Tag: tour de france

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The New Blog

As I said to an important advisor earlier today: Just what I need as a further diversion from the serious business of life–a new blog. It’s called re: Cycling, and I’ve been noodling around with it for awhile. Not that you can tell, necessarily: to the untrained eye, it resembles a blog just like the one devoted to your aunt’s pet cat’s colon surgery. What prompts the “announcement”–sure to propel waves of consternation across the far-flung Infospigot empire–is the onset of the 2008 Tour de France. For the most part, I’m going to make my Tour posts at re: Cycling. The extra special Tour posts with the added, deep existential dimension: those will appear here, too–if there are any.

The new thing is a work in progress. I have it in mind to ask a couple of riding and writing friends to become co-editors, contributors, and maybe do a couple little spin-off projects based on what we put together there. That’s a longer term project, though.

Any thoughts, suggestions, encouragement or condemnation: please send it my way.

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Your Phil Liggett Tour Quotes of the Day

From today’s Stage Three:

Phil on geography: “The River Loire is the big river here in France. It runs from the west, from the east rather, into the west. It’s 700 miles across. It’s the biggest river they possess.”

Phil’s rider profiles of the day: “Aleksandr Kuschynski here [half a dozen riders in the frame]. I think he’s rock bottom on the classification, isn’t he, overall? But that doesn’t matter, he’s a workhorse, too, for Liquigas, puffing and blowing in the middle of the peloton there at the head. [Camera has panned down to riders’ legs.] These look like the legs of Marcus Burghardt of Team Columbia.”

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2008 Tour Theme Song

[Details on the Versus 2009 Tour de France theme song, “First Breath After Coma” by Explosions in the Sky, here. Details on 2010’s featured song, “Kings and Queens,” by 30 Seconds to Mars, here.]

The Versus cable network is marketing the Tour part as brutal manly spectacle (along with bull riding and cage fighting) and partly as redemption story. For the latter theme, the network’s Tour promo montage uses part of a song with the lyrics,

“I’m gonna clear out my head,
I’m gonna get myself straight,
I know it’s never too late
To make a brand-new start.”

The song is “Brand New Start,” released in 1998 by Paul Weller. The full lyrics to the tune, which has a down-to-earth, environmentalist/activist edge to it, are here, and a YouTube video is here.

Amazon MP3s of “Brand New Start”: studio cut and live version (both sound very close to what Versus is using). Cost: 99 cents.

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Phil’s Liggett’s Quote of the Day

From the Versus Stage 1 telecast of the Tour de France:

“The beautiful scenery of Britanny now, remember we’re in Britanny now for three days, that’s what they’ve paid for and that’s what we’re gonna get and enjoy here on the Tour de France because these narrow roads constantly twist and turn, the undulations are very, very special here for all of the riders and 43 of them in their first Tour de France.”

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Phil’s Liggett’s Quote of the Day

From the Versus Stage 1 telecast of the Tour de France:

“The beautiful scenery of Britanny now, remember we’re in Britanny now for three days, that’s what they’ve paid for and that’s we’re gonna get and enjoy here on the Tour de France because these narrow roads constantly twist and turn, the undulations are very, very special here for all of the riders and 43 of them in their first Tour de France.”

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Floyd Again

It’s not a surprise that Floyd Landis has filed an appeal of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s verdict against him. I’m prompted to remember what his mother said when that case went against him: something to the effect that she didn’t think it was worth appealing, but Floyd being Floyd — and seeing that he still insisted on his innocence — how could he not appeal?

Now the case goes to the oddly named Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, and the word is that its ruling — which will be the final, final, final legal verdict in the matter — will come down early next year.

In the meantime, Tour de France officials will appear in Madrid on Monday to bestow their event’s much besmirched champion’s jersey on Oscar Pereiro, who finished second to Landis in 2006. I just love picturing what happens if the Swiss court rules in Landis’s favor. Will there be a ceremony to retrieve the jersey from Pereiro and give it back to Floyd? (Of course not. In the unlikely event he wins his Swiss appeal, Landis will probably have to sue the Amaury Sports Organization, the Tour company, to get the championship back. Which reminds me of hearing Pete Dexter, the former newspaper columnist and fine novelist, asked about why he hadn’t sued David Milch, the creator of HBO’s “Deadwood,” for what Dexter felt was theft from his much earlier novel of the same name. “You know, if you do that, that’s what you do. That becomes your job. You’re someone who sues.” Not that I’m without sympathy for Floyd, but he looks like he’s got a new job.)

