Watching the tour always makes me think of Lance....
It's that time of year! 3 weeks of watching cycling every night! Even the rest days have recaps.
This year, I find myself thinking of Lance a lot especially while watching guys like Contador and others who's pasts are know while guessing at the likelihood of others. It seems so strange that seven tours no longer exist and Lance is wiped out of the books. It is weird. I guess that is why sports like baseball largely left the record books unchanged versus having years with no names.
Say what you want about the guy - bastard, asshole, cheater. All that I get. Especially if you view him in a vacuum instead of contrast him against his contemporaries and their peccadilloes.
All of that aside, all of it. Just think how crazy lucky you got to be to win 7 tours. Damn! Looks at this year. Froome - Out! Cavendish - Out! Andy Schleck - Out. Teejay losing time. Dozens of others crashed and brutalized losing time and skin. So much BAD LUCK. Then I think about Lance, the cheater. How lucky was he? How did he out work all the other guys, stay out of danger, avoid championship ending crashes and simply survive that many tours finishing them AND winning them? It seems wild to me. Even if the guy was racing the tour on a motorcycle you think at some point his luck would run out.
Viva Le Tour!
Comments
That said...I remember watching so many of the tours when we was racing and as you say it's amazing what he did, even with the benefit of PEDs. I'll never forget the 2001 TDF when Lance acted like he was struggling early on then when they got to l'Alpe d'Huez he looks back at Ullrich, hits the hammer, and rockets away up the mountain. Amazing.
BUT, damn! Was he talented. And, worked hard to create his own luck. I loved to cheer for him and find him now a really interesting mix hero, anti-hero, victim and victimizer. The whole thing crazy.
Here is an interesting read about how is living currently: http://www.esquire.com/features/lance-armstrong-interview-0814?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1456_69794940#comments
Watching the Tour just isn't the same without a hero (or a villain)...
Regarding his personality...like Charles Barkley said, "I ain't no role model." Neither was Macbeth or King Lear, but they make great stories.
I read that too, and all I could think was "public relations rehab." Esquire's not known for asking the tough questions. The only thing I took away from it was that achieving a peak level of excellence requires a level of focus that quickly bleeds to narcissism. It would take an exceptional human being to be able to turn that off. Empathy and winning don't go well together in certain activities.
Sure, Lance is a bully and tore down many people to defend himself. I don't blame him for doping. He was surrounded by dopers so why not join them and stay with the pack to be competitive. He just happened to figure out a better way to do it and was the most successful at it than anyone else. Does it make it right.. No.. But if you want to be the best at something why not do it better than anyone else.. Lance just happened to be very good at doing that.
Anywho.. I loved watching Lance race.. Such excitement in the round by round boxing matches on the rides.. Pretty crazy..
It is very strange how in the coverage of this year's tour they make no mention, don't play any clips, etc of pretty much any tour from the 2000's. It's as if all of the great tactical games that we all watched and enjoyed didn't even happen. In fact, come to think of it, I don't think they've shown hardly any clips from any past tours??
The Esquire article is a good read. A few weeks ago I went for a ride with a buddy, and we stopped to pick up an old friend of his. Turns out to be Ken Rideout, the Wall Streeter profiled in the article (and apparently a "friend" of our own JW). At any rate, I take one look at this guy and he looked like a guy right off the pro tour, not in his kit, which was from a largely sponsored team, but his musculature, body fat & size. I really felt the guy was probably jacked. He of course during our ride (I barely held on to these guys from a mile back and we re-grouped often), bragged about his training camps with Lance and how he beat him on some ride one day. The same ride they quoted in the article. This guy was a classic and clearly was still worshiping LA, right down to the PEDs...
btw, this guy typically lays down a roughly 9:29 as he qualifies for Kona... really the more relevant issue for this crowd.http://www.esquire.com/features/lance-armstrong-interview-0814
FWIW, the WTC can test me any day they want. And if you want to pay for the cost of the test, I'll bet you any amount of money you want that Ken Rideout is also clean. But yes, he is very fast. When he KQ'd at IMNYC his swim was within 1 min of mine, his bike was withing 2 mins of mine and he beat me by over an hour on the run. Ken can also drop a 1:18 half mary, does that mean he must be a doper? So be careful when you "hint" that somebody might be doping just because they're fast. There are lots of clean fast guys out there. Ken's IM splits are actually very similar to Coach P's (except he also knows how to swim...) Does that mean Coach P must be a doper? I mean really... How can Coach P possibly drop a low 3-handle marathon after a 4-handle bike split if he's clean??? Ken is very "Boston" though and has the most outlandish personality of just about anybody I have ever met. I would honestly hate him if I didn't know him and know that he's actually a really good guy under his Boston Facade. He is loud and obnoxious in true Boston Fashion, not because he happens to be a Wall Street guy... But he trains and races VERY hard.
