The Truth is Out There, But Can We Find It?
E.M. Swift at SI.com wrote an interesting editorial about drug use in pro cycling that got me thinking something other than apathy about the sport for the first time since early August.
In the mid-80s I'd scour the back pages of the newspaper's sports section for a 1" x 2" recap of each day's Tour de France - top names and times only. No OLN, no front page tributes to the first American victor, Greg LeMond, no internet, etc. If you were a cycling fan, you subscribed to obscure magazines for month-old news and excitedly looked for those little tallies of the top 20 racers. I rode ceaselessly, with names like Hampsten, Alcala, Grewal, and Hinault tagged onto everyone in front of me on a bike or in a slow car.
But then I stopped following as cycling collapsed under the drug incriminations and house cleaning that followed the stellar years of Miguel Indurain's dominance in the 90s. It wasn't too hard - I was in college and then the Navy, places that ironically shrink your world almost to immediate experience only. But I didn't miss it because I had the feeling that maybe they really did all cheat after all. I kept riding, but I never bothered to race anyone but cars and anyone else who happened to be on the road at the same time, and I never plastered the names of pros on their backs. The excitement of the later Armstrong years re-fired my interest, not because of him directly but, thanks to the 'net and the inflated US media coverage, because of the immediacy of the peloton, the throngs of fans on the shoulders of mountain passes, the wind and noise and blazing speed all played out daily.
It didn't take much to make me fall for my old flame, and by 2006 I was again following the classics, vaulted through the Giro, and was drooling in anticipation of le Tour (of course this time I used RSS feeds and real-time online coverage, though still not OLN - 'curse you cable company!' *shaking of fist*). I could have swooned like freaking Scarlett O'Hara when Landis won stage 17, delirious with the raw perfection of an epic climb. Even the temporary speed bump of Operation Puerto on the eve of the race did very little to dim my enthusiasm.
And then, of course, Landis drank a beer, which upped his testosterone in relation to his epitestosterone on the night after stage 16. Or his epitestosterone plummeted due to his bonking that day. Or he ate bull testicles, or he wallpapered himself with testosterone patches that he got from a French girl named Sophie who's dying to be known as Steve. Who the hell knows? Someone knows. Maybe it's the lab which frantically tries to keep up with the money and glory driving drug use. Maybe Landis knows, maybe his coach knows, maybe Dave Zabriskie knows. Maybe he's telling the truth, though if he were an NBA star who'd been accused of shooting someone I'd laugh at the notion of professed innocence. As Swift says, the truth is out there. But will we ever know it? Even though the question piggy-backing my glee during Landis' performance during stage 17 was 'is he taking something?' my common sense ruled it out, thinking no one would be stupid enough to bonk, then cheat, then win a stage when they know that stage winners are immediately tested. Swift quotes Willy Voet, he of the '98 Festina drug ring, "A racer who gets caught by doping control is dumb as a mule." Meaning maybe one could be dumb enough to get caught AND cheat when it would raise the likelihood of being caught.
Whatever. Once again, I just about don't care. I haven't cared enough to update the post where I praised this year's Tour, and I haven't cared enough to visit the explosion of blogversations debating the minutiae of the Landis case. I don't care because I can't know for sure. I did re-read July's Bicycling interview with Landis and Zabriskie, hoping to find some sort of clue that could have been missed without 20/20 hindsight, but of course, I didn't. The thing that drew me back into fandom wasn't only who was going to win, it was the best young racers, the guys who attacked out of the blue and held on by the grace of god to win a stage, the stalwart professionals in the truest sense of the word who rode year in and out for more than a decade without a Tour win but also without allegation, and the force of nature that is the peloton. It's guys like workhorse Frankie Andreu who stood up and admitted his own use, though it might not change anything. And it's guys like Eddy Merckx who dominated so thoroughly for years, winning everything in sight, not just skipping everything else so he could taper in time for the Tour.
