Friday Group Ride #24
Putting aside the controversy du jour/semaine/mois/année, can we all just agree that this Giro d’Italia has not only been the best race of the 2010 season, but the best Grand Tour in recent memory? Can we? If not, there’s a comments section. Lodge your protest there.
For me, this race has been a huge breath of fresh O2. Between successful breakaways (enough that I’m questioning my stance on race radios) and unexpected results (Richie Porte anyone?) and strong men on steep hills, I am beginning to think that Angelo Zomegnan (race organizer) is something of a genius. And they haven’t even crested the Gavia yet!
This week’s Group Ride is sort of a compendium of questions. Where does this Giro stack up against other recent Grand Tours? Why do you think this one has been so good? If Ivan Basso wins the overall, how will you feel about that? Do you think someone else will take the GC? Are Italian podium girls prettier than French ones? Has the Tour of California hurt or helped the Giro? Does Andre Greipel deserve to ride the Tour de France? What happened to Team Sky and Bradley Wiggins? Does it matter? What did you think of the Dutch prologue? Too much road furniture? Has Carlos Sastre’s 21st Grand Tour been disappointing, or is Charlie just passed it now?
Let’s talk about it. Let the craic ensue.
Image: John Pierce, Photosport International
Interview: Steve Bauer, Part I
Bauer in the final time trial of the ’86 Tour de France
When you think of great cyclists from North America, Steve Bauer is one of those guys whose name immediately comes to mind. Most famous for his rides at the ’88 Tour de France and ’90 Paris-Roubaix, he was also the silver medalist at the ’84 Olympic Road Race. Just before the Tour of California RKP sat down with him for a chat about his racing past and his career post-racing.
RKP: Of all the editions of the Tour de France, the 1986 battle between Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault seems to generate more interest and more unanswered questions than any other edition. Just how tense were things?
SB: I think it started out to be really amicable. In the back of my mind I was thinking it was Greg’s turn to win the tour he was definitely on form to win it. And I think the previous year going back bernard crashed hard he was injured the jersey was under a bit challenge from Roche. Greg had to hold back his chances on Luz Ardiden. So I was okay thinking Greg did his job, he basically worked for Hinault he sat on Roche’s wheel he didn’t attack and he didn’t try to take advantage of the situation. And because he could have.
The preamble in ’85 sort of led me to believe it was Greg’s turn. But bike racing doesn’t work like that. And when you have two guys on the same team that can win the Tour de France it’s a rare occasion such as with Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault.
Bernard was saying to himself and everyone else, ‘The best guy’s gonna win.’ And he probably had that vision in his mind. So we’re gonna race and we’re gonna see who the best guy is. Right? So he took some pretty interesting strategies in the beginning of the race and attacked when our team was in control of the race, which was very brilliant, actually. He took the lead and then Greg, fortunately, was able to fight back due to Bernard’s I would say machoism or trying to do too much. He attacked on the Tourmalet with 100km to go to Superbagneres and he died, right? And Greg took advantage of that and basically he took back the time that he lost. Otherwise he might have lost the Tour de France. If Bernard hadn’t tried to do the double—
RKP: It was an audacious move!
SB: Right! Now we’re in a situation where it was even Steven pretty much and it was really a true battle. The Alpe d’Huez day everybody remembers it to be Greg, Hinault, Greg, Hinault going up the climb. Greg was afraid people would take him down. Bernard said, ‘I’ll lead the climb.’ And they both say afterwards they could have dropped each other. But Greg thought it was pretty much over after that day. He thought, ‘Okay, it’s over, things are good,’ and then in the press conference Bernard says well it’s not over until after the time trial. And Greg flipped. He flipped! So then it got really tense. It sort of seemed to be okay until then and then from Alpe d’Huez to Paris was not.
I roomed with Greg that night. He was furious! He was so angry that Hinault would actually say would keep racing and not help him win the Tour de France when he was in the lead. So it got really tense. The big day that I remember the most was the race to St. Etienne where Greg was in front first over the top of the Col and Bernard was helping the Panasonic team chase Greg. Then Greg got caught and a counterattack went and Hinault went down the road and our team was chasing Hinault (laughing). At least, the Anglophones. It was just crazy. Bernard chasing Greg and us chasing Bernard.
