Call this just a brief interlude from the All-Halladay-All-The-Time business. Later this afternoon we roll up to Reading, Pa. to take a gander at Kyle “The Deal Breaker” Drabek before wading into to the deep end of the rest of the deadline comings and goings.
So first this, then Reading, San Francisco and points Continental.
First of all, I don’t speak French. From the sounds of the language, it seems a little easier to follow than Spanish, which is something I can piece together as long as the speaker goes slowly and uses some words I can attach some sort of context to.
Sometimes it works, but sometimes it goes terribly, terribly wrong. For instance, one time I tried to say, in Spanish, that I was hungry and it came out as, “I want a man.” That wasn’t what I meant at all, but hombre and hambre are two similar sounding words that mean two completely different things.
Anyway, there was a French commentator on the radio the other day commentating on the big bicycle race. To be more precise, it was the penultimate stage of the Tour de France where the riders climbed the otherworldly-looking Mount Ventoux. Reports indicated that there were one million people lined along the switchbacks of the mountain that probably helped to freak out the riders even more. If it wasn’t a serious climb above the tree line over terrain that looked like the dark side of the moon, or the oxygen debt mixed with the lactic acid buildup, the fact that the riders had already completed approximately 2,000 miles of the trip from Monte Carlo through the Basque country, into the Alps and Provence before finishing at the Champs-Élysées in Paris.
Helluva way to spend three weeks.
However, according to the translation of the French commentary, the word coming from Mount Ventoux was more awed than respect.
Lance Armstrong est courageux masculin.
Not sure if that’s correct vernacular, but that was the sentiment. The French were celebrating Lance Armstrong as if he were Charlie Lindbergh or Jerry Lewis and it was the strangest thing. After years of spitting at him as he rode by on his bike, and claiming that the chemotherapy treatments he had undergone when he nearly died from cancer was “performance-enhancing,” it appeared as if they finally warmed up to the 37-year-old Texan.
How could that be?
Maybe it was because Lance could be painted as a victim of sorts during the 2009 Tour de France. You know, because surviving cancer and rumors of doping wasn’t enough. This time, the seven-time winner of the biggest race in the world, overcame ambivalence from race directors eager to keep him in retirement and off the previously banned team Astana. Then there were the 11 doping tests during the 21 stages of the race that came after the charade of a claim that he attempted to dodge a drug-tester. That stuff was brie on a baguette compared to the surgery in which he had 12 screws fused into his collar bone after a wreck during a race in Northern Spain. That was the hardest part of the comeback.
“Lying in the ditch in that situation … You sort of ask yourself, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’” Armstrong told ESPN’s Bonnie Ford. “I don’t feel that way today, necessarily, although I’m still in a lot of pain and ready to get this behind me. It was a shock.
“To go as long as I have without having anything like this happen is basically a miracle. … It was bound to happen. It’s not good timing, but it certainly could be worse. And I look at it from a different perspective, too, just from the curveballs my health has thrown me in the past. Laying in that ditch with a shattered collarbone is a lot better than other health scares I’ve had.”
Fair enough, but it seems that really turned around the French was the hard-nosed ride up Mount Ventoux last weekend. Lance didn’t win that stage, but that was beside the point. The French seem to favor guys who are valiant in defeat than guys with talent who win. Though to call the Mount Ventoux ride a defeat is not totally accurate. Lance finished fifth, but rode in support for eventual Tour victor Alberto Contador. When Contador needed a boost or a helping hand, Lance was there to carve out a path. When Contador needed someone to run interference, Lance was there.
Lance was the highest profile domestique in the history of the race. He did everything to ensure Contador’s second Tour victory except fetch water bottles.
Here’s the thing about that – he didn’t have to. If Lance wanted to win the race, he surely could have. With a team as strong a Astana, the ’27 Yankees of cycling, all Lance had to do was find a way to get Contador to fall into line and get after it. Even after Contador inexplicably surged ahead during the early stages of the race to put a time gap between himself and the rest of his team, Lance let it slide.
How come?
Well, as first reported by Bonnie Ford, Lance had a plan. Ever Machiavellian, Lance was busy breaking up the band in the middle of the concert. Next year the seven-time champ will likely be the main man on the newly formed Team Radio Shack. He’ll take team manager Johan Bruyneel with him and possibly even top American rider, Levi Leipheimer with him.
Contador? Well, he’s on his own. It appears as if the proclaimed top rider in the world will be the man on a new Spanish team. It’s not confirmed but since the cycling world leaks like a sieve it appears as if this is the way it’s shaping up.
Nevertheless, Lance will get to take on Contador mano-y-mano in 2010. Both men will be busy putting together the best teams (maybe Lance will get George Hincapie, the American who turned in the greatest 75th place finish in the history of team sports during the Tour), but don’t look for anything less than another great rivalry.
Maybe even some slippages in political correctness.
After the (spectacular) coverage on VERSUS was lauding Contador as the strongest rider in the world and a great champion of the race, ex-rider Frankie Andreu asked Lance if his soon-to-be former teammate had any weaknesses
“Yes,” Lance said. “He has some. But we’re not going to talk about them now.”
If only he would have fiendishly wrung his hands together, too.
