Bob Roll is an American former professional cyclist, author, and television sports commentator. He was a member of the 7-Eleven Cycling Team until 1990 and competed for the Motorola Cycling Team in 1991. In 1992 Roll moved to Greg LeMond's Z team and added mountain biking to his racing accomplishments. Roll continued racing mountain bikes professionally through 1998. Roll is known in the cycling world, and to his global cable television fans, fondly, as "Bobke". He has written Bobke: A Ride on the Wild Side of Cycling, Bobke II, and two Tour de France Companion volumes. He has also had many columns published in VeloNews. He is credited with suggesting that Joe Parkin, professional cyclist and author, move to Europe and wrote the foreword for Joe's first book. As the accounts of the now legendary story go, in 1998 a young Lance Armstrong, continuing to recover from testicular cancer remediation, had recently dropped out of the Paris?Nice cycling race. Armstrong's training coach, Chris Carmichael, invited the affable and entertaining Roll to journey to Boone, North Carolina, to talk with Lance and do training rides with the young Armstrong for several days. 

July 7th, 1960 in Oakland (Age 63)