RKP: Hampsten said that was one of the worst days of bike racing he ever had.
SB: Yeah. It was just insane. It was like, what were we doing? So the team was split, obviously. Hampsten, myself and the English speakers obviously helping Greg, and then the French boys were helping Bernard. It was definitely split alliances based on what we felt or who we thought deserved to win the race. And that was it. Then it went to the time trial and after the time trial it was over. I remember seeing Greg after the finish and he was just like pushed to the absolute limits. Completely. And Hinault would say well that’s the way it should be. I pushed him to his limits and now he knows that he won it being the best guy. That’s what Hinault would say; okay you gotta honor that.
RKP: At the end of the day there was a certain logic to what he had to say.
SB: Yeah (laughing).
RKP: If he wanted Greg to prove he was the strongest rider, it would seem that he did so.
SB: Absolutely.
RKP: It sounds like it was a lot of stress to put the riders through.
SB: Koechli [Paul Koechli was the team’s DS] was a really good manager. He kept a really good balance, even keel. It must have been really difficult for him as well as director but he seemed to be the right man for that job. To keep the team on track and there were no fisticuffs. I mean, there could have been.
Bauer on his way to finishing second at the ’90 Paris-Roubaix
RKP: Okay, on to another great race: 1990 Paris-Roubaix. I recently heard someone say the whole reason you didn’t win was parallax, that the angle of the camera captured the finish line wrong. And it was the first time I’d ever heard anything like that. I wasn’t there; I don’t know, but it sounds crazy. What I’ve always heard was that you were riding into the setting sun, it was hard to see and difficult to judge just where the finish line was. What’s your take on that finish?
SB: Well, I mean, it’s kind of interesting if I reflect on the sprint that—my track experience, because I came from a track background, my track experience actually failed me there because the size of the Roubaix velodrome puts the finish line more before the banking, where most tracks put it down like two-thirds of the stretch. And in the effort, we were just going flat out for the line, I’m expecting the line to be about five meters further. You’re sprinting almost in a blackout you’re going so hard. And in the photo obviously we hadn’t thrown our bikes yet.
RKP: From the photos I’ve seen it looks like Planckaert had thrown his but you hadn’t thrown yours yet.
SB: Well, you look at the photo and Planckaert’s thinking about throwing his bike. He was starting, but he missed it too. He was starting to initiate it, but he didn’t beat me with the bike throw. It was like I hadn’t started the bike throw and he had sort of initiated a bit but he wasn’t going past me with a throw, you know? And that’s just it. I just thought the line was another few meters, so I was ready to throw the bike, I crossed the line and a flash went off and I went ‘shit’ and we’re already past the line. The flash goes off and you’re like ‘awwww, damn it.’
But, like I said, with my track experience you almost sense the line is coming into the banking just as the banking starts to turn and there’s the finish line. But Roubaix is a 400 meter velodrome. Call it a mistake or whatever; other than that I rode a perfect race. That’s what it is.
The photo? Who knows. I saw a photo where he beat me after the finish but maybe I should have had more scrutiny on the judges or the photo or the photo finish. I don’t know. Hindsight. It’s a long time ago. Not really worth digging it up now.
RKP: Certainly, but people remain curious because it was an epic day of racing.
SB: Yeah, yeah, it was that close for sure. I did a perfect race. That’s what I feel about it anyway. That’s one of those days—you do a perfect race and lose by an inch. Or less. Actually it was less than an inch (laughs).
RKP: It made it memorable. Perhaps the best second-place finish ever at that race.
SB: (Laughs.)
Check back next week for Part II.
Images: John Pierce, Photosport International
Rouge
Whether we race or simply ride, the lanterne rouge shines on us all at one time or another. That red lantern that once hung from the caboose of a train to show the conductor that none of his couplings had come undone, today represents the end-of-the-line, that hair’s breadth between riding and ceasing to ride.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve envisioned its burgundy haze over my shoulder as my legs went dead and the road refused to roll beneath my wheels. It is both a sadness and a motivation, as it must have been for all those domestiques who sacrificed all but still finished the big race. It is at once the stuff of nightmares, of being chased, endlessly and to the end of our means, but also the stuff of legend, the demarcation point of having passed out of danger. Alone on the road, not in a group and without a finish line to cross, we are confronted with the stark truth that, in order to get anywhere from where we are, the pedals must be made to spin.
