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Breaking Away
Dave, Mike, Cyril, and Moocher are working-class friends in the university town of Bloomington, Indiana who graduated from high school the year before, aren't sure what to do with their lives, and consider attending university unrealistic. They spend time swimming in an abandoned water-filled limestone quarry and sometimes clash with the more affluent Indiana University students in their hometown, who refer to them disparagingly as "cutters," referring to the locals' common work in the limestone industry.
Dave is obsessed with competitive bicycle racing, Italian racers in particular, because he recently won a Masi bicycle. His down-to-earth father, Ray, a former stonecutter who now operates his own used car business, is puzzled and exasperated by his son's love of Italian music and culture, which Dave associates with cycling. His mother, Evelyn, is more indulgent and prepares Italian dishes for the family, to Ray's annoyance.
Dave masquerades as an Italian exchange student to romance a university student named Katherine, and serenades "Caterina" outside her sorority house with Friedrich von Flotow 's aria M Apparì Tutt' Amor to Cyril's guitar accompaniment. Katherine's boyfriend, Rod, and his fraternity brothers beat Cyril up, mistaking him for the suitor. Mike, a former high school football quarterback, insists on tracking down Rod for revenge over Cyril's objections. The university president reprimands the students for their arrogance toward the "cutters" and, over the students' objections, invites the town to field a team for the annual Indiana University Little 500 race.
An Italian cycling team comes to town for an exhibition race and are annoyed by Dave's challenge to their preordained victory. They force him to crash. Despite the disillusionment this causes him, Dave is persuaded by his friends to join them in racing the Little 500. Ray privately tells his son how, when he was a young stonecutter, he was proud to help build the university but never felt welcome on campus. Dave, having confessed his deception to Katherine, patches things up before she leaves for a job in Chicago.
Dave, the only skilled cyclist among his friends, rides most of the Little 500 without a break unlike the other teams, which switch riders. He gains a small lead, but is injured in a crash and comes in for a change. Mike, Cyril, and Moocher are unable to keep pace with the field. Dave has his feet taped to the pedals, committing him to finish the race himself, makes up the lost ground, and overtakes Rod on the last lap to win, beating out Rod's favored fraternity team.
Ray is proud of his son and takes to riding a bicycle himself for his health. Dave enrolls at the university, where he extolls the virtues of the Tour de France and of French cyclists to a pretty French exchange student. His father shows a look of surprise and dismay when Dave says "Bonjour Papa" while bike riding with the French student.