The bike gang is a hallmark of carefree teenage youth. We’re not talking Harleys. We mean the red-blooded American, tried and true, Goonies-style spokes-spinning, head-down, breeze-in-your-hair-with-your-best-guys-by-your-side bike gangs. You’d meet up with your pals in your neighborhood and just ride. In the case of one particular teen, however, “the guys” in his gang happen to include an Olympic silver medalist who took third place in the Tour de France in 1998 (Bobby Julich) and another who won fourth place in the Tour de France in 2008 (Christian Vande Velde). And, of course, there’s George Hincapie, the 17-time rider in the Tour de France and Olympian, the man known as superstar cyclist “Big George” to many but just “Dad” to 13-year-old Enzo. That’s some gang.
And while most teenagers are happy if, say, just the kids at school or their crush acknowledge their Instagram posts, Enzo’s include comments like: “So proud of you, buddy!” from people like Lance Armstrong. (“Thanks, Uncle Lance,” was his reply). But that’s nothing new for Enzo (Zo, for short), who was born into the family business—the sport of cycling—and who is poised to carry the mantle of the Hincapie name.
Enzo got his first bike at three years old and started riding at four. Did the son of George Hincapie, legendary pro cyclist well-known for being the lead domestique (the rider who helps get the leader to the finish line) for “Uncle Lance,” start with training wheels?
“Oh, yeah, we did everything,” says George, smiling as he sits at a table in their European-inspired home near Paris Mountain. “We started with a Big Wheel, which is a rotational front wheel that helps you balance, and, of course, the push bike.” Enzo’s first road race was in 2016 just before he turned eight years old, but it wasn’t until this past year that he says he really connected with the sport. “I didn’t really start showing interest until the start of last year,” says the soft-spoken teen with kind, coffee-bean-colored eyes that are seemingly always within seconds of being partially obscured for a moment until he flips his enviable tousle of mocha hair back into position.
“Before that, it was me forcing him to ride,” jokes George, “like I do with Lucca now.” Lucca is Enzo’s 7-year-old brother; sister, Julia, is 16.
In a year when so much otherwise went wrong in the world, 2020 allowed Enzo to shift gears, you might say, as Bobby Julich, who has known Enzo since he was born, witnessed on weekend Hincapie rides. Julich met George when they were teenagers and then shared an apartment with him when they were on the same team as professionals at Lake Como in Italy in 1995, “before it got taken over by Clooney and the whole Hollywood crowd,” says Julich. “When I moved here five years ago, Enzo really wasn’t into it,” explains Julich. “He had a bike and he rode, but you could just tell it wasn’t really his thing, and George never pressured him into it. We’d go out and do the loop out to Hotel Domestique, and when we’d come back we would meet Enzo at Tandem Creperie and then we’d ride home with him, so it was about a 10-mile ride. He was such a little kid, and it was just fun seeing him on the bike. And then, man, I don’t know what happened, but this last year Enzo just transformed himself. Not only did he grow about a foot, but he started paying attention to his diet— even more so than George and I probably ever did,” says Julich, adding, “What 12-year-old stops eating chips and cookies and soda, and marinates and makes his own chicken breasts and fresh vegetables? It’s just amazing seeing his progression, and it’s all coming from him, which is key. I mean, he leans on George and I and Rich [Hincapie] for coaching, or for advice, but he’s just becoming his own person.”
Which has to feel good for Enzo as he stretches his legs—literally and metaphorically—between the bookends of his father’s history and legacy, and Enzo’s own potential and destiny.
His story begins when a young model in France named Melanie Simonneau fell in love with the name Enzo when she was presenting a Ferrari (one version of the car being the iconic Enzo) in her hometown of Dijon in the year 2000. A few years later, she fell in love with George Hincapie. Their Enzo arrived three years after their first child, Julia, who was born in 2004. “She had said if she ever had a boy, his name would be Enzo, so there was no negotiation,” says George, who met Mel in 2003, when as a podium hostess at the Tour de France, she planted a kiss on Big George’s cheek. Seventeen years of marriage and three children later, Melanie now watches her oldest son’s races with nearly the same trepidatious excitement that she did her husband’s. “Half of George’s body would be road rash, and when he broke his collarbone he didn’t want to have it fixed because he could not train,” says Melanie. “I told my husband, ‘I watched you when I was there at the races and everything goes real great, but when things are not great I was super worried.’ I was like, ‘I can’t go through this with my son,’ but that’s what he wants to do. It’s the sprint that scares me. I’m just very nervous, and when the race is over, I’m happy.” Also happy is Enzo, whose most recent victory was climbing the podium in third place in June at the 2021 USA Cycling Amateur Road National Championships in Florida, competing in the Junior 13-to-14-year-old category.
Enzo’s grandmother, Martha, and grandfather, Ricardo Hincapie (a one-time cyclist in his own right, as George and his older brother, Rich, and sister, Clara, were coming up in Queens, New York), live down the street and are yet one more rung on the ladder of Enzo’s support system. Another—and something that George didn’t have himself as he made his way as a junior cyclist—is a whole community of riders who call Greenville home, in no small part because of George’s presence here over the past two decades. “It’s been fun to see how far the sport has come with middle school and high school leagues now,” says George. “It’s a much more social experience for Enzo than it was for me, and I love seeing that.”
The Hincapie family endeavors also include Hincapie Sportswear and Hotel Domestique, the 13-room Euro-style luxury hotel and grounds, home to the annual Gran Fondo Hincapie ride—their 10th this year in October—through the Blue Ridge Mountains. This year will be the first time they’ve added a 50-mile Junior Challenge race complete with prize money for 18 and under riders, both boys and girls. They also host events in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.
From Ricardo’s early efforts dragging a young George away from watching morning cartoons to get the bike wheels rolling, through George now training his own son, the dual inheritances of focus and awareness are the intangible heirlooms bolstering Enzo’s self-reliant determination. And that, along with the brass tacks of his training—his discipline and nutrition regimen, gear like compression boots for post-ride recovery, a smart trainer gadget for the practice bike in the family gym, and, of course, riding with a peloton of 60 to 70 adults, comprising some of the best retired pro cyclists around—will get Enzo to his place on the podium. And, as he aspires to conquer his own ascents, wherever they take him, you can’t help but think that the Gentle Giant himself might even relish that one day in the not-so-distant nor impossible future, the perceptible shift from, “So, you’re George Hincapie’s son” to “So, you’re Zo’s dad” could happen. And if and when it does, anyone who really knows George might even say he’ll never be prouder.