It is one thing to look forward, to see the red kite and then the finish line. It is quite another to look over your shoulder, feel the glow of the lamp and hear the rumble of the lag wagon.
One afternoon last winter, I rode from the office to a party at my kids’ school. The temperature hovered around 37˚F (3˚C) and a steady rain fell. In my head, it was worth it. Look, Daddy came to the party even in the cold and rain! Smiles. Laughs. Hugs. Cockles-warmed. Memories made.
The school is 13 miles (20km), door-to-door, from my office, so even in miserable weather this was well within my capacity for suffering, especially as my kids were involved.
Five minutes before I left the office, I checked the map, thinking I could, perhaps, shave a mile or two off, limit the suffering by taking a different route. I eyeballed a potential path, committed it to memory as best I could and set out.
Now the interesting thing about New England is you can spend a lot of time here and not know your way around. An encyclopedic knowledge of one town tells you nothing about the adjoining jurisdictions. And so it was that I went awry, not towards the school but past it, off into suburbs I didn’t know and will never afford to live in. My skin went pink and raw where exposed. My tights soaked through. The wind drove me into making worse and worse decisions about how to get back on track.
I’d packed no food nor water, because I don’t need food and water to get 13 miles, and after 90 minutes in the saddle, I was running out of gas. It was getting dark. Every time I thought to go for the phone in my pocket I resolved to ride up to one more junction to see if I could get my bearings again. Foolish pride goeth before a bonk, or so I have read.
Finally I made the call to my wife, got directions and dragged myself over the last three miles to join the party, which was, by then, over. Mapping my errant route later, I discovered that I’d ridden 33 miles. Clever, eh?
Of all my days out on the bike, this one best typifies a day with the lanterne rouge over my shoulder. The rouge is that force that suggests to you that what feels impossible just might be done, if only you keep on. It is also the luminous manifestation of failure. Have I cried for having failed on the bike? I have. Have I felt satisfied on occasion for riding my worst? Yes, that too.
And, as on the bike, so it is in life. I have struggled, thought I couldn’t go on, but gone on anyway. I have also ridden in life’s broom wagon once or twice, scooped up by compassionate souls and ferried along until I was ready to ride again, so to speak. Sometimes we live on the front of the pack, and sometimes at the back.
Perhaps it is just my perspective, but I find the important rides of my year are the ones where I carry the lantern, rather than the ones where I feel strong. In strength, I can revel. I can smile. I can feel the power coursing through my veins. But I seldom learn anything about myself at that end of the ride.
It’s up against the wall where I learn the most, where I confront my limits and find the humility I need to keep on.
Fans
Colorful characters have been a part of bike racing for as long as I’ve been visiting races. But they used to be on the rare side. While I can’t say they are the rule, they are anything but uncommon at the Amgen Tour of California. In one 300-meter stretch of Mulholland Highway, I saw more costumed fans than I have in any two days of the Tour de France. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought a Halloween party was running long. Many photographers composed their shots to include these fans.
This centurion was asking around for the pope (check yesterday’s post) because he wanted to be blessed.
Adam and Eve, sorta.
Spectators called this fan Borat. Though sunny, it wasn’t warm; comfort must not have been a concern.
The woman on the right is dressed as a hand. When she turned around you could see white fingernails. What her connection to a banana and a beer keg is anyone’s guess.
I can’t say this guy rode this high wheeler all the way up the climb, but I did see him ride into and out of view. I also saw him riding back down the climb.
When I first saw this fellow something about his corduroy suit and shaggy handlebar mustache seemed out of place, at least, with this crowd. When I saw Jesus in the road, he began to make more sense.