And FWIW, I was also at that camp that they mentioned in the Esquire article with LA and it was freakin' awesome. I guess that also makes me a d-bag doper... And the "Man-Camp" wasn't nearly the LA love-fest that they made it out to be in the article. But why let the truth get in the way of a good Esquire story, right? LA showed up to the camp out of shape and frankly a bit depressed. He left in a little better shape and seemed revitalized. The thing that was taken away from LA was his ability to compete. And that is literally the thing that fueled the guy his whole life. Believe it or not, LA just happened to be "one of the guys" at the camp. I think it was Jimmy R's way of getting LA surrounded by a bunch of competitive, "Type A" dudes that just wanted to train hard and talk a bit of trash. He wanted LA to crawl out from under his self-pity rock and turn into an actual human being again and in some small way, I think it worked. And Ken (and another guy) did beat him up one of the big Strava KOM segments. It made for great trash-talking fodder over beers that night (FWIW, I was ~20 seconds back on the ~3:30 segment). And you could see LA scheming for the rest of the camp to take it back, which he did on the last day of the camp after shedding his bottles and getting a lead-out from the strongest guy in the group. He took back the KOM by 4 seconds. LA looked like he won the freaking Tour when he took back that KOM... And in true Ken Rideout fashion he immediately said to LA "Oh wow, Mr. big-time LA... Won 7 TDF's and now you're excited about taking a KOM off of some lame Wall Street Guy..." The sad part is that a REALLY out of shape LA is still a better cyclist than I am (but not by much)...
It's just so easy to throw stones at LA. It's also so easy for people to stand back from afar and to talk about his arrogance like we're all holier than thou. The dude was the best at what he did. And he was fun to watch and root for (or root against if you were French or German). He doped like everyone else (maybe better). And he vigorously tried to defend his lifestyle and livelihood, like just about any other super competitive, super aggressive, Type A personality would likely do in that situation (but very few of us have gotten that deep in that type of a situation). It's just really easy to sit back and say the guy was a giant A--hole and that none of you would ever do any of the things he did to defend his sport's lie that was woven piece by piece over many decades. When exactly along the string of the ~20 yrs of his history in that sport was the appropriate time to stop defending himself and blow up his sport and livelihood after a string of much smaller lies and defenses by him and many many of his other colleagues in the sport? Would you have had the courage to walk away from hundreds of millions of dollars and world titles and fame to simply turn into an obscure domestique or maybe a bike mechanic or similar as you watched people not quite as good as you take the fame, glory, and money. Just to not hurt the feelings of a small handful of people along the way? Or would you have tried to crush a couple who got in your way and continue your competitive quest upward?
LA is actually a real person. He's a bit quirky and awkward in his real personality. He was often quiet, but then super animated when it was about something that he really cared about. he not a movie character villain, and he's certainly not perfect... Are you?
Okay. Off my soap box now. Go ahead and flame away...
As an athlete I admire LA and his ilk. As a person I despise the way he handled himself. It's another case where the cover up is worse than the act itself.
I've been a cyclist for decades. Never was gifted enough to even consider doping as it wouldn't have been enough to be considered elite. I get that all the TDF guys doped. LA did it better than anyone. It made for some of the best TDF racing ever. Just like baseball in the Bonds/Sosa age. If you subscribe to the moral relativism argument you can say the cheating isn't a big deal....nor is the consistent, vehement denials. What is hard to forget though is the personal attacks, calling his accusers whores, drunks, trolls, cheaters, etc. I've certainly not seen anyone stoop to that level, and in fact that's when I switched from being a LA apologist to believing he was indeed guilty.
As hard as it is...I try not to judge him or anyone else though. God knows I'm not perfect.
Umm…is this Esquire article available online? #cantbebotheredtogoogle
Just kidding
Where LA crossed the line is how he went out to destroy people who said otherwise. It wasn't just defending himself, LA sued, and WON against a writer that "libeled" him, when after all the writer was telling the truth. He destroyed Frankie Andreu's reputation, Emma O'reilly and the list of bodies goes on. THAT is where he lost my respect.
As for Ken Rideout, I will take your word for it, whether natural or doped, he is a freak of nature, which most people who qualify for Kona are. Let me also say, that while i may have made some leaps in my description of him, he is an incredible do-gooder. He runs the NYAC triathlon committee and has helped a number of upstart pros get a real go of the sport, on that level alone, he deserves applause.
And John, if you doped, I'd expect much better performances out of you
JW's within a few seconds of Lance, calling out Coach P, and on the attack. I'm pretty sure he typed that at 5.0 w/ks (words/key-stroke) Did he learn this at camp?.....I'm calling L'Equipe magazine
Probably this also, from Cinzano