Steve Russell/Torstar News Service

Mark Holmes watches the Corso Italia Grand Prix cycling race that ran along St. Clair Avenue West, Lansdowne, Davenport and Caledonia yesterday.

They broke every traffic rule in the book, skirted the edge of disaster with each turn in the road, endured a bone-rattling ride over 100 kilometres of pitted, humpy Toronto roadway and traffic jams – and loved every second of it.

"It was fantastic," said Jim Lefebvre, and well he might have felt that way more than anyone. Yesterday’s first real cycling road race to hit these streets of ours in over a decade finished with the 36-year-old Lefebvre riding "look-ma no-hands" to the finish, the easiest of winners in yesterday’s racing.

"I was here in 1988," he told the crowd. "I think I got third as a youngster. It brings back a lot of memories."

It also brought some life to a sleepy, sun-kissed Sunday along St. Clair Ave. W., where the most contested battle of recent days has been over the looming construction of dedicated streetcar lanes. This Corso Italia Grand Prix series did demonstrate that there’s great potential for dedicated bicycle lanes.

Lefebvre, a massage therapist and former two-time Canadian criterium champion from Niagara Falls, won despite two tire punctures. The second came with just seven laps remaining – had it come inside of five laps to go, he wouldn’t have enjoyed the free lap granted for mechanical failure, and this romp would’ve been deflated in more ways than one. So add good timing to good riding, but what’s with those flat tires?

"No surprise," said Lefebvre. "A bumpy course, a big fat ass like mine – you get flats."

Lefebvre took control with 10 laps remaining, breaking away from a lead pack of eight others who seemed content to let him go. He crossed the finish line in two hours 38 minutes 30 seconds, 1:09 ahead of the pair of second-place Darko Ficko and third-place 18-year-old Mark Pozniak. The victory earned him and his Jet Fuel Coffee teammates $750, and a further $250 in lap prizes.

But this was as much about renewal and re-introduction as it was about racing. Organizers hope that this Corso Italia series, held in the late 1980s over a similar course, lasts longer than the previous incarnation, and that it becomes a fixture – even if the street figures to be ripped up for some time to come, if and when that streetcar-lane project gets going. For a group that usually races in the country, the crowd in the hundreds lining St. Clair provided a boost. For the locals, whose Sunday afternoon fare usually runs to Italian Serie A soccer game off the dish or a game of pool, it seemed to go over well.

But it was down Lansdowne Ave. where the hairy stuff happened, the racers more than doubling the posted speed limit of 15 km/h for cars. A scant two laps into yesterday’s first morning race, masters rider Charlie Squires was taken to hospital after taking the corner on to Davenport a little too fast and crashing into the barrier head-first. An S-curve just above Davenport followed by a little dip in the road and a depressed manhole cover then that turn had some riders calling for changes for next year.

"They should re-pave the road," suggested women’s race winner Merrill Collins of Toronto.

"I’d do the same course, but in the opposite direction," said Leigh Hobson of Kitchener, runner-up to Collins in one of the day’s closest finishes. The 37-year-old Collins, a personal fitness trainer, sprinted away in the final 200 metres to win by a couple of seconds.