Amgen Tour of California: the Afterglow
The recently concluded 2010 edition of the Amgen Tour of California was easily the most exciting edition of the race, thanks in part to two of the hardest courses the race has ever undertaken, a field arriving with a great deal more fitness than could be expected in February and a host of real contenders who rode as if the race were the only goal of their season.
Surprisingly, I’ve heard some criticisms of the race coming from varied quarters. The criticisms are free-range: the race takes in too much of a large state; the organizers caved to team pressure and moved a stage start from an historic, crowd friendly and scenic location (Pasadena) to a wasteland (Palmdale); the time trial was made a mockery by the presence of Floyd Landis and pre-runs of the course by corporate big wigs and triathletes; the course was either too damn hard or the judges too unforgiving, which resulted in 37 riders being ruled hors delai between stages six and eight.
At least one thing is true beyond a doubt. After the DNFs and HDs, only 37 riders finished the Amgen Tour of California. I can’t recall a race that started 128 riders and finished less than a third of them. What’s unfortunate about this is how perception can be shaded as subtly as the chiaroscuro on the faces of the subjects of the Dutch masters. The difficulty of next year’s race course may turn on whether people (racers, directors, sponsors, fans) come to the conclusion that the race was harder than granite and cool, or harder than Rubik’s cube and unreasonable.
Which conclusion people draw may rest on the officials’ actions. Hors delai is a rule around which officials can exercise some discretion. Of the 80 riders that did not finish the race, 68 of them saw their race end on either stage six or stage eight. Of those, 37 didn’t finish because they were outside the time limit.
As many riders finished outside the time limit as finished the race.
While I haven’t checked just how deep prize money went, presumably money was left on the table due to the small number of finishers.
The DNFs were attributable to fatigue, crashes or other maladies, such as leg cramps, and claimed another 41 riders over the course of the race. Still, had 79 riders finished, more than six teams would have been listed in the final team GC. Only Garmin, Radio Shack, HTC-Columbia, United Healthcare, Team Type 1 and Bissell finished enough riders—three—to be counted on the teams classification.
The question for AEG is: How similar are ‘wow, really hard race’ and ‘whoa, that’s just stupid’? My guess is you can quantify the difference. I’d say it’s about 37.
By almost any standard, the Amgen Tour of California presented race fans with an extraordinary week of racing. Despite the HDs and DNFs, we saw a more competitive field with a higher overall level of fitness than in previous years.
I feel like I learned a few things about the teams present, such as: Danielson’s DNF means that once and for all, we won’t see him at the Big Show and if he’s released from Garmin, his next stop will be with some Continental team that needs a affordable former sorta star. Hesjedal’s stage win indicates the guy is getting stronger with each passing lunar cycle. Liquigas has some serious depth given that they, like Garmin, are managing to be competitive at two races at once. Team Jelly Belly is composed of cycling’s equivalent to suicide bombers. They didn’t win a single stage, but they figured in almost every significant break. They give new meaning to “die trying.” HTC-Columbia and BMC both must hope that their teams recover well after the Giro and Tour of California, otherwise they won’t have the depth necessary to support their GC men at the Tour de France. Oh, and watch out for Saxo Bank at the Tour; Andy Schleck generally looked like he was out on training rides.
I’ve seen a lot of racing over the years and I can say the final stage Amgen Tour of California was some of the most thrilling racing I’ve seen in person. While it didn’t carry the weight of a Grand Tour or Monument, it really was the next best thing. I’d hate to see it get watered down.
FGR #23 Wrap
I think it was harder than I imagined it would be to come up with good questions for Floyd Landis, his actions so baffling and absurd as to render a rational approach well nigh impossible. How do you talk to a mad man?
Mark’s early entry, “When will you apologize to Greg LeMond?” got an answer over the weekend, when Landis actually showed up at the Tour of California and made a personal and in-person apology to the former champ. I’d have given half my spare parts to be a fly on the wall for that one.
Interestingly, the bulk of the questions contained more than a tinge of anger, which is, I suppose, understandable given the number of us who bought and read Landis’ book (I did). There is a level of public hypocrisy here seldom encountered, and many of us are still working out how to reconcile the lies with the possible truths on offer now. Is the boy crying wolf? Or is the wolf among the sheep even now?
