The Tour’s Over

The quick takeaways:

–It’s a little hard to take in the dimensions of Lance Armstrong’s accomplishment. On the sporting level, I think it’s on a par with Muhammad Ali’s domination of the heavyweight division before he was drafted or Michael Jordan’s taking over the NBA. They existed on planes above their contemporaries, and so does Lance.

–His accomplishment will remain under a cloud, I think, until there’s a definitive answer to questions about whether Armstrong used “illegal substances.” (Good piece in Velonews on this today from former racer and l’Alpe d’Huez stage winner Andy Hampsten.) The cynical assumption, from which I’ve tried to refrain, is that he’s been on something. Maybe the definitive answer will never come and the cynical assumptions will win the day. What a shame.

–The Tour next year: Will Lance ride again? It’s hard to imagine him not defending the title. One thing I’m interested in what will happen to race coverage here when he’s finally out of the race. The Outdoor Life Network has had a ready-made hometown superstar to promote and has done a good job of building its coverage around him. But what if the favorites were a German, an Italian, and a Russian? For serious cycling fans, the Tour would still be compelling. But I think OLN would lose most everyone else without another legitimate U.S. threat.

–Speaking of the next U.S. threat: Who is it? I have no idea, and that means nothing, because I don’t know much about what’s happening in the pro cycling ranks. I think it’s fair to say that when LeMond’s star faded, few saw Armstrong’s rising as a great Tour rider, and virtually no one saw him as a future champion.

–Speaking of OLN: As I said, they did a nice job building and marketing a month-plus of programming built around Armstrong (even if “The Cyclysm” is a cataclysmically dumb banner for the programming event. But: You wonder if they could do better with the broadcasting team. On the plus side, Bob Roll is great: Knowledgeable, funny, with a winning way of never taking himself or the Tour too seriously. But Al Trautwig combines lack of cycling knowledge with a suave, empty broadcasting style that’s got to go. And the play-by-play/color team of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen are trapped in a cyclysm of gasping superlatives, butchered metaphors, and pure and simple miscalls of the action. The final one came today, when Liggett announced that Fabian Cancellara, the young rider who had won the prologue three weeks ago, had gone off the front on the next-to-last lap of the street circuit in Paris. Both he and Sherwen narrated his big push up the Champs Elysee and his attempt to stay clear of the peloton. Then, after a good two or three minutes of this, the rider made the turn just before the Arc d’ Triomphe and voila, the OLN twins noticed it was not Cancellara at all but Juan Antonio Flecha. Think about that kind of mistake in any other sporting event you can think of. Hard to imagine it being tolerated.

The Son Also Snoozes

393
Kate and I are no longer childless! Tom returned from Germany this afternoon. Spent the afternoon regaling us with stories and pictures and poring over his amazing German candy trove and explaining the finer points of German beer and beer glasses. Just before dinner, when the evening replay of the Tour came on, he hit the wall.

X Prize News 7.22.04

Wednesday, the X Prize Foundation put out a release announcing a press conference in Santa Monica next Tuesday, July 27. The subject: “Several announcements” about the $10 million prize competition. You don’t need to be a rocket surgeon or a brain scientist to know that the Number One announcement will be dates for a prize attempt by Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne team (earlier news on the possible timing on Wired News and MSNBC.com).

An official involved in X Prize launch planning — I interviewed him for Wired News, which chose not to do a story yesterday; since we spoke under that understanding, I don’t want to quote him by name — wouldn’t confirm the SpaceShipOne news. But he did says this about the announcement: “They’re just going to announce the dates of one of the applicants’ next flights, their next prospective flights.” The official said his organization, which I would describe as being a key partner in Rutan’s launch preparations, would participate in next week’s announcement.

The X Prize people say that in addition to Rutan, Brian Feeney of Toronto’s da Vinci Project will participate. Feeney likewise wouldn’t comment on the announcement. He did say that his group will be holding a press event up in Toronto on August 4 (it was orginally planned for Wednesday, July 21, but was cancelled partly because of the imminent X Prize press conference, he said. He also said that since the da Vinci Project is an all-volunteer effort, “Sometimes it’s hard to tell people what to do” and pull off something like a press day. But he said the August 4 session will definitely happen.

