Category: Sports

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Today’s Tour Mystery

Phil Liggett just looked at a picture of a T-Mobile rider struggling off the back of the peloton on today’s (the 10th stage’s) final climb. “That’s Ullrich!” he gasped, meaning Jan Ullrich, the great racer known more as a perennial Tour also-ran. But it wasn’t Ullrich — it was one of the T-Mobile domestiques who was done with his turn in the peloton for the day.

But that’s just a small botched detail in today’s race. The truly impenetrable mystery for Liggett and OLN announcing partner Paul Sherwen is why Lance Armstrong’s team has been riding so hard at the front during the latter parts of the stage. The guys have been utterly mystified about it, guessing that perhaps it has to do with Lance’s fear of one of the riders in a breakaway that, coming off the second-to-last climb of the day was 4 or 5 minutes ahead of the main field.

But as the charge up the long last climb has developed, it’s apparent that Discovery has something else in mind: They’re applying as much pressure as possible to the rest of Lance’s rivals — all riding behind Discovery in the same group — to prevent any of them from making an attack. It’s like sucking the air right out of their lungs — they just don’t have much left to launch their own moves. And right now, inside 12 kilometers to the finish, it looks like the tactic has worked — most of the front group has blown up and dropped back.

Long way to go to the finish, though ….

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OLN and the Tour: The Little Things

It’s a small thing I want to complain about — a very small thing in a world where dozens of people are killed in terror attacks every week, where our nation is sending young people into an ill-defined and badly executed war, where so many of us struggle with personal challenges large and small just to get by from day to with our sanity intact. With that preamble spoken, the further piece I want to say is: It’s a damned shame, and very strange, that the race announcers on the Outdoor Life Networks Tour de France coverage are so bad at their jobs.

I’m hooked on the race, and I’ll watch every day, the daily cascade of meaningless froth from the two play-by-play guys (Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen) notwithstanding. Granted, they have a tough job. They’re sitting in a booth at the finish line every day and trying to cobble together some meaning from the live TV pictures they’re seeing and radio reports they’re hearing. But having conceded the task is difficult, it’s still sort of shocking how shallow, careless and sometimes flat-out wrong the duo is.

Just one case in point that won’t mean anything to anyone but a dedicated watcher/follower of the Tour: During Saturday’s stage, Lance Armstrong’s team collapsed. Everyone knows that now, because both Lance and smart commentators have been talking about it ever since the stage was over (Lance’s take in a post-race interview: “It was a bad day for the team.”).

But while the saga was unfolding — when the OLN guys had this amazing drama right in front of them — they apparently had no idea what was going on. What a viewer saw was Armstrong alone in a large group of riders from other teams who freely took turns attacking him (trying to get away from Armstrong by making sudden rapid accelerations ahead of his group); he was left to respond himself to every challenge, which involved “covering” the attack, or matching the quick accelerations of his rivals to make sure they didn’t get away. The disappearance of all of Armstrong’s teammates, who ordinarily would play a role in covering the moves from other teams, was stunning and recalled his very tough 2003 Tour, when he was repeatedly left by himself to deal with a rather large and very hostile group of competitors.

Sherwen and Liggett picked up on the attacks, because that’s what the pictures showed. But about the more important development that wasn’t on camera, they said nothing. The equivalent in baseball announcing terms would be if the announcer decided to tell you only what he saw happening at home plate. A lot of what’s important in a game happens right there. But you only see the game if you take in the rest of the field.

That’s all. That’s the end of this OLN complaint and this broadcasting day.

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Gone Cycling, and Back

I flew to Chicago over the weekend to ride in a 600-kilometer (375-mile) event I needed to qualify for next month’s Gold Rush Randonee here in California. The ride actually started in Wisconsin, from the little town of Delavan (a little northeast of Rockford, Illinois) and wandered around several of the state’s southern and central counties.

Beautiful riding, but cutting to the chase: I didn’t manage to finish. The first half of the ride went just fine, I was on pace to finish the first 400k in about 20 hours, get a couple of hours of sleep, and head back out to finish before the heat of the following day. I really had no doubts I would make it. Just at that point, though, a big storm hit and I got held up for several hours at a gas station in a little town called New Glarus. The ride never got back on track for me after that, though I had a memorable ride through a rainy night across some hilly and seemingly deserted back roads. After finishing the 400, I felt completely used up and wound up quitting the ride. There’s a little more to it than that, and I’ll write more later, because most of the part I did was exceptionally fun and challenging and the country beautiful. But that’s the bottom line.

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Modest Proposal: Cycling Edition

I belong to a bike club here in Berkeley. That is, I pay my dues, subscribe to the email list, and once in a very long while go on a club ride (my riding habit is usually solitary, an effect of taking a long time to get going on weekend mornings).

