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.

Leaving The Field

Jurgen van den Broeck pulled out of the Tour de France yesterday, before the sixth stage.  The day before, he injured his knee in a pile-up just 200 meters before the end of the fifth stage.

Last year, he finished fourth, thanks due to good showings in the mountains and in time trials (his specialty).  Most analysts believed that had  an outside chance of winning the race.  

Interestingly, his first full season as a professional was the one that included Lance Armstrong's penultimate Tour victory in 2004.  He remained with the team for two more seasons and seems not to have been involved in the scandal that cost Lance his titles.

Here is van den Broeck in last year's Tour:

If he can ride through that, he can overcome his knee injury.  I wish him well.

Lance's Offenses: Neither The First Nor The Last

Tonight I saw the 60 Minutes segment on Lance Armstrong.  I don't think I learned anything new from it.  Then again, I didn't expect to.

I'm not going to debate about the genuineness of Lance's confession or whether he doped in the last two Tours he wrote.  It's all getting tiresome, really.  Call me a cynic, but I don't think anyone--the investigators, Lance's teammates or Lance himself--is telling everything he knows.  And anytime Lance or anyone else is accused of doping, someone will say, "Well, everybody was doing it."  Be that as it may, the affair is a mess.

All right, I'll say one more thing before I get to what prompted me to write this post.  Lance and certain other people, of course, have an interest in his being cleared of the accusations and lifting the ban on his competing.  On the other hand, if Lance was indeed doping and did, in fact, make his teammates take the same drugs he was taking and threatened anyone who wouldn't, or who spoke of it, then there were also people who had a vested interest in denying it, or simply looking the other way.  Yes, I'm talking about UCI officials, among other people.  They were probably looking at Lance as a ticket to the American market.

Anyway, what I now find far more interesting than the question of whether Lance doped or not is the degree to which he controlled the Tour, and much of the racing scene.  One rider--Tyler Hamilton, I believe--said, in essence, that what Lance wanted, Lance got.  He was well-connected and, according to some riders, if you didn't go along with him, you could be essentially run out of the sport.

It got me to thinking about the ways in which a few athletes manage to control a competition, and not only with their athletic domination.  It's long been suspected in cycling and other sports that a few top-flight competitors conspire with each other to control the outcome of contests.  

It's not hard to imagine in a sport that's as individualistic as cycling.  In stage races like the Tour, teams compete, to be sure, but most people watch the races to see the performance of individual riders.  (Probably the only team sport about which the same thing could be said is basketball:  There were a lot more fans of Michael Jordan than the Chicago Bulls, for example.)  Track events and time trials usually pit individual riders against each other, so it's easy to think that there are conspiracies.  

Velodrome d'Hiver

In fact, collusion was very commonly attributed to the races at the old Velodrome d'Hiver in Paris.  Of them, journalist Pierre Chaney wrote:

There was a lot of talk about the relative honesty of the results, and journalists sometimes asked themselves what importance they ought to place on victories in these six-day races. The best of the field combined between themselves, it was known, to fight against other teams and to get their own hands on the biggest prizes, which they then shared between them. This coalition, cruelly nicknamed the Blue Train [after a luxury rail service patronised by the rich] imposed its rule and sometimes even the times of the race, the length of the rest periods. The little teams fought back on certain days but, generally, the law belonged to the cracks, better equipped physically and often better organised.

Chaney was writing about races during the 1920's. One could be forgiven for thinking that there is indeed "nothing new under the sun" and that whatever Lance's offenses were, they were neither the first nor the last, neither the beginning nor the end.

Lance And Oprah

This morning, while doing my stretches and getting dressed for work, I was listening to the news.

I heard what I'm sure you've all heard by now:  Lance Armstrong, in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, has admitted to using banned substances.

To me, it's interesting that Winfrey said he "did not come clean in the manner I expected".  Of course, I won't know what she meant by that until I see the interview.  She said he "was ready" and "met the moment."

Now, I have to wonder what made him "ready" for a "confession".  And why did it take an interview with Oprah for him to "come clean".

While I am willing--however reluctantly--to believe his confession and guilt, I find it interesting, to say the least, that it's taken so long for anyone to establish his guilt. It seems that athletes in other sports--baseball in particular-- who were using banned substances were found out more quickly than Lance was.   

On the other hand, I don't think I have to wonder why there was so much more pressure on him to confess than there has been for other cyclists.  The first five-time winner of the Tour De France, Jacques Anquetil, once said something to the effect that nobody ever won the Tour on salad and mineral water.  

