Lyn And Lyn Win



As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I have riddent a tandem twice in my life.  Both times, I was the "captain" or "pilot":  That is to say, I was in front. 



On my first tandem ride, my "stoker" was a blind woman.  She wanted to ride with a group that, at that time, toured various ethnic neighborhoods in New York to sample their foods and restaurants.   The Light House called the group with that request, and I volunteered to pilot a bike Light House supplied.



I soon realized that she needed a tourguide as much as she needed someone to steer the bike.  She was blind from birth, so she had no idea of what, say, a terra cotta-hued cornice looked like.  Unfortunately, perhaps, for her, I was (at least at that point in my life) better at spinning wheels than at spinning narratives.



Someone named Lynette Nixon also piloted a tandem for a blind (or, at least, visually impaired) cyclist.  That is about where the similarities between her experience and mine end.



I don't think Ms. Nixon was as much of a tourguide as I was.  You see, she and her stoker Lyn Lepore were riding on a velodrome--in Sydney, Australia to be exact.  They won the silver medal  in the women's 1km time trial event of the 2000 Paralympics.  Their compatriots, Sarnya Parker and Tania Modra, took the gold in their home country.

L-to-R:  Silver medalist tandem duo Lyn Lepore and Lynette Nixon with Gold medalists Sarnya Parker and Tania Modra at the 2000 Paralympic Games.


Nixon and Lepore also accomplished something else I never will:  They may have been the only tandem whose first names were "Lyn".  I would have loved to hear the crowd cheering for them:  Lyn! Lyn! 


(Hearing such a chant but not seeing them might lead someone to think they were Chinese. )

Cycling, Football And Sociology

In an earlier post, I noted that some of the best teams in the World Cup football (soccer, to Yanks) tournament represent some of the world's top cycling nations--and that the US is in ascendancy in both sports.

In following the tournament and the opening stages of the Tour de France, I realized another striking parallel between the two sports.  In the traditional powerhouses of cycling and football, the top players and riders come from the ranks of the poor or working class.  Much of the peloton could just as easily have been working in a factory or farm had their cycling talents not been discovered and developed.  In fact, at the beginning of his professional career, at least one journalist wondered whether Eddy Mercx had the desire or discipline to win because he was "bourgeois"?  How bourgeois was he?  His father owned a grocery store and had just acquired another.  In purely Marxist terms that indeed made Mercx pere "bourgeois", but hardly made his son a "rich kid."

Adonia Lugo, a bike advocate and anthropologist in Los Angeles

Football players have traditionally come from backgrounds similar to those of cyclists, although there is a greater presence of immigrants, or children of immigrants, on the pitch than one finds in the peloton. Still, one rarely finds someone in football or cycling team kit who had the opportunity to do other things.

Here in the US, things are different.  Both sports are seen as suburban and middle-class.  It's true that not many of our cyclists or footballers have come from the inner cities or farmlands.  Rather, the hotbeds of both sports are found mainly in middle-to-upper class suburbs on the two coasts rather than in the Rust Belt.

Ironically, the teams that represented the US in the three prewar World Cup tournametns were primarily blue-collar industrial workers.  They were immigrants, or the children of them, who lived in the sooty enclaves of New Jersey and New England factory towns.  Their last hurrah came in the first postwar tournament when they pulled off one of the biggest upsets in the history of sport:  They beat the mighty British team in the tournament's opening game.

The Performance-Enhancing Drug Everybody Uses

Of course I'm not surprised to see that Coca-Cola is one of the main sponsors of the FIFA World Cup.  After all, Coke is one of the world's most recognized brands, in part because it' wholly or partially sponsors countless sporting events all over the world.  One of them, of course, is the Tour de France.

For all of the outcry about doping in cycling, football and just about every other sport you care to name, perhaps no single substance has been consumed in greater quantities by more athletes than "The Pause That Refreshes."

Some drink it just before events.  Others sip on it during their runs, rides or games.  And still others gulp it as a "recovery" drink.

Most of those athletes drink their Coke flat or de-fizzed.  Very few substances--even those from the world's most sophisticated labs--can deliver a quicker or more intense "boost"than Coke.  Even Starbuck's would be hard-pressed to concoct something with more sugar and more caffeine per serving than America's most recognized contribution to the world.

From what I've heard and read, Lance himself imbibed.  So did Frank Shorter in the 1972 Olympics.  In my racing days, I even saw racers who were the most resolute vegetarians--or who, at least, hadn't had a dish of ice cream since they were six years old--partake of John Pemberton's invention.

On those rare occasions when I drink soda these days, I drink Coke.  But I don't drink it during rides simply because the carbonation doesn't sit well with me and I don't want to take the time to wait for it to go flat.  But from those who drink it during rides, races, games, events or training, I'd be curious to know whether it has the same effect now that it, like nearly all soft drinks made in the US, uses high-fructose corn syrup rather than cane sugar.

I'd also like to know how many athletes drank it before 1903, when it was still made with fresh coca leaves.  I'd love to know how the anti-doping agencies would deal with it!

 

Girls On Bikes In The Festival Of Britain

Yesterday, we in America celebrated our independence from Great Britain.  The funny thing is, in celebrating our passage from a colony to a sovereign nations, we in the US almost never think about--or mention, at any rate--that England was the country from which we liberated ourselves.  I guess it's hard to hold a grudge against someone who hasn't had power over you for 238 years.

Still, I have to wonder:  Is it sacrilegious to think about what our parades might look like if we still gave fealty to the Crown?  In other words, is it improper to post an image of girls on bicycles the 1951 Festival of Britain?  

Well, since one of the great revelations of middle age is that guilt is, for the most part, a useless emotion, I'm going to post such an image just because I like it.

From Cyclechic