Is This What Cycling Needs?

About twenty years ago, some cycling buddies and I were enjoying a post-ride pizza.  (Actually, it was more like pizzas, plural:  If I recall correctly, we did a long ride at a brisk pace.) Miguel Indurain, possibly the least effervescent personality ever to dominate a sport, had just won the Tour de France.  While we all admired his talent and skill as a rider, a couple of us lamented the fact that he was all but unknown outside of a few European countries.  That was one of the reasons why so few Americans, at that time, were paying attention to the Tour or racing in general. 

A few years earlier, Greg LeMond won the Tour for the third time in five years.  There was some “buzz” in this country about him and cycling, but it died out pretty quickly after he hung up his bike.  Of course, some of the waning of American interest in the Tour, Giro and Vuelta could be blamed on the fact that no American rider of LeMond’s stature followed him, at least for nearly a decade.  

Although people who met him said he was likeable enough, he wasn’t particularly compelling in an interview.  Moreover, the same people who professed to liking him also said, in the immortal words of a journalist I knew, that he “wasn’t the brightest thing in the Crayola box”.  A couple of interviews I saw mostly confirmed that impression.  

At least he was more interesting than Indurain.  Some reporters said the Basque rider was a jerk; others said that spending time with him was more narcotic than aphrodisiac.  Even he himself admitted, in a post-race interview, “My hobby is sleeping”.

As we gobbled our slices of tomato, cheese and dough, one of our “crew” came up with this insight:  “What cycling needs is a Michael Jordan.”

If my sense of history of accurate, Jordan had retired from basketball for the first time.  I don’t recall whether it was during his failed attempt at a career in baseball, which he said was always his first love in sports.  But even in his absence, Chicago Bulls #23 was, by far, the best-selling sports jersey in the world.  Kids were wearing it in France when I rode there later that summer, and a newspaper reported that he was the most popular athlete in that country.

I thought about my old cycling buddy’s insight  yesterday when I was listening to the radio news station and the sports reporter said that in a few days, the Yankees will start their first training camp in two decades without Derek Jeter.  Some would argue that he was the greatest baseball player of this generation.  (Even though I’m not a Yankee fan, I wouldn’t argue against that claim.)  He, like Jordan, “Magic” Johnson, MuhammadAli and Martina Navratilova, was one of those athletes known to people who aren’t even fans of his or her sport, or sports generally.  And, although neither basketball nor baseball is starving for fans in the US, I’m sure that the executives of the leagues in which they played—not to mention legions of marketers and advertisers—were glad that Jordan, Johnson, Ali, Navritalova and Jeter came along.

From Triangle Offense

As I thought about that, I thought about Lance Armstrong and realized I hadn’t heard much about him lately.  After his last Tour de France victory in 2005, he seemed poised to become, possibly, the first cyclist to transcend his sport, even if he didn’t dominate it in the way Eddy Mercx, Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault  and Indurain did during their careers.  

(Even when they were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, most European cycling fans agreed with such an assessment of Lance.  Although he won the Tour more often than the other riders I mentioned, he didn’t win, or even enter, many of the other races, including the “classics”, on which those other riders built their careers.)

Of course, part of the reason why he would have been a transcendent phenomenon was his “Lazarus” story.  Even before he confessed to doping, there were whispers that he faked his cancer (having known people who lived with and died from it, I don’t know how it’s possible to do such a thing) in order to lull his competition and create a media sensation.  But, even if he hadn’t gone from wondering whether he’d lived another day to leaving peloton wondering how far ahead of them he would finish, he probably would have gotten all of those offers he had for commercial endorsements.  I even think he would have been mentioned as a candidate for public office, as he was before his now-famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) with Oprah.  

What I’ve said in the previous paragraph makes sense when you realize that even before he won his first Tour, he was in demand as a motivational speaker.  Of course, some of that had to do with his bout with cancer, but even if he hadn’t faced such adversity, he would have been invited to give pep talks.  He’s not a great orator in the classic sense, but he is the sort of person to whom people would pay attention even if he weren’t so famous.  Although not necessarily loquacious, he’s articulate.  But, perhaps even more to the point, he is an intense and fiery personality who doesn’t have to tell a particularly compelling story or use florid language in order to capture the attention of his audience.  At least, that was the impression I took away from the one brief in-person encounter I had with him, and from the times I’ve seen him interviewed.

If Lance indeed consumed as many illicit pharmaceuticals as has been alleged, and if he bullied his teammates into doing the same, the story of his rise and fall is a sort of Faustian tragedy.  But his tumble from grace is also sad for cycling and its fans because it denied the sport its first universal household name.  For that reason, it will be a while before the early Spring Classics will generate as much attention in the US as the beginning of baseball’s Spring training season.