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Floyd Again

It’s not a surprise that Floyd Landis has filed an appeal of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s verdict against him. I’m prompted to remember what his mother said when that case went against him: something to the effect that she didn’t think it was worth appealing, but Floyd being Floyd — and seeing that he still insisted on his innocence — how could he not appeal?

Now the case goes to the oddly named Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, and the word is that its ruling — which will be the final, final, final legal verdict in the matter — will come down early next year.

In the meantime, Tour de France officials will appear in Madrid on Monday to bestow their event’s much besmirched champion’s jersey on Oscar Pereiro, who finished second to Landis in 2006. I just love picturing what happens if the Swiss court rules in Landis’s favor. Will there be a ceremony to retrieve the jersey from Pereiro and give it back to Floyd? (Of course not. In the unlikely event he wins his Swiss appeal, Landis will probably have to sue the Amaury Sports Organization, the Tour company, to get the championship back. Which reminds me of hearing Pete Dexter, the former newspaper columnist and fine novelist, asked about why he hadn’t sued David Milch, the creator of HBO’s “Deadwood,” for what Dexter felt was theft from his much earlier novel of the same name. “You know, if you do that, that’s what you do. That becomes your job. You’re someone who sues.” Not that I’m without sympathy for Floyd, but he looks like he’s got a new job.)

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1710

Floyd Landis lost the 2006 Tour de France on stage 16 with a spectacular and humiliating collapse on the final climb in a long alpine stage. He came back the next day and did what no one imagined possible, riding a solo attack across the Alps that shocked those who left him for dead the day before. He won the Tour in the race’s final time trial and got his victory lap on the Champs Elysees. And then… . Well, you know all that. A urine sample taken after the thrilling stage win showed an unusually high level of testosterone. Something like a trial was held, and the verdict is in: 14 months after his apparent triumph, Landis’s tests have been ruled reliable and he appears to have lost the ’06 Tour once and for all. Unless he files and wins and appeal or contemplates a comeback in his late mid-30s, his career as a professional cyclist is over, too.

It’s a bad business. I’m not well versed in the case evidence. But I don’t want to believe Landis doped, and circumstantially the case against him — the very idea that he would cheat at that juncture of the race — never made sense to me and still doesn’t. The system in place to prosecute Landis and others is flawed simply by its presumption of guilt; essentially, it presents riders with test results and challenges them to prove they’re not right. So, in the absence of a “Shoeless Joe” moment — me: “Say it ain’t so, Floyd”; him: “I’m afraid it is, kid” — I think I’ll always see Landis the way he was on that one amazing day, bursting from the pack and overtaking and dropping one rider after another until, finally, he rode alone over the last mountain. He crossed the line at 5:10 p.m., or 1710 in the 24-hour time scheme the French use.

There’s a little movement afoot, promoted mostly by Trust But Verify, I guess — for fans and supporters to hoist their libation of choice in Floyd’s honor at 5:10 p.m. today, wherever you happen to be. I’ll be doing that.

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1710

Floyd Landis lost the 2006 Tour de France on stage 16 with a spectacular and humiliating collapse on the final climb in a long alpine stage. He came back the next day and did what no one imagined possible, riding a solo attack across the Alps that shocked those who left him for dead the day before. He won the Tour in the race’s final time trial and got his victory lap on the Champs Elysees. And then… . Well, you know all that. A urine sample taken after the thrilling stage win showed an unusually high level of testosterone. Something like a trial was held, and the verdict is in: 14 months after his apparent triumph, Landis’s tests have been ruled reliable and he appears to have lost the ’06 Tour once and for all. Unless he files and wins and appeal or contemplates a comeback in his late mid-30s, his career as a professional cyclist is over, too.

It’s a bad business. I’m not well versed in the case evidence. But I don’t want to believe Landis doped, and circumstantially the case against him — the very idea that he would cheat at that juncture of the race — never made sense to me and still doesn’t. The system in place to prosecute Landis and others is flawed simply by its presumption of guilt; essentially, it presents riders with test results and challenges them to prove they’re not right. So, in the absence of a “Shoeless Joe” moment — me: “Say it ain’t so, Floyd”; him: “I’m afraid it is, kid” — I think I’ll always see Landis the way he was on that one amazing day, bursting from the pack and overtaking and dropping one rider after another until, finally, he rode alone over the last mountain. He crossed the line at 5:10 p.m., or 1710 in the 24-hour time scheme the French use.

There’s a little movement afoot, promoted mostly by Trust But Verify, I guess — for fans and supporters to hoist their libation of choice in Floyd’s honor at 5:10 p.m. today, wherever you happen to be. I’ll be doing that.

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