Channeling Hinault? LeMond? Mondrian?

 What made it so popular?

It probably didn’t hurt that two cyclists who won, between them, eight Tours de France and a bunch of other races, wore it.

Nor did its design:  With its echoes of Mondrian, it still looks good nearly four decades later. A company that pioneered the kinds of pedals and helped to popularize the kinds of frames nearly all racers—and many wannabes—ride today used a similar design in its logo.

That company is Look.  The jersey in question is that of the La Vie Claire team.  I rode the jersey—and the pedals—in my youth.

I’m not surprised that the jersey is reproduced to this day.  Nor does it provoke consternation in me that an illustrator would be inspired by it:

A Thriller Or A Juicer?

My uncle, who was as much a card-carrying liberal on social issues as anyone I've known (Having spent much of my life involved in the arts and the academic world, that's saying something!) nonetheless refused to watch any movie in which Jane Fonda, a.k.a. "Hanoi Jane", appeared.  

The question of whether you can appreciate the work of anyone accomplished in his or her field--whether in the arts, sports, science or any other area of endeavor--knowing that the person did something immoral, unjust or simply out of line with your values, is certainly not new.  I know otherwise well-read people who will not touch Ezra Pound's Cantos because he was an anti-Semitic Fascist and refuse to have any truck with movies, TV shows, books or other creations from folks who are--or whom they believe to be--immoral or politically incorrect.

Likewise, there are erstwhile fans who gave up on bike racing because of the doping scandals.  This phenomenon was, I believe, most pronounced in the wake of Lance Armstrong's fall from grace.  With all due respect to Greg LeMond, Armstrong was probably the first modern "American hero" of cycling. At least, he was the reason why many Americans paid attention to the Tour de France, if not to bike racing as a whole.  But even Europeans admired and respected him, however grudgingly, if for no other reason than his "comeback" story.

It would be one thing if current and former fans directed their ire solely at him.  Since he was stripped of his titles, however, it seems that some have given up on the sport.  Many more, though, look at every victory, and every current and rising star, through a lens tinted with suspicion.  It's hard to blame them, though the problem of doping pervaded cycling--and sports generally--long before Lance seemed to spring from his death bed to the podium.

So, when Alberto Contador announced his retirement from racing a few months ago, fewer tears were shed than when Bernard Hinault, Eddy Mercx, Jacques Anquetil, Fausto Coppi or even Miguel Indurain called it quits.  That, even though, among those riders, Hinault is the only one besides Contador to have won all three Grand Tours --Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a Espana-- more than once. (Mercx and Anquetil each won the Vuelta once, while neither Coppi nor Indurain ever won it.) Even though nearly anyone who has followed the sport will say that he was one of the most talented riders of his generation, they are not as sorry to see him go as they were when previous winners of the maillot jaune and maglia rosa left the scene.

Contador in the 2005 Tour Down Under

Contador, though, wasn't just a cyclist who won races.  He pedaled with gusto, and raced with panache.  Probably the last cyclist who won with such style was Marco Pantani, winner of the 1998 Tour and Giro.  His "juicing" spiraled into abuse of other drugs, including cocaine, and led to his death five and a half years later. The way Contador rode was often described as a "dance", and he recently admitted that in his final Vuelta --which he won--he would "attack exactly when I felt like it" instead of "calculating everything".  You might say he had his reasons:  After all, he was riding his final race, and it was in his home country.

He was indeed thrilling to watch.  Should we remember him for that--or for the titles he lost and the ban he incurred from his drug use?   

Why Aren't You Paying Attention To The Tour de France?

Funny he should mention it:  The Tour de France is in progress.  

Yesterday, "Retrogrouch" said he is "barely" following this year's race.  I could say the same thing.  In fact, other cyclists I know who've followed Tours (and Giros and Vueltas) past say that they're paying little or no attention to the latest editions of these contests.

It got me to wondering why this is so, and whether it's just an American phenomenon.  Could Europeans' interest in those races also be waning?

Now, to be fair, the Euro football (soccer) championship ended three days ago.  It's held every four years, like the Olympics, and this year's version was held in France.  As it happens, les bleus made it to the championship game, which they lost to the Portuguese side.