Tour de Lunacy

Favorite moment in today’s stage: Lance’s dash for the win, natch.

Close second: Kloeden, one of the Germans on the T-Mobile squad, giving a firm shove to a guy running alongside him waving a German flag.

Third: Paul Sherwin’s comment on another one of the roadside lunatics, a guy in a chicken suit who ran in front of the lead group for about 100 meters: “It’s a pity that some of these people are so crazy.” Sherwen also observed during a replay of the finish that Lance had been “determinated” to win.

Tour de Dad

One unexpected development in this year’s tour, unremarked by the Outdoor Life Network’s Tour team, is my dad’s discovery of and enthusiasm for the race. OK, it’s mainly remarkable because he was born the same year Belgium’s Leon Scieur won the race; or, to put it more plainly, the year Warren Harding took office as president (of the U.S., not the Tour). Lots of Tours and even five-time winners have come and gone since then.

Dad’s preference is to watch the stages on OLN’s evening recap. We watched Armstrong’s ascent of l’Alpe d’Huez Tuesday evening together long distance, on the phone.

Murder in Berkeley

CIMG1644

Well, not murder exactly; or not a murder, to be exact. Kate and I were walking near home and saw crows gathering near the local middle school. Intentions were unclear. Were they about to go Hitchcock on us? Apparently not. I went home and got my camera. When I got back about half an hour later, only a few stragglers remained, including this one, who was sort of gurgling as if it really wanted to sing.

Le Tour Today

Lance Armstrong won another mountain stage, and everyone’s crowning him the winner of this year’s Tour. One thing I wonder about is, given the continuing allegations that he’s been “doping,” is what the French and other European fans think about him. (No, I don’t believe the accusations, just as I don’t truly believe the suggestions that Barry Bonds has been using steroids; but sometimes you wonder if maintaining that belief is more than a little like clapping your hands to revive Tinkerbell in “Peter Pan.”)

Anyway, as Lance was approaching the summit on the l’Alpe d’Huez climb, there was a great aerial shot from a TV helicopter. I was checking out all the slogans the cycling fans had splashed on the road to encourage their heroes. The overwhelming majority of the thousands of messages cheered for favorites like Jan Ullrich, Richard Virenque, Ivan Basso, and yes, even Lance Armstrong.

But in one short stretch, Armstrong rode across messages that said “Lance EPO” (a reference to a blood-doping substance), “Lance Sucks,” and “F*** Lance.” Wow — seems kind of hostile. On the other side, though, there was this battle cry: “Rip Their Balls Off, Lance.””

Tour de Dibble

I should know better, but the sports jerks still get to me when they start talking every summer about how the Tour — you know, the Tour — isn’t really an event. Driving through Baltimore on our way to the airport to come home, I heard Rob Dibble and another troglodyte start in on Lance Armstrong and the Tour. Dibble said that cycling isn’t really a sport because “the bike does a lot of the work” and Lance can “coast on it and sit on it.” So when we got to the airport, I wrote the following and sent it off:

Dear Rob Dibble and ESPN Radio:

Every year at Tour de France time, sports boneheads cut loose about what a joke bicycle racing is. And every year people like me, who actually know something about sports that don’t involve throwing, hitting or kicking balls or pucks or people, try to show you what boneheads you really are. So here we go again, but maybe with a difference.