For all his erratic behavior, the thing that strikes me about this current flap is the consistency of Landis’ approach. He ALWAYS rushes in when a measured approach would be better. He did this as a racer, and he’s done in it his post-suspension life as well. He also seems to traffic in the plausible more readily than the true, which is to say, his statements (including all his denials about doping post-2006) linger, not because they’re necessarily true, but rather because they’re plausible. It’s this combination of impetuousness and manufactured ambiguity that make him such a frustrating figure.
Even those who believe him now are forced to concede that Landis has gone about everything, start to finish, in the wrong way. It’s a difficult position to start from.
Certainly, he could have simply confessed his sins, cleared his conscience and moved on, but instead he’s chosen to scorch the earth, allegedly to help reform cycling, but the lie behind that sentiment is so transparent as to be insulting to those of us who really do wish for a reformed peloton.
The thing I can’t get over (among many, if I’m honest) is how Landis has managed to rally so much support over so many years despite being bat shit crazy. If I had that one question to ask, it would be this: “Floyd, what is it about you that people find so compelling that they’d cast their lot in with yours, not once, not twice, but over and over again?”
Having been a mad man, and having dealt with many of the same over the years, this is the component I find most interesting, the ability of those who would lie and cheat and steal, be they disgraced athletes or still-reigning champions, to continue on in that vein, year after year, decade after decade, lifetime after lifetime, to the consternation of us all.
Image: The Walt Disney Corporation, all rights reserved
The Venerable Bike Shop
San Francisco landmark American Cyclery
A love of gear is an expansive love. And it’s not a love that blooms in isolation. It grows from our infatuation with an activity and the gear is nothing more than the physical manifestation of that activity.
I won’t say that cyclists love cycling more than runners love running, but the devotion seems different, and—naturally—to our eyes, more enjoyable.
It should be no surprise that our love for the bicycle itself extends to the stores that sell them. If the bicycle is a good time waiting to happen, then a shop is countless adventures yet to unfold. In each of those bicycles—even the ones we wouldn’t buy—we see our lives as we want them to be: The excitement of dressing for a five-hour ride with friends every day of the week.
And yet, we love bike shops not because of what they are, but in spite of what they are. Few of us have the sort of shop we dream of in our backyard. Even when our buying experience isn’t what we’d like, or as good as we believe it ought to be, we continue to love bike shops at least as a concept.
I’ve been in plenty of shops that were professional enough, but seemed empty of passion and that seems to be where I draw the line. Unless a shop is doing something to excite me about my sport and make me feel like my riding life is important to them, I won’t really go in for more than chains and cables.
I think that may be why operations like Mill Valley’s Above Category and Studio Velo engender such fanatical love. They are to cycling what Miracle-Gro is to roses. Ah, to live in Marin County. Slurp.
So why don’t we love the average bike shop the way we did back in the 1980s? My memory of shops back then was that they were cool the way Fonzie was cool to me when I was in second grade.
Once I take off the rose-colored glasses, I can see that a retailer had a much easier job in 1986 than they do today.
The number of bike categories they had to address was much less. The shop I dealt with had road bikes, a few mountain bikes and at Christmas they’d get a few kids’ bikes. One or two of the bikes were touring models and the rest were traditional road racers.
Replacement parts held in stock mostly amounted to freewheels, cables, brake shoes, a headset or two and five sizes of ball bearings. Aftermarket upgrades amounted to one or two groups, a few choices in pedals, a couple of rear derailleurs and a saddle or two.
In all honesty, the clothing selection was lousy.
I don’t recall anyone angling for a discount back then. Of course, the most expensive bike my shop carried didn’t cost 10% of the annual income of its more affluent customers, either. Even college students could come up with $1000 to purchase a Campy-equipped Torpado.
All of the decoration around the shop involved photos of PROs riding the bikes the shop carried.
Retailing is a much tougher business today. Online competitors and deal-shopping consumers squeeze profits like a kid with a ketchup bottle. The number of models a brand offers has in many cases tripled or quadrupled and retailers are rewarded better pricing based on just how much they stock. The array of replacement parts a shop is expected to stock has multiplied with the ferocity of cockroaches in a dirty kitchen. And while a frameset could hang on a wall for three or four years without losing its relevance or value, the same cannot be said today.