Then again, the tournament was held in France in 1984 and 2000, both of which the French won.  This year's final matchup brought Cristiano Ronaldo-- who some regard as the world's best player-- and Antoine Greizmann--who could become his successor, according to some experts--onto the pitch as opponents.  So, even those football fans who aren't French or Portuguese (or simply fans of those teams) could find something interesting to watch.  Also, there was the "feel good" story about the Icelandic squad, which made it all the way to the quarterfinals against France (and, along the way, beat England).  This is especially shocking when you realize that more people live on Staten Island than in Iceland, where there are no professional leagues!

Stories like those keep casual fans interested in major sporting events.   Such drama seems to be lacking in this year's Tour.  There are favorites and "dark horses", to be sure.  But there aren't the sort of compelling rivalries, in part there is no rider-of-his-generation like Bernard Hinault and, thus, no one who's in a position to ascend to the throne, if you will.   There is also not a "feel good" story like the pre-fall-from-grace Lance Armstrong's (though, even in his heyday, there were whispers that he was doping).  




And, let's face it, there's nationalism in sports.  It's no longer startling to see British riders dominate the race, just it was no longer a shock to see Americans win after Greg LeMond.  While there are some very good riders from the former Soviet Bloc countries, none of them yet poses a challenge to the established order.  One reason, I think, is that those riders tend to dominate in sprints, often at the expense of other events, just as the best British riders--until about fifteen years ago--were time trialists.  Even Peter Sagan doesn't look ready to make the "breakthrough", and even if it did, it wouldn't excite fans in the US or the major cycling nations of Western Europe.

Finally, I think some people have given up, or are giving up, on cycling because of the widespread doping.  While football and other sports have their share of "juicers", the problem doesn't seem anywhere near as rampant.  At least, that's how fans seem to see it.

Anyway, if you want to read about a really exciting Tour, Retrogrouch wrote a very nice account of the 1986 version, which had everything this year's edition seems to lack.

Joop Zoetemelk: He Didn't Ride The Tour De France To Work On His Tan

Any New York basketball fan will tell you that Patrick Ewing is the most unlucky player who ever lived.

Why?  His career almost entirely coincided with that of none other than Michael Jordan.  Although Ewing earned many accolades and awards throughout his professional and collegiate careers, one prize eluded him:  the NBA championship.  Jordan retired with six of those.

There are similarly "unlucky" cyclists.  Perhaps the most benighted of all was Raymond Poulidor, "le deuxieme eternel"--the eternal second.  He finished the Tour de France in that position three times, and in third five times in the fourteen Tours he entered (and twelve he completed).   In spite of his consistency, he never even wore the yellow jersey.

What caused "Pou-pou" (With a nickname like that, how could his luck be anything but bad?) such misfortune?  Well, his professional career began in 1960.  Two years later, he entered--and finished third in--the Tour for the first time.  As fate would have it, Jacques Anquetil won his second consecutive (third overall) Yellow Jersey in that year's boucle.  Anquetil won the following two Tours, with Poulidor achieving his first second-place finish in 1964.

Anquetil retired in 1969, but that year another legend won the Tour for the first time. You probably know his name: Eddy Mercx.  Even though Poulidor rode his last Tour in 1976, a year after Mercx completed his last, the "Pou" still could not win the maillot jaune.

After Poulidor, the rider with the worst luck was probably Joop Zoetemelk.  He is one of only two cyclists to enter the Tour more often than Poulidor:  sixteen times, a record George Hincapie later equaled.  In those sixteen tries, he finished second six times.  And he actually won it once, during the unusually cold and rainy 1980.  I was one of the many fans who lined the Champs-Elysees on the day he circled the Arc de Triomphe and ascended to the podium in the Yellow Jersey.

He is the second-unluckiest, not only because he actually won and because he had more second-place finishes than Poulidor (though he was never third), but also because he didn't have to contend with Anquetil.  However, he pedaled through first part of his career --as Poulidor did in the latter part of his--in the shadow of Mercx.  And during his later years, including the year he won the Tour, Bernard Hinault dominated the cycling world.

While nobody can fault the way he rode in 1980, critics often point out that he achieved his victory in the year Hinault withdrew after the twelfth stage, when the weather aggravated the tendinitis in his right knee.  Hinault would win again the following year (when Zoetemelk just missed the podium with a fourth-place finish)  and in 1984 and 1985.  Zoetemelk finished his last Tour in 1986 when Hinault's teammate, Greg LeMond, won for the first time.

