Andy Bishop, a pioneering American road and mountain bike racer who competed in four Tours de France before becoming a respected teacher and coach, died Tuesday following a battle with cancer. He was 61.<\/p>\n
Born in Tucson, Arizona on May 26, 1965, Bishop emerged during the first major wave of American riders to establish themselves in European professional road cycling in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
A trailblazer in both road and mountain biking, Bishop competed at the elite pro level for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
He debuted in the 1988 Tour de France with PDM, and later raced with 7-Eleven, Motorola, Coors Light, and Nutra Fig-Colorado Cyclist, among others.<\/p>\n
He competed in four editions of the Tour de France and one Giro d\u2019Italia, racing for several top pro road teams during the late 1980s and 1990s.<\/p>\n
Bishop also started eight monuments, including three editions of Paris-Roubaix, and finished second in the Belgian classic Druivenkoers-Overijse to Viatcheslav Ekimov in a three-up sprint.<\/p>\n
Bishop was an anti-doping advocate and maintained that he raced clean during an era heavily tainted by performance-enhancing drugs. He told Cyclingnews<\/em> he believed he was the only rider on PDM\u2019s 1988 Tour de France squad who did not dope.<\/p>\n One of his career highlights came in 1995, when he won the overall at the Herald Sun Tour in Australia.<\/p>\n Bishop transitioned to mountain biking in the mid-1990s, just as the discipline was booming.<\/p>\n He raced the off-road circuit from 1996 to 2000 with the Gary Fisher trade team, where his teammates included 1996 Olympic gold medalist Paola Pezzo and future 2012 Giro d\u2019Italia winner Ryder Hesjedal.<\/p>\n One of his notable off-road results was 24th at the 1997 elite men\u2019s mountain bike world championships in Ch\u00e2teau-d\u2019\u0152x, Switzerland.<\/p>\n He maintained a lifelong connection to cycling after retiring, and he coached two-time Olympic cyclist Lea Davison and many others.<\/p>\n Bishop settled in Vermont and became a photographer and educator, teaching mathematics at Harwood Union High School and later at Hanover High School in New Hampshire.<\/p>\n He died June 2 at his home in New Hampshire following a battle with stomach cancer. Bishop is survived by his wife and two children.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/news\/andy-bishop-cyclist-obituary\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/andy-bishop-cycling-seven-eleven.jpg”] Andrew Hood Updated June 5, 2026 05:38AM Andy Bishop, a pioneering American road and mountain bike racer who competed in four Tours de France before becoming a respected teacher and coach, died Tuesday following a battle with cancer. He was 61. Born in Tucson, Arizona on May 26, 1965, Bishop emerged during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-1973669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1973669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1973669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1973669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1973669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Cycling pioneer and educator<\/h2>\n