American Flyers

Boulder County supplied the road that opens the film’s race. The “Hell of the West” first stage was staged on the Morgul-Bismark loop south of Boulder, and most of that circuit lies inside the county: the Marshall Road leg, the stretch of Colorado 93, and McCaslin Boulevard from the Marshall Road corner south through Superior and most of the way up its closing climb, the Wall. The Flatirons appear in the background.

Filming overlapped with the real Coors International Classic, whose director Michael Aisner is thanked in the end credits, so some of what reaches the screen is genuine Boulder County bike racing rather than staged action. The rest of the film’s Colorado is elsewhere: the red-rock “Tour of the Moon” stage is Colorado National Monument near Grand Junction, and the finale was shot on the climb from Idaho Springs toward Echo Lake, on the road to Mount Blue Sky, then still called Mount Evans.