Few world-class cyclists have ever had fairer skin than the Dutchman.  That was the basis of a joke that went something like this:  He never tanned because he was always riding in the shadow of Mercx (or, later, Hinault).  However, fans in his home country are not the only ones who don't see him as riding in the shadows of anyone:  On its 75th anniversary, the Royal Dutch Cycling Federation named him the best rider ever to come out of the Netherlands. 


Perhaps most important of all, every cyclist who competed with and against him respected his work ethic as well as his natural talent.  More than one of his fellow riders called him "the perfect teammate".  According to Peter Post, his manager on the TI-Raleigh Team, "He followed the rules.  He got on with people...  He never asked for domestiques.  Joop never demanded anything."   A few observers also saw that as his weakness.  "He could not give instructions...when Zoetemelk won the Tour, the instructions had to come from Gerrie Knetemann and Jan Raas," according to fellow Tour rider Rini Wagtmans.  Still, he made this assessment:  "Joop Zoetemelk is the best rider the Netherlands has ever known."

Today, Mr. Zoetemelk turns 69 years old.  Wherever he spends his day, he will not be in the shadow of Anquetil, Mercx, Hinault or anyone else.

They've Gotta Start 'Em Young

Yesterday, Chris Froome won the Tour de France two years after he won it for the first time.  He deserves all of the accolades he receives.  Anyone who can finish the Tour is at least a world-class rider; anyone who can win it is among the sport’s greats.  And when a cyclist wins the Tour more than once, it’s hard not to compare him with the sport’s immortals.




He is 30  years old.  When Bradley Wiggins won three years ago, he was 32.  And, even though Lance Armstrong’s wins have been vacated, I will include him in this comparison:  He was a few weeks short of 28 when he wore the maillot jaune in Paris for the first time.

Now, every woman of a certain age has said, “Age is just a number!”  (I’m guilty as charged!)  In some contexts, it’s true.  However, the age at which a cyclist wins his first Tour—or, for that matter, at which he or she achieves his or her first victories or high placements—seems to have a lot to do with whether said cyclists becomes one of the dominant riders of an era—or of the history of the sport.

I couldn’t help but to notice that Bernard Hinault was 23 when he won his first Tour in 1978.  Eddy Mercx’s first victory in the race came at age 24 in 1969.  Other cyclists won major stage races and classics when they were in their early 20’s, and were winning (or at least finishing among the top riders) in professional and amateur races before that.

 

Eddy Mercx in 1969

 

Actually, riders like Mercx, Hinault, Coppi and other greats from the past were competing in lots of races at such early ages.  (As great as they were, they won about one out of every five races they entered during their careers.)  That gave them the opportunity to learn how to ride a variety of different races.  When they won, it helped them to build their reputations, which would lead to contracts with major teams that had the resources to help them elevate their riding.

 

By the time Coppi, Jacques Anquetil Mercx and Hinault won their first major races, they had already entered more races than most, if not any, of today’s riders will participate in during their entire careers.  And, as I’ve said in my earlier post, in riding (and sometimes winning) a variety of races, they developed a range of skills—mental as well as physical—on which they could draw throughout their careers.  As a writer, I liken them to a writer who reads and writes in a variety of different genres when he or she is young and develops a diverse repertoire before entering the apex of his or her career.

Bernard Hinault in 1978

To be fair, cyclists today can’t be blamed for starting later than their counterparts in earlier generations.  When Anquetil and even Hinault were competing, it wasn’t unusual for a young man to leave school at 14 or 16, depending on which country he called home, and start working.  Part of the reason was that jobs and apprenticeships were available; another reason was that those young men were working to help support their families, whether in a factory or on the farm.

Cyclists of the past usually came from the class of young men I’ve just described:  one that is disappearing.  Young people in western European countries, like their counterparts in North America and Asia, are staying in school longer.  Given that few colleges and universities have cycling programs, many would-be racers find it difficult to keep up their training—especially in the absence of support from a team or club—at the same time they’re studying.