So who’s to blame? Well, this is one of those occasions, like the economy, where there’s plenty of blame to go around. Consumers (us) can be faulted for wanting deals that ultimately undermine the service we get when we visit a shop. As they shave their margins, they shave their ability to sit on large amounts of stock and their ability to pay livable wages to their staff, which hurts their ability to keep employees who talk like Competitive Cyclist copy.
The shops can be faulted for caving to every request for a deal. If they all held firm like unionized workers, we’d all be paying list prices. Some can also be faulted for running their shops like sidewalk lemonade stands and not really knowing basic statistics that are key indicator’s for their business’ health or how to connect with consumers on an emotional level.
Finally, the bike companies get a buffet-sized helping of blame for their ever-increasing number of SKUs. Let’s ask the question: How many price points do you really need to hit?
Speaking of connecting with consumers on an emotional—even visceral level—I’ve got to ask why none of the bike companies out there have resorted to enticing men with sex. You know, busty babes? I’m guessing that shots of Lance Armstrong and George Hincapie stand in for traditional hard bodies for most women (well, if not, it works for my wife), so why not use the Bay Watch approach to luring more men into the sport?
I don’t mean to trivialize the issue, but a great many very large, very successful multi-national corporations resort to sex as a means to short-circuit men into purchasing their widgets. Given how ubiquitous the approach is, isn’t it fair to point out that the approach continues to be used because, well, because it works? Wouldn’t photos of Heidi Klum astride a Specialized Amira bring some new consumers into the sport, riders who won’t expect Dura-Ace at 105 prices?
I don’t really think sex is the answer, but it is such an obvious tactic that if bike companies and retailers are missing this one, I can’t help but wonder what else they are missing.
And yet, like the faults we find in our best friends, we’ll never stop loving bike shops. Around every corner, in nooks and basements, they never fail in their ability to fascinate and excite.
Friday Group Ride #23
Here in Cycletopia there is only one approved topic of conversation this week, and it’s NOT whether Richie Porte is going to win the Giro d’Italia. Accordingly, we are going to take the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” approach to the Group Ride in an effort to get the bicycle racer formerly known as Floyd Landis out of the collective system.
As if that were possible.
Personally, I was grateful to Padraig as well as some other commentators on other sites for helping me wrap my tiny, transistor-based brain around the whole thing. The tentacles of Landis’ “confession” reach in so many directions and touch so many riders/doctors/trainers/managers/teams, that I would have had a very hard time making any cogent analysis of the situation at all.
Do you come from the “what if it’s true?” angle, or the “what if it’s false” angle or even the “Landis is lying, but what’s he’s saying still might be true” angle? How do you factor out the fact that you might even like some of the riders who now stand accused, as I am doing with Dave Zabriskie, to remain impartial enough to wait for the truth? If the truth never comes, how will you retain your passion for the sport, and who’s fault would it be if you couldn’t?
As is usual in a situation such as this, there are more questions than answers in the beginning, and as a result, our Group Ride asks a question about asking questions, i.e. If you could ask Floyd Landis ONE question right now, what would it be?
Please limit yourselves to one question. There are plenty to go around.
Image: John Pierce, Photosport International
Floyd Landis Confesses
What a difference four years makes. Had Floyd Landis woken up on July 28, 2006, and called a press conference to announce to the world all the things he detailed in his e-mail to USA Cycling’s Steve Johnson, we might have hailed him as a sort of fallen hero.
An Icarus of the pedals.
As fate would have it, Landis’ non-negative result for was synthetic testosterone, essentially the one drug he claims, now, not to have taken in 2006. So he believed what almost anyone else would have believed—that he could beat the rap.
He didn’t count on a few details. First, he didn’t count on the Machiavellian nature of USADA, which pursued the case with a ‘win at all cost’ mentality. As I wrote in my BKW post “At All Cost,” had this case been tried in the American judicial system, Landis would have won the case because the lab performing the work did such a lousy job. However, USADA’s zero-tolerance policy toward doping also happens to be a zero-loss policy as well, and clearly Landis didn’t understand that actual innocence didn’t matter.