The club’s email list is mostly informative and entertaining, but sometimes given to extended pissing matches over who knows how much about some arcane (or perfectly ordinary) facet of cycling. The latest example: Member One posted at random about his love of a certain brand of tires for riding in the rain. It’s not the first time he’s touted the brand; I don’t know whether he’s getting a kickback or what. Member Two quickly chimed in, as he did once before, to observe that the tires in question go on the rim very easily — too easily, in fact, because he had one blow off his rim during a ride once. Member Two would never use that brand of tire.

The exchange inspired me. Quoting myself, here’s my contribution to the discussion:

I’ve been experimenting this year with doing away with tires altogether and just riding on some bare old rims that have been lying around the house for years. Straight-away traction, let alone cornering, is a bit tricky until you have a few miles on the unadorned rims. That’s all it takes for the local pavements to roughen the metal surface and give you a secure grip on terra firma. Talk about getting a good feel for the road! But for the lack of a tire, it’s practically like riding sew-ups.

Old steel rims are particularly fun to ride after dark; as a paramedic I met after one ride said, the chro-mo wheels create "quite a light show" as you career down the macadam. And if that’s not enough to persuade you of the virtues of rubber-less riding — shut your ears to the nay-sayers who complain about the slight increase in noise — just think about the weight savings: Since you don’t need to worry about flats (or tires blowing off) anymore, you don’t need spare tubes, patch kit, tire levers, or pump, either (but just as you would on a pneumatically cushioned jaunt, remember to  bring your medical and dental insurance cards with you when you ride rubber-less).

With all these advantages, word on "the street" is that Trek has hooked up with Bridgestone, the Japanese tire and bicycle maker, to develop a more durable "naked" rim for both both road and off-road riding. I’ve also heard that Rivendell is considering offering a new model — tentatively named the "Orc" — equipped with tireless rims and featuring no brakes.

I’ll admit I won’t be satisfied unless at least one club member takes this seriously.

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Sky Antlers in Flight

Researching a randonneuring trip to Portland and what airlines will charge for flying my bike as luggage, I checked the American Airlines site for details. I remember from a couple years ago that they charged $80 for the bike. That’s still true.

But American’s list of “sports equipment” it will fly is unexpectedly entertaining. It includes antlers (“must be as free of residue as possible; the skull must be wrapped and tips protected”), bowling balls (bowling ball cleaning fluids may be dangerous cargo), javelins ($80 each), “pole vaults” (I assume they’re talking about the poles, and they’re not allowed).

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The Bike Gig

Regular readers of this space — if it is a space, but I won’t wander into that corner of linguo-journalistic inquiry for now — know I’m fond of mentioning my exploits in the world of road cycling. One of the things I’ve been aiming for this year is a Paris-Brest-Paris-length endurance event — 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) in 90 hours — to be held next month here in California. A large part of the challenge is the preparation and training involved, especially a series of four shorter (but still long) rides (called brevets) that qualify you for the ride. The qualifying distances are 200 kilometers (125 miles) in 13.5 hours; 300 kilometers (187 miles) in 20 hours; 400 kilometers (250 miles) in 27 hours; and 600 kilometers (375 miles) in 40 hours.

All in all, I had no problem doing the rides to qualify for PBP in 2003 or in doing PBP itself. By that I mean my body held up well and my motivation only flagged once, during the cold, rainy, dark middle of the 600-kilometer qualifier as I ground very, very slowly up a steep mountain road in Mendocino County. The only other significant breakdowns — I didn’t get a flat tire all year — involved my ass and my good humor, though not necessarily in that order.

But this year it’s been a different story.

Continue reading “The Bike Gig”

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Mileage Scoreboard: 05.28.05

Posting from our friends Larry and Ursula’s place in Fair Oaks, California, after a long evening, a very fine dinner Larry cooked for all of us, and another long ride: It’s about 93 miles up here by car from Berkeley. It’s longer by bike, and longer still the way I do it: about 130 miles. Not the hardest ride — lots of flat, and a good wind most of the day. But the thing is, even if it’s flat and tail-windy, you’ve still got to ride the distance. More about the ride tomorrow. We’re going to clear out of here soon (somehow, it’s become 11:30 p.m.) and drive back to Berkeley.

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In Bicycle Land

Long bike rides are an exercise in sensory overload. There’s so much to take in over the course of a day. The landscape, of course. Socializing with other riders. Monitoring the way you’re feeling, gauging your effort, measuring what you’re putting out now against how much work you have ahead. Watching everything that happens on the road, knowing that a momentary lapse of attention, an unseen crinkle in the pavement, an unremarkable pebble, could interrupt your ride or end it if you’re unlucky. Keeping an eye on other riders when you’re riding in a pack, taking pains to make sure you ride steadily and predictably while watching everyone else to make sure they’re doing the same. It’s hard to believe how absorbing the sight of a rear wheel spinning 12 inches in front of your front wheel can be until you’ve spent an hour or two or three watching one while trying to stay aware of the road ahead and what other riders are doing; it’s active, rolling meditation.

