Tour of the Gila was a key stop between Santa Clara Pueblo and a WorldTour Team for one young cyclist.

In 1987, Greg Tafoya entered Tour of the Gila as a junior racer, paying $18 at the late-registration table in Silver City.

In his very first season, the talented teen from New Mexico, had just visited the Olympic Training Center to try out for the U.S. Junior Worlds Team. Here in his home state, he bumped into new acquaintances from the national junior team.

Tour of the Gila, still in its infancy then, was already a pretty big deal, he says. “It was a real shocker. The junior field was huge. I think ended up fifth or sixth.” (The race organizers’ records say Tafoya placed third overall.)

His interest in stage racing piqued, he vowed to come back and win the race the next year. “It’s a New Mexico race, and I’m from New Mexico,” says Tafoya, who hails from Santa Clara Pueblo. “I felt like we had to represent our state well on our territory.”

But Tafoya’s next season brought early challenges. He’d upgraded his racing category but then broke his wrist, got food poisoning and the flu. Once he felt better, he resumed serious training, riding twice a day and driving to Albuquerque to race Tuesday night crits or Thursday circuit races. Tafoya won fourth at the New Mexico Criterium Championship. “That was a Pro, 1, 2, 3 category field, so I knew I was coming around and Silver City was coming up,” he said.

Long story short, Tafoya did sign up for Tour of the Gila again in 1988 and won the category 3 race overall. He remembers a highly competitive field, particularly the battle against an international athlete who rode like he should have been in a higher category.

He fondly recalls the leader’s jerseys, reflecting on their purple hue and the title sponsor branding. “It was originally called the Scott Nichols’ Tour of the Gila. I remember the car dealership owner Scott Nichols driving around in his convertible Corvette.”

Silver City also sticks out in his memory. “I felt like it was home away from home. I stayed at the college dorms and got addicted to the Jalisco Café. Back then, it was almost like a little house. I ate there breakfast, lunch, dinner. That was my race fuel. I gotta have chile. I’m a New Mexican.”

Nowadays, Tafoya lives near Park City, Utah. “I come out of the cycling hot bed of Española,” Tafoya says, clarifying his sarcasm. “Somehow, I stumbled across cycling. I think the movie might’ve been my introduction to it.”

Like many, he started riding a bike around the time he learned to walk. And then he kept having encounters with the sport, even attracting the help of his cycling mentor, Kent Bostick—an alum of Tour of the Gila and national cycling legend.

The weekend after Tour of the Gila, Tafoya won the Tour of Los Alamos, which also drew racers from Colorado and beyond. “I had this secret dialog that I’d successfully defended southern and northern New Mexico against out-of-state racers,” he says.

Tafoya continued racing and, while training ahead of the 1989 season, he found himself on the same road as a major name cycling name: Bob Roll, then a WorldTour pro riding for 7-Eleven. “I was out training in the middle of winter near my reservation in northern New Mexico and saw him riding by. I thought I was hallucinating, so I turned around and rode up to him.”

After that meeting, Tafoya accepted Roll as a mentor and trained like him too. “I felt really lucky, and one day he tells me I think you should get ready for Europe. I was like, ‘What?!’ I’m literally straight from the reservation, and he’s saying you need to take a stab at being a professional.”

With instructions from the 7-Eleven coaches coming through Roll, Tafoya rode “big miles” and did “tons” of climbing. “I’m still a teenager figuring out how to raise money to get a ticket to Europe. My stepmom was a famous Santa Clara pottery artist. Her client found out about it and gave me a ticket to Italy,” he remembers. “I was either going to be a professional bike racer and see the world or join the Navy and see the world. The unbelievable bike-racing dream was playing out.”

Tafoya flew to Italy and met up with the team, putting in one training block that mimicked the Giro d’Italia. “I was told I was very likely the first Native American professional bike racer,” he says.

He was overseas during the 1989 edition of Tour of the Gila or Tafoya would’ve raced again in Silver City. “I wanted to go back and win the pro 1, 2 race for New Mexico,” he recalls. “When I was over in Italy, I was talking to Bob. I told him about how the Tour of the Gila was definitely a race that people should be doing if they had plans to test the waters in Europe. He asked why is that? The terrain, the altitude, the nature of that race will prepare you for Europe.”

While Tafoya stayed in Europe that season, something was drawing him back home. “Two weeks before I left for Italy, I met a girl,” he explains. “My dream of traveling the world through bike racing or the Navy became a blur, because I really wanted to be with this girl, who I’m still with over three decades later.”

Back stateside, he and his wife put themselves through college. Tafoya worked for 16 as a molecular biologist “trying to cure cancer” before becoming a snowboard instructor and getting involved with programs for high-risk Native American youth. He subsequently earned a master’s in public health and created a prevention curriculum called RezRIDERS. “It’s still going without me,” he says.

Tafoya said that, while cutting his cycling career short was the right choice, he returned to the sport 30 years later. “When I came back to it in 2019, my wife dared me to get on a bike again. I was flipping through the TV channels and saw the Tour of Utah. Sepp Kuss was climbing and smiling. I told my wife, ‘I understand what he’s feeling.’”

She bought him a bike, and today, Tafoya finds his way to a couple races per year. “The last race I did was the Utah State Time Trial Championship. I won that.”