He also didn’t count on the details of a phone conversation he had with Greg LeMond would become public. LeMond’s recounting of the conversation will seem entirely more believable for anyone who previously doubted his testimony. Four years hence, one wonders if Landis comes up with a different answer to the rhetorical question he put to LeMond when urged to confess. He asked, “What would it matter?”
While we don’t know the exact details of what Landis confessed to Johnson and the UCI, we have the substance in broad strokes.
1) He did drugs, lots of them, beginning in 2002.
2) Lance Armstrong did more drugs and told him who to work with.
3) George Hincapie did all the same drugs.
4) Former roommate David Zabriskie did drugs.
5) Levi Leipheimer did drugs.
6) He has no proof.
7) Those closest to him didn’t know what he was up to.
8) He confessed to his mom.
We should note that Landis has only implicated American riders. One wonders why he has implicated only Americans. Could his full and complete confession be leaving something out?
After four years of his strenuous denial and seven-figure defense that was, in part, paid for by fans who believed his innocent plea, for him to come out now and say, ‘Okay, now I’m telling the truth,’ credulity strains. UCI President Pat McQuaid said Landis’ statements were “scandalous and mischievous.”
Even if we believe everything his says lock-stock-and-barrel, in this case, his truth-telling comes a little late. As a means to restore respect and reputation, his confession is a failure. Still, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen. On this point, McQuaid has it wrong.
“These guys coming out now with things like this from the past is only damaging the sport,” McQuaid told The Associated Press. “If they’ve any love for the sport they wouldn’t do it.”
Come again? We don’t want dopers to confess? Please tell us you’re kidding.
I’ve heard from several sources that Landis has been drinking heavily, heavily enough to affect his fitness and relationships. It’s a tragic turn of events given what he has already experienced. It’s easy to connect the drinking with the events he says he is now confessing, the truth he needs to get off his chest. In 12-Step programs, you are directed to confess your wrongs, but there follows quickly one caveat: except when to do so would hurt others.
Which brings us to the meat of his confession. Most of what he has confessed involves others. To clear his conscience, he need only to confess his own deeds. Whatever motivation he has to tell what he says Armstrong, Hincapie, Leipheimer and Zabriskie have done, it isn’t his conscience; it sounds more like retribution—‘If my ship is going down, I’m taking yours with me.’
Backing this up is the fact that Landis pointed out the eight-year statute of limitations, which is due to run out on some of the alleged acts, as a motivating factor to come forward.
“Now we’ve come to the point where the statute of limitations on the things I know is going to run out or start to run out next month,” Landis said. “If I don’t say something now, then it’s pointless to ever say it.”
He wants cases opened into the acts of Armstrong, Hincapie, Leipheimer and Zabriskie while there’s still time, which means his confession is less about his acts than the acts of others. He wants to see others punished.
But he says he has no proof. Naturally, Armstrong, Hincapie, Leipheimer and Zabriskie will have to defend themselves and because Landis detailed them in e-mails, meaning they were written, not spoken, they rise from slander to libel. Because these are public figures, the odds are against any of them meeting with success in a court room following a civil suit.
Landis may have a tougher time defending himself than they do.
Federal investigator Jeff Novitzky, the man who headed the investigation into Victory Conte and the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) is one of the investigators involved in checking out Landis’ claims.
One of the first questions Novitzky and other investigators will have for Lanids will be who his sources were. Where did he buy his stuff? His suppliers may have sales records. If they have sales records that can substantiate his claim that he was a customer, then it is also possible they would have sales records detailing their relationship with other clients, and it’s a safe bet that if it is true Landis was taking his cues from others, then he was probably shopping at the same market, so-to-speak.
Armstrong has pulled out of the Tour of California following what sounds like a minor crash. Cynics will probably surmise that it was a strategic decision to avoid media scrutiny.