Beyond the pure physical effort, the factor I identify most with cycling is landscape. I think more than any other reason, that’s why I’m motivated to get on my bike and go. Just thinking about yesterday, when I rode the Davis Double Century, the sight memories all by themselves are overwhelming. A golden eagle. A hundred-foot high dike of lava. Creeks and streams running hard and full. But instead of trying to paint the whole day, just one brief impression: Rolling back toward Davis across the westernmost stretch of the Sacramento Valley an hour or so before sunset, passing acre after acre of newly flooded rice paddies near Interstate 505. The day had been warm, the Valley is just above sea level, and there it felt humid as midsummer in the Midwest. The sky was flawless, the not-quite-full moon well up over the long eastern horizon. The wind was down, and the paddy water held perfect casts of every detail of the world around and the heavens above. In the distance: egrets, night herons, terns, working the edges of the inundated fields; me and all the others rolling past, opening and closing circles, feeling for perfect rhythm.

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Opening Night

The Infospigot household, plus special guest (and friend of Thom) Jane, took in the Oakland Athletics home opener tonight. The final score found the hometown nine at a steep deficit to the visiting Toronto Blue Jays, a result that left the 44,000 witnesses chilled and uncharmed. (Just a second and I’ll be done with what I believe is a bad Roger Angell impression.) But the team has 80 more home games to play, so hope abounds.

I’ll say this, though: Everything was close to OK before the umpire went and wrecked things by saying “play ball.”

The A’s stadium, which now goes by the name of McAfee Coliseum or something like that, is impersonally massive since its reconstruction a few years ago to accommodate the East Bay’s professional football team. The main charm the big concrete bowl had before the remodeling was a view over the top of the outfield bleachers to the Oakland Hills. There’s still just a sliver of that vista visible from the cheap third-deck seats (ours came with an unadvertised obstructed view), and the evening sunlight on the ridge — even with a hillside stripped by a gravel quarry — is always striking. Just before the anthems were played — Canadian first, then ours — I noticed a couple of big birds soaring just over the rim of the stadium to our left. I thought they were turkey vultures at first silhouetted glance — an addition to the pigeons, California gulls, and barn swallows that claim the Coliseum as home roost — but as we kept looking, we realized they were red-tailed hawks. Both swayed and wheeled around a light tower on the third-base side of the stadium, and both eventually settled onto the white-painted grating of a workers’ platform at the base of the lights.

Then the anthems. Even though a Canadian guy I met in Ireland in 1973 pointed out that “O Canada” is a militarist hymn (“Listen to what they’re saying — ‘O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.’ On guard!”), I’ve always liked it, and Kate and I sang the few words we knew. Then a singer started into “The Star-Spangled Banner,” a performance punctuated by loud fireworks. We sang along to that, too, despite my dislike of the current manifestation of our flag and patriotism cult.

But while we sang, both Kate and I kept scanning the sky around the stadium. Roy Steele, the public address announcer, alerted the crowd to expect a flyover from a pair of FA-18 jets from Lemoore Naval Air Station in the Central Valley (here’s a question: How much do those flyovers cost, and who pays?) when the anthem was done. Somewhere in the song’s last few bars, Kate said, “There they are.” And off to the southeast, a couple of tiny shapes trailing smoke headed for the rim of the stadium opposite us — heading straight for us, in other words. I said, “Stay way up there, you two.” There was just a dull roar till they climbed into the west behind us, then we were engulfed in a prolonged peal of thunder. I love seeing the big, fast planes. Too bad we can’t put them on permanent amusement duty.

Then the game started, and things went downhill from there. At least until the postgame scrambled eggs back here in Berkeley.

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‘Please — Please! — Don’t Look’

An immortal moment of broadcasting conscience on ESPN’s “SportsCenter”: The show was reporting on the death of Al Lucas, an arena football player who died in a game tonight after trying to make a tackle. One of the show’s anchors, Fred Hickman, read the item. As they got ready to show the clip of the play in which Lucas was fatally injured, Hickman said, “in the interest of decency, we invite you to look away.”

Then they played the tape.

The content of the video aside — uninterested as I am in ESPN’s notion of decency, I did not look away; the angle of the play they showed was just generic football rough stuff, a tangle of players hitting each other during a kickoff return — what a nauseating display of false piety and pandering: “Oh, we hate to do what we’re about to do; and you’ll hate us for it too — especially if you stoop to our level and watch what we’re about to put on the screen. For heaven’s sake, don’t watch this. It’s just horrible. Isn’t it? We’ll have a replay in 15 minutes. In the name of all that’s holy, please avoid it.”

I’m not saying ESPN or anyone else should refrain from showing the tape. Quite the contrary. The poor guy died in a public venue in the conduct of a sport that puts a premium on violence, even crippling violence, and ESPN promotes the voyeurism along with the rest of the media. So go ahead and roll the tape. Just spare us the solemnity. If ESPN had really wanted to make the kind of “in the interest of decency” statement it was pretending to make, the producers could have shelved the footage. What are the chances of that happening?