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.
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| 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.