That means that cyclists aren’t starting or resuming their careers until they’re just about the age at which Hinault and Mercx won the Tour for the first time.  They therefore have fewer years in which to compete, let alone amass victories, never mind to test their mettle in a variety of different kinds of races.  Mercx retired from the sport at 33, which is actually fairly late for an elite cyclists.  At that time, he’d been racing professionally for 17 years: more than half of his life.  (In contrast, Froome didn't turn professional until he was 22.)Few, if any, of today’s cyclists will have such long careers—and thus less of an opportunity to become the dominant rider Mercx was.  

Why We Don't Have Any More Hinaults or Mercxes

Retrogrouch's excellent posts about Bernard Hinault and the 1985 Tour de France got me to thinking about how professional racing has changed. As a result,  I came to the conclusion that racers like Hinault or Eddy Mercx simply could not exist today.

There are a number of reasons why no one races, let alone dominates, the way Hinault and Mercx did.   One is this that the organization, sponsorship and training of riders and teams are very different today from what they were three decades ago, when Hinault achieved his final Tour de France victory, let alone when Mercx won his last title a decade earlier.

In those days, cyclists rode in a much greater variety of events than they do now.  The greatness of Hinault and Mercx--and of cyclists like Jacques Anquetil, Fausto Coppi before them--was that they rode (and won) many of the one-day "classics" (including such races as Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix) as well as races against the clock and on the track.  Most of the current generation of cyclists won't even enter as many races as Mercx or Hinault won. 

In other words, cyclists of Hinault's and Mercx's generations  did not focus all of their time and energy on winning the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a Espana.  And, when they won those races, they did so by being among the top riders in all aspects of those races:  They won mountain climbs, sprints, time trials and long road stages. 

Bernard Hinault

Now, to be fair, it isn't necessarily the racers' fault that they're not riding as many events and that the best riders on each team are focused on winning the long stage races.   That has been driven, I think, in part by the sport's changes in sponsorship.  Hinault's generation was the last to be sponsored by bicycle companies (which are not nearly as big as, say, automobile, athletic-footwear or soft-drink makers) and businesses of one kind and another that had little name recognition outside their home countries.  Few people outside of France had shopped in a La Vie Claire store, and few outside of Italy had eaten a Molteni salami, before Hinault and Mercx, respectively, wore team jerseys with the names of those companies on them. 

The landscape was beginning to change late in Hinault's career, when global companies like Coca-Cola and Nike began to sponsor teams and races.  While it meant bigger budgets for equipment, training and such, it also meant that those companies wanted as much exposure as possible--for themselves and cycling--for the money they spent.  Most Americans (or casual fans in other countries, for that matter) couldn't have told you who finished fourth in the Dauphine Libere or whose hour record was just broken--but everyone knew who won the Tour de France, especially if the rider came from his or her own country. 

Again, in the interests of fairness, I should point out that by the time Greg LeMond won the Tour for the first time in 1986, few Americans had grown up following the sport of cycling.  A true fan of any sport not only knows the results of his or her hometown team's games, but follows other teams and, most important, the players on those teams.  Even more important, they understand the intricacies of playing or participating in the sport:  few basketball fans anywhere in the world can appreciate Tony Parker's "floater" as much as the ones in New York, even though TP has never played for the Knicks.  That is because New York basketball fans follow all of the NBA as well as international and college basketball. When LeMond came along, few Americans born after the era of the six-day races followed cycling in a similar way.  Few things will get the attention of would-be fans like a dominating victory in a major race.

Also, it must be said that Americans had a greater variety of sports and leagues already vying for their attention than most Europeans had for theirs.  It's quite a challenge for a sport like cycling to compete against leagues like the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball, all of which grew tremendously during bicycle racing's dormancy in the US.  A story about a one-day race in a foreign country simply would not distract most Americans from baseball or basketball or football playoffs.

Finally, I will offer one more reason why I think the cycling world will not produce more Hinaults, Mercxes, Coppis or Anquetils.  Such riders--like the great English footballers of the past--were usually the sons of native-born farmers, factory workers, miners, other blue-collar workers and small business owners.   People in circumstances like those may not grow up with much, but there's enough money--or enough can be saved--for a bicycle.  Sometimes there isn't much else, and that is what motivates a talented rider. 

(I read somewhere that when Eddy Mercx was going off to race with the Peugeot team, his father tried to stop him. "Who will mind the store?," he protested.)

