Tour de France Open Thread

by tgirsch

July 8th, 2008

Per commenter Ted’s request. My first thought is telling: The Tour de France is going on already?

Categories: Cycling, Sports |

13 Comments

Paul Tomblin July 8th, 2008
I’ve got to say, I’m less involved in the race this year, mostly because none of my favourite riders are involved. I’m happy they kicked out the dopers, but I think kicking out two of the top three riders from last year because they’re on a team with the same name (but different riders and different Directeur Sportif) as a previously disgraced team is pretty f*ing stupid, though.
Paul Tomblin July 8th, 2008
BTW: You’ve got to fix your blacklist. Every time I post, I get the following error:

Regex ID: 163570 (Morris) appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
Janusz July 8th, 2008
It is strange not seeing names like Ivan Basso or Jan Ulrich in the Tour…but fun to see some new blood participating…

Lets hope we’ve gotten past the messiness of last year…
Ted July 8th, 2008
It;s obvious to me that I was a bandwagon fan of the TdeF. Back when Lance was accomplishing his superhuman feats, I watched every stage, sometimes twice. For me it was very similar to watching the America’s Cup races. Long periods of time filled with minute tactics but no significant changes in the race, with the occasional burst of action that might decide the entire thing in the course of ten seconds. I’ve never watched a NASCAR race, but I can imagine at some level that experience would be similar (except cruising through the French country-side and the occasional village sure provides a more interesting backdrop than seeing the same infield and grandstand 250 times in rapid succession…

But I digress. For me, especially in ‘04, the TdeF had additional significance. I had recently been diagnosed with cancer and was going through a sledgehammer chemo/radiation regiemen. I had enough strength to use the remote to change the channel on the TV, but not much more. Needless to say, to see Lance Armstrong, himself a cancer survivor, winning what many consider to be the most physically-challenging sports event on the planet, was a very inspirational experience.

Earlier that year, I had read his book “It’s not About the Bike,” in which he talks about how significant the psychological aspect of the race is, especially in the mountains. Basically, these guys drive themselves to near death. An as soon as any doubt enters the mind, snap! the rider cracks and his day is done. I saw this over and over in the climbing stages. An elite climber would challenge a lesser climber, the lesser guy would try to keep up, and then, snap! he was finished.

The details are a bit foggy now, but on one mountain stage, Armstrong had a very small overall lead. He and about five other climbers had left the pack behind. At he foot of one very steep section, Armstrong stands up and takes off, separating about 100 feet from the other riders before they could react. Then he turns around and stares at then for about five seconds (seemed like about a minute). Then turns back forward and just dusts them, opening up an insurmountable lead and ensuring another overall win. It was like when Randy Johnson threw the first pitch over Kruk’s head in Baltimore at the All-Star game. Complete psychological domination.

Of course, as the dopng rumors came out, I was always afraid Armstrong would be busted. I can safely say that millions of cancer patients across the country hoped any prayed that would not happen. It would have been such a huge disappointment.

Anyway, Lance retired, doping became more and more of an issue, and the Floyd Landis debacle ended my interest in bicycle racing. But is was fun while it lasted.
digglahhh July 8th, 2008
I heard Barry Bonds is entering this year, he wants to take up a sport in which he will be considered clean by comparison.

Ted,

That was a great post. I’m almost embarrassed to follow it with my snarky, trite attempt at humor. The psychological element is extremely important in all sports at such high levels. The disparity in raw talent is way smaller than in your average recreational game, when you think about it. Kobe Bryant, for example, is always the best player on the court. But, what really seals it is how clearly aware his defender is of that fact…
Paul Tomblin July 8th, 2008
Ted: I think you’re referring to the incident that is universally known as “The Look”, when Armstrong looked back into Jan Ulrich’s eyes to see if he had it in him, and Ulrich couldn’t match it. One of the truly great moments in the Tour.

Another favourite moment for me was on another mountain stage a few years later. Armstrong had tried to give the stage win to his team-mate Floyd Landis, at the top of the second last hill when he told him “ride like you stole something”. But two other rivals kept up with Landis, so Armstrong had to as well. Then on the last climb, Andreas Kloden got a good lead on everybody, and Paul Sherwin and Phil Ligget were saying “he’s won, nobody can catch him now”, and suddenly Armstrong puts on an incredible burst of speed, catches Kloden and passes him. Everybody wondered why Armstrong expended that much effort when he already had enough of an overall lead on Kloden that he could have let him take the stage with no ill effect. Armstrong later admitted that on the previous time trail up L’Alpe D’Huez, German fans had been spitting on him and yelling “Doper”, so when he suddenly realized it was a German who was going to win the stage, he had to shut him down.
Ted July 8th, 2008
Yeah, the Look. I looked it up, that was the 2001 Tour. That was the first year I really got into it. A guy that was doing web development for me back then was a sponsored road racer and he was a huge Ulrich fan. Needless to say I had bragging rights over him that day (although LA denies that he was trying to intimidate Jan - it sure looked that way).

Poor Jan, he has to be one of the more unlucky pro athletes of all time. He might have been a four time Tour winner if not for a certain dude from Texas. Of course even he has since been busted for doping.
tgirsch July 8th, 2008
Of course even he has since been busted for doping.

I’m sad to say that I’m still highly suspicious of Lance in this regard. The best (other) athletes in the world were mostly doping, and he still beat them. If he did that without also doping, it’d be truly amazing.

I know we’re supposed to presume innocence and all that, but the sport of cycling is so tainted by doping, it’s hard to imagine someone clean being so dominant.
Ted July 8th, 2008
WAWAWAW…hands over ears…can’t hear what you are… WAWAWWA
Paul Tomblin July 10th, 2008
One thing that argues for Lance is that several of his former team-mates got caught doping after they left Lance’s team (Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis, etc). You can bet that the cycling organizations, and especially the French, would have offered any of them massive money and maybe shortened suspensions if they would have turned in Lance.
Ted July 11th, 2008
Thanks Paul. I appreciate your comment. It somewhat balances the comment of the guy that I thought was my buddy, Tgirsch
tgirsch July 11th, 2008
Hey, if we agreed on EVERYTHING, that would be boring, right?

Did you see Hart got the last NL All-Star spot? He started slow, but has been playing pretty well of late.
Ted July 12th, 2008
Hey, we always have self-referential econometrics to keep things lively..