blvd. where we’d keep up with the cars at 25-30 mph. Riding in heavy traffic was a piece of cake. Sometimes a group of us (5-6) would ride south to Tijuana, buy some tacos from a street vendor, visit the bike shops there, buy some fireworks. I’d smuggle a few back in an empty waterbottle (some were illegal in CA back then). Riding up the Strand to Coronado we’d stop along the sand dunes and fire off some of the larger firecrackers. Very powerful stuff back then.