Other cyclists have admitted that doping was rampant in the sport.  But, none of them won the Tour seven times.  And none of them was American.   What's more, none of them did it the way Lance did it: He concentrated on winning the tour to the exclusion of many other races, including classics like Paris-Nice.  That is in marked contrast to riders like Eddy Mercx and Bernard Hinault who, between them, won about 400 more races than Armstrong did.

Plus, he managed to rankle other cyclists, including his teammates, in ways that no other winner did.  To be sure, they all provoked envy among the riders they defeated, and the ones who served as domestiques on their teams.  But, as fiercely competitive as they were on their bikes, they were gentlemen off their bikes.  Armstrong, from what I've heard and read, was cocky and often arrogant.  Now, I'm not saying that's a good reason to accuse him or to get him to confess.  But I think that other cyclists, as well as the sport's officials, wanted to see him brought down in ways they never wanted to see their old heroes dethroned.

Whatever their motives for bringing Lance to "justice", and whatever his motives for confessing, this is still a very sad time for the sport.  After all, he is one of the few larger-than-life personalities the sport has produced.  Other cyclists, like the ones I've mentioned and Miguel Indurain, were lionized for their athletic prowess.  But even Indurain himself admitted he wasn't much of a story when he wasn't pedaling.  As he once told a journalist, "My hobby is sleeping." 


I believe that the sport will continue even after Lance has been, in effect, excommunicated from it.  But it won't be the same.    About the only person who will benefit, I think, is Oprah.  To be exact, her network will benefit. After all, some people will look for it on their cable boxes for the first time.  

Showing Their Colors On The Fourth

Hello there!  Today is the Fourth of Joo-lie.  


Yes, it's American Independence Day.  And it's my birthday.  But I can't say I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy:  I was born in Georgia!  Then again, it was one of the thirteen colonies that declared independence.


(One thing they never teach in American History classes, at least in the US, is that there were really fifteen colonies.  Thirteen seceded.  The other two, Quebec and Nova Scotia, didn't.  The reality is that they couldn't:  Nova Scotia was the North American base for the Royal Navy, and Montreal and Quebec City were essentially garrisons for the Royal Army.  But I digress.)


Anyway, on a day like today, what better theme than red-white-and blue bicycles?

Perhaps it's not surprising that red-white and blue bikes come out in the wake of victories by American riders.  It seemed that during the reign of Lance, every other Trek model had some sort of variation on the flag that poet Bill Knott referred to as "a starry sweatband of cheese."

All right, it's a Do-Rag.  My question is:  Will it fit under my helmet?  


Back when I was training in Prospect Park, I sometimes rode with a guy who wore a yarmulke under his helmet.  And the fringes of his tallit dangled from underneath the hem of his jersey.  I also sometimes rode with an observant Jewish woman who carried a skirt in her jersey pocket.  As soon as she got off the bike, she pulled the skirt on.  Where else but in America, right?


Speaking of Americana:  Like baseball, basketball and snowboarding, mountain biking originated in the USA.  So, of course I had to include a mountain bike here:

And, of course, the Fourth is not complete without parades and such.  And there are always kids on bikes.  This one's for them:

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't end my homage to red, white and blue bicycles on the Fourth without mentioning the web page of someone who has a red, a white and a blue Cannondale.

Keeping Your Balance: It's In The Shoes

"Life is like riding a bicycle.  To keep your balance, you have to keep on moving."


Who said that?  This guy:

Anyone who can, or even tried, to explain the universe is entitled to a theory or two about life, doncha think?


But you can't keep moving unless you start.  And you can't start if you can't get on the machine:

Emma, I don't mean to be condescending, but you can do it.  If I can ride my diamond-frame fixed-gear bike in a short, snug skirt and boots, and a long jacket, you can do it, too.    If you need some guidance, take a look here:  http://www.sfbike.org/?diva.


On the other hand, you can do things the easy way:

Then again, Audrey Hepburn made everything look easy, or at least effortless.  Isn't that the definition of grace?


Lance said it's not about the bicycle.  He knew a thing or two about moving forward.  One thing he didn't mention--because he couldn't have known--is that a lady needs the proper shoes for cycling:

A big "thank you" to the editor of "Girls and Bicycles" for setting me straight--to the extent that anybody can do that! ;-)


Doncha know?  Bike shoes are for cycling, not walking.  At least, that's what I used to tell customers when I was trying to convince them to spend $200 on a pair of shoes to go with their $200 pedals and $30 cleats.  I actually believed that.  I also believed that one could not move forward--and therefore keep one's balance--without the proper shoes.


Today I know that for a fact.  The difference is in my definition of the proper shoes.  But sometimes it's hard to find them in size 11 wide. 

Still, I will keep moving forward.  And keep my balance.  After all, isn't that what being a woman on a bicycle is all about?