Eddy Mercx

That class of people is disappearing in Europe, as it has been in the US.  Some who would have been members of such a class found ways to improve their economic (if not social) lot in life.  Thus, their kids grow up with electronic gadgets and other distractions an earlier generation never had.  Becoming a first-rate cyclist requires many hours of training, which can only be done by someone who either doesn't have distractions or has the mental discipline (which few have) to ignore them and get on his bike.  Also, a rider needs a similar kind of discipline to forego, say, ice cream or other foods that, while pleasurable, will not enhance performance.

Increasingly, in countries like France, the ones who are most motivated to develop their athletic talents are immigrants or their children.  And they are not becoming cyclists.  For one thing, they are poorer than the native European working classes were, and can't afford a racing bike or the other necessary equipment.  On the other hand, it takes hardly any expenditure for equipment to play futbol (soccer) or basketball, or to become a track-and-field competitor.

The Africans, Arabs and other third-world immigrants (and their children) who live in Europe also share a trait with Americans at the time of Hinault:  Most haven't grown up following the classics and other bike races.  Sure, they know who won the Tour and Giro, but like an earlier generation of Americans, they might draw a blank if someone  mentions Milan-San Remo.

(I also can't help but to wonder whether some of them see cycling as a "white" sport, and are thus discouraged from competing in it even if they or their families or friends can afford a bike.)

So, increasingly, competitors in the major European races are coming from outside the region in which those races are held.  Many riders have come from former Soviet-bloc countries, which had strong racing programs that were sponsored by the state.   Today's corporate sponsors can offer them better equipment and training facilities than their parents could have dreamed.  Even so, it's harder for someone from Russia to spend a whole season going from race to race in France, Italy, Belgium, England and other western European countries.  So they find themselves focusing on particular races and specialities (which is what they did under the old Soviet system:  then, as now, a disproportionate number of Russian riders are sprinters), just as other riders have done in recent years. 

All of this will lead me to my (though not the) last reason why we won't have another Hinault or Mercx, or the racing scene that produced them:  Much of the fire one saw in "The Badger" or "The Cannibal" when they rode came from racing in front of their compatriots.  Or, when they weren't performing in their own homelands (or the nations in which their teams are based), they were fueled by rivalries with countries that bordered their own.  So Mercx could be driven as much by the ire of French fans, who hated him for winning "their" races, as by the support of fans in Italy, where his Molteni team was based.  A cyclist--no matter how great or simply flamboyant--from a faraway land will never draw such love or hate, and can thus never be motivated in quite the same way as earlier riders were.

Il Giro Inizia Oggi

Probably the one race everyone's heard of is the Tour de France.  It's one of the oldest and most-promoted multi-day stage races and winning--or even competing in--it is regarded as one of the greatest accomplishments in all of sports.

Today, this year's edition of what is probably the second-best known race--The Giro d'Italia--begins in the Riviera city of San Lorenzo with a Team Time Trial that will end in San Remo.  Alberto Contador, winner of the 2007 and 2009 Tours, is an early favorite to win the Giro.  So is Tasmanian cyclist Richie Porte.




Contador says he is not motivated by the Tour alone--a marked contrast to other cyclists, including, ahem, a certain American--but wants to accomplish something last accompllished by Marco Pantani in 1998:  win both the Giro and the Tour.  He is motivated in part, he claims, by the crash that probably cost him a chance at winning last year's Tour.

Winning both races no mean feat because, like the Tour, the Giro encompasses three weeks of near-daily cycling over widely varying terrain in a number of different riding disciplines:  individual time trials, team time trials, sprints and long road stages, some up and down mountains.  As long as he doesn't crash again or have some other sort of bad luck, he'll complete the Giro and have about a month to recuperate before starting the Tour.  (Of course, "recuperating" for racers at such a high level involves riding more miles than most of us do on our "big ride" days!)  At the starting line in Utrecht on 4 July, he'll be up against cyclists--including some of his own teammates--who haven't ridden the Giro will therefore be fresher.

Contador sandwiched a 2008 Giro win between his Tour victories.  In that same year, he won the Vuelta a Espana--commonly considered the third great stage race of cycling--and reprised those victories in 2012 and 2014.  To date, no one has won all three races in the same year, though several of the sport's greats--including Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Mercx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain--won two of the three in the same year.  

To state the obvious, if he takes both la maglia rosa and  le maillot jaune this year obvious, Contador  will be in elite company!
 

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.