And what of Landis’ actual confession? That is, what of what he claims he did? These would be new infractions worthy of their own case. While I have advocated a truth and reconciliation commission to encourage athletes to come forward and tell what they know, this case is ugly and really perverts the way you hope justice will work.
Should Landis get a slap on the wrist in exchange for his cooperation? Or should he get the proverbial book thrown at him yet again? It may be that he has already come to the conclusion that his return to the pro ranks won’t be what he had hoped and that he is ready to depart.
If that’s the case, then his confession is 200-proof revenge.
This case may well make it to a grand jury, which will be much more likely to result in actual justice than any action USADA takes. Getting at the real truth should be the goal, rather than just handing out punishment.
But what of Landis’ original case? He was within his right to defend himself and we should never forget that. However, his defense built a sham identity that wasn’t enough to escape conviction. Hopefully, that will be a sobering thought to the new generation of dopers, a la Bernard Kohl and Riccardo Ricco. However, Landis’ defense turned into the most costly prosecution ever for USADA. In mounting such an expansive defense he cheated not just those who contributed to the Floyd Fairness Fund, but all those of us who follow cycling and depend on the anti-doping authorities to uncover and prosecute doping. One wonders who escaped prosecution because USADA was mired in a more than year-long case with Landis.
I have often thought that there will come a day where we look back on the EPO era with different eyes. We should never condone doping, but there may come a point when we understand that during the time when EPO use was rampant, there were no heroes and very, very few villains, that these men were flawed, like all of us, and a product of their time.
Image: John Pierce, Photosport International
Garmin-Transitions Comes of Age
When Jonathan Vaughters’ fledgling PRO team first went to Europe, all who watched closely enough to care asked a single question: Will they win? It’s an unsurprising question. Any time a team ventures from any Anglophone country to Europe to race, fans wonder what races they might win.
However, in the case of what was then Slipstream Sports, the question had a subtext. What people wondered wasn’t so much whether a predominantly American team run by the single most dapper director in the sport could beat the Euros at their own game. No, the question was whether a team that was so conspicuously, laboriously clean could win a bike race.
Slipstream, in other words, was a crucible. As the most believably clean program in the sport, if they won, it would be proof that it was possible to race at the ProTour level and win clean. If they failed, then winning clean was doomed as an ideal. Kill that hope, and you might well be killing the sport for many.
Of all the criticisms I’ve heard of the Garmin-Transitions team—and I’ve heard many—the one I’ve heard most often was that they don’t win. They don’t win big stuff; they don’t win decisively. Sure, there are criticisms that Millar has never returned to his form of old, that Danielson will never fulfill the promise of his gifts, but they have just been scapegoats for the program’s larger lack of high-profile wins to shut the doubters up.
I think, maybe, the time has come to give Vaughters his due.
In a single day, Garmin-Transitions swept the stages of the two biggest bike races going on in the world.
In stage 10 of the Giro d’Italia, Tyler Farrar won the stage following a burned-rubber lead out from teammate Julian Dean. He out-sprinted Robbie McEwen, a notoriously proficient freelancer who can pirate anyone else’s lead out train to his benefit. He also bested Andre Greipel, Robert Forster and Danilo Hondo. At this point, just about the only guy Farrar hasn’t beaten in a head-to-head sprint is Mark Cavendish. He also leads the points competition. In short, anyone with any remaining doubts about Farrar’s real talent can sit down.
Less than nine hours later the unthinkable happened. David Zabriskie, one of the most talented time trialists to ever wear the stars and bars, a guy so known for his prowess on a second-by-second basis that he has been almost completely written off as a road racer, surprised everyone by jumping hard—not to mention insanely early—and held off Levi Leipheimer and Michael Rogers for the stage win in Santa Cruz. Zabriskie donned the leader’s jersey, climbing to the top of the general classification for the first time ever in the Tour of California. Though he twice finished the race in second place overall (2006 and 2009), it didn’t seem that too many media outlets (or fans) took him seriously as a real contender for the win.
His win in stage three seems to have made people re-think his potential.
One day, two wins, two jerseys. ProTour teams are supposed to have depth enough to be competitive at two races at once, but to sweep the day’s racing isn’t just good, we usually call it dominant.