First, your comments dismissing cycling as a sport show such amazing ignorance that it’s hard to tell where to begin. But let’s try the statement that during bike racing, the bike is doing a lot of the work and that the physical exertion is nothing like that encountered during running. Rob that’s about the same as saying that your shoes are doing a lot of the work when you throw a fastball; and in baseball, spiked shoes help you get the leverage you need to throw. It’s true that bicycles have a marvelously efficient way of converting muscular energy into motion. But at the professional level, that translates into extraordinary results. If you take a look at the speeds attained and energy spent (in terms of watts or calories or any other way you want to measure it), bike racers are putting out the same or more effort as long-distance runners; in sprints, which may come after hours of tough riding, the energy output is very similar to that of sprinters in track and field. What the bicycle does is make it possible for a trained athlete to go farther faster and longer than someone on foot or on cross-country skis, for instance. So, to go back to the baseball shoes for a moment: There’s no way wearing the same model shoes you wore would make it possible for Lance Armstrong to throw a 95 mph heater. And there’s no way that putting you on Lance’s bike would make you anything more than a sad, sweaty, out-of-breath retiree.

Rob, I’m sure you doubt all this. But I think I could prove my point to you and your audience. I think a fair test would be to pit you, an elite one-time professional athlete who utterly dismisses the idea that bike racing is challenging, against a retired pro cyclist. Someone like Greg Lemond, who’s been out of the game for awhile. But you know, that might be stacking the odds against you. What I’d really like to do is get you on a bike myself and do a little race. Maybe 20 miles or so. A route with some climbs and some descents. I’m 50. A run-of-the-mill cyclist. I’d love to have you show me how easy the sport is.

And one last thing, Rob: You got mad on the air because some Cubs pitcher might have exercised some poor judgment and was said to have committed a “Dibble-ism..” You wanted to know what a Dibble-ism is. Well, throwing a ball into the stands, as you once did in Cincinnati, hitting a hometown fan, is one example. Disrespecting fellow athletes because you don’t understand their sport is another.

Hope to see you on the road.

Still East

We’re in my brother’s neighborhood in Brooklyn — Brooklyn, New York (a sign on the expressway coming in from Queens says “Brooklyn, Believe the Hype”).

Spent yesterday and last night with friends in Hastings-on-Hudson, just north of New York City (not sure if that “on Hudson” is a modern invention or not). A beautiful stretch of country, with the Palisades on the New Jersey shore and a series of old rich-guy estates stretching from the upper Bronx far up the eastern side of the river. We visited one: Wave Hill, maintained by the New York City park’s department. Then went up the road a way to Tarrytown, where Washington Irving concocted his “Sleepy Hollow” tale. We went to a church and graveyard that figure in the story and saw the Irving family plot (crowded).

Tomorrow, back south, eventually to Washington and our flight back west and a lot of work waiting for us in California.

Road notes: July 9

7/9/04

Breakfast with McCrohons in Washington

Drive up to New Jersey by way of the Lewes-Cape May Ferry

Needed to reserve ferry spot and arrive an hour ahead of departure for “security reasons.”

Got to terminal about 55 minutes before our scheduled departure at 4:15 p.m. But they put us on the 3:30 p.m. ferry. What security? They did check my ID when we drove up to the gate, but that’s it..

Clear on the ferry. Lewes beaches stretching west along shore of Delaware Bay.

from D.C. Crowded.

As we approached Cape May, passengers spotted about 20 dolphins off port side (one said she saw a whale, too). Occasionally one leaped from the water. But mostly we saw them arching and diving.

Cape May: Wild place? Was always taken by image of Cape May warbler, which I have only seen in a book.

New Jersey’s Ocean Route, the scenic way up the shore: Nonstop strip of beachtown development. Prettier once you turn away from shore, north of Wildwood, and cross wide stretch of marshes toward the Garden State parkway. All the Jersey bashing aisde, the freeway in that north-south stretch is much more “scenic” than the shore.

Yankees-Devil Rays on the radio. Rays up 2-0. Charlie somebody, whose voice I recognize from ESPN, is doing the play-by-play. In 3rd or 4th inning, introduces “the Yankees injury report. Brought to you by the Cochrane team. If you get hurt, call Johnny Cochrane and his team of laywers.” Or something to that effect. Thereafter follows the injury report, which is an extended discussion on the intestinal parasites that had been infesting Jason Giambi and Kevin Brown. Johnny Cochrane. Intestinal arasites. Awesome.

Ended the day at Exit 105 off the Garden State Parkway, Tinton Falls. No falls visible, though.