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Steve Bauer

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Steve Bauer

Steven Todd Bauer, MSM (born June 12, 1959) is a retired professional road bicycle racer from Canada. He won the first Olympic medal in road cycling for Canada and until 2022 he was the only Canadian to win an individual stage of the Tour de France (Ryder Hesjedal, Svein Tuft and Alex Stieda had been part of winning team time trial squads).

Bauer joined the Canadian national cycling team in 1977, competing in team pursuit. He would remain on the national team for seven years, winning the national road race championship in 1981, 1982, and 1983, competing in the Commonwealth Games (1978, 1982), the Pan American Games (1979).

He capped his amateur career with a silver medal in the men's cycling road race at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. This was the first medal in road cycling for Canada at the Olympics.

Bauer turned professional following the Olympics, and in his second professional race, won the bronze medal at the world cycling championship road race in Barcelona.

Between 1985 and 1995, he competed in 11 Tours de France. He began his professional career in 1985 on the La Vie Claire team of Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond, where he stayed until leaving for Weinmann–La Suisse–SMM Uster Helvetia in 1988. Bauer finished fourth in the 1988 Tour, winning the first stage and wearing the yellow jersey for five days, the second Canadian to wear the jersey. The first was Alex Stieda in 1986, who was also the first North American to wear the yellow jersey.

At the 1988 world championship, Bauer disputed the final sprint with Belgium's Claude Criquielion, world champion in 1984, and Italy's Maurizio Fondriest. As Criquielion tried to pass against the barriers, Bauer sent him crashing into the barriers. Meanwhile, Fondriest passed and won the race. Bauer was immediately disqualified, even if once Criquielion sued Bauer for assault and battery, the municipal court of Oudenaarde ruled in Bauer's favour. The ruling was upheld in both the Appeal Court and the Supreme court, at which stage Criquielion was fined for bringing the case a third time in a process that lasted for more than five years.

In 1989 Bauer won the Züri-Metzgete. In 1990, he took second place in Paris–Roubaix to Belgian Eddy Planckaert. The finish was so close that the officials had to study the photo-finish for more than ten minutes before Planckaert was finally declared the winner. After 266 kilometers of racing, Planckaert had just edged Bauer by less than a centimeter, making it the closest finish of the race's history.

Riding for 7-Eleven, Bauer wore the Yellow Jersey following stages one to nine at the 1990 Tour de France, before ultimately finishing 27th. He had been part of a stage one breakaway alongside Claudio Chiappucci, Ronan Pensec and Frans Maassen which gained a 10-minute time advantage at the head of the general standings. In subsequent stages, Bauer, Pensec and Chiappucci all wore yellow with defending champion Greg LeMond only gaining the lead of the race after stage 20, the final time trial. At the 1991 Paris-Roubaix, Bauer placed fourth overall, finishing in a small group just over a minute behind lone winner Marc Madiot. For his 1993 Paris–Roubaix campaign, he had a bike built by the Merckx factory with "an extreme rearward seat position" to test his theory that it would "engag[e] the quadriceps more efficiently" and with it "more power to the pedals". He failed to make the top ten (finishing over 4 minutes behind the winner in 23rd place) and never rode that bike again.

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