So yeah, the truth is out there, and the person with the truth either made an unintentional mistake or has a secret. Either way, I'm never going to know. Swift says the truth will eventually be revealed, and he may be right for cycling in general if the truth means drug-free cycling. But I don't think we'll ever know about the Floyds, Lances, or Tylers because the truth will be obscured by legal strategizing. The only thing I can do is embrace the sport, enjoy the drama throughout rather than just the drama of the winner, disdain those who would deceive me, and not put too much into the overall, unbelievable victories. It's a shame that that's been stolen from us by those who would win at any cost but it's a testimony to the sport that it still has so much to offer.
UPDATE: A legal technicality has basically snuffed out the Operation Puerto (the major sting that excluded the top hopefuls from the '06 Tour) case. No proof, no foul, no one caught, and nothing to show for ruining the second half of the season.
In the mid-80s I'd scour the back pages of the newspaper's sports section for a 1" x 2" recap of each day's Tour de France - top names and times only. No OLN, no front page tributes to the first American victor, Greg LeMond, no internet, etc. If you were a cycling fan, you subscribed to obscure magazines for month-old news and excitedly looked for those little tallies of the top 20 racers. I rode ceaselessly, with names like Hampsten, Alcala, Grewal, and Hinault tagged onto everyone in front of me on a bike or in a slow car.
But then I stopped following as cycling collapsed under the drug incriminations and house cleaning that followed the stellar years of Miguel Indurain's dominance in the 90s. It wasn't too hard - I was in college and then the Navy, places that ironically shrink your world almost to immediate experience only. But I didn't miss it because I had the feeling that maybe they really did all cheat after all. I kept riding, but I never bothered to race anyone but cars and anyone else who happened to be on the road at the same time, and I never plastered the names of pros on their backs. The excitement of the later Armstrong years re-fired my interest, not because of him directly but, thanks to the 'net and the inflated US media coverage, because of the immediacy of the peloton, the throngs of fans on the shoulders of mountain passes, the wind and noise and blazing speed all played out daily.
It didn't take much to make me fall for my old flame, and by 2006 I was again following the classics, vaulted through the Giro, and was drooling in anticipation of le Tour (of course this time I used RSS feeds and real-time online coverage, though still not OLN - 'curse you cable company!' *shaking of fist*). I could have swooned like freaking Scarlett O'Hara when Landis won stage 17, delirious with the raw perfection of an epic climb. Even the temporary speed bump of Operation Puerto on the eve of the race did very little to dim my enthusiasm.
And then, of course, Landis drank a beer, which upped his testosterone in relation to his epitestosterone on the night after stage 16. Or his epitestosterone plummeted due to his bonking that day. Or he ate bull testicles, or he wallpapered himself with testosterone patches that he got from a French girl named Sophie who's dying to be known as Steve. Who the hell knows? Someone knows. Maybe it's the lab which frantically tries to keep up with the money and glory driving drug use. Maybe Landis knows, maybe his coach knows, maybe Dave Zabriskie knows. Maybe he's telling the truth, though if he were an NBA star who'd been accused of shooting someone I'd laugh at the notion of professed innocence. As Swift says, the truth is out there. But will we ever know it? Even though the question piggy-backing my glee during Landis' performance during stage 17 was 'is he taking something?' my common sense ruled it out, thinking no one would be stupid enough to bonk, then cheat, then win a stage when they know that stage winners are immediately tested. Swift quotes Willy Voet, he of the '98 Festina drug ring, "A racer who gets caught by doping control is dumb as a mule." Meaning maybe one could be dumb enough to get caught AND cheat when it would raise the likelihood of being caught.
Whatever. Once again, I just about don't care. I haven't cared enough to update the post where I praised this year's Tour, and I haven't cared enough to visit the explosion of blogversations debating the minutiae of the Landis case. I don't care because I can't know for sure. I did re-read July's Bicycling interview with Landis and Zabriskie, hoping to find some sort of clue that could have been missed without 20/20 hindsight, but of course, I didn't. The thing that drew me back into fandom wasn't only who was going to win, it was the best young racers, the guys who attacked out of the blue and held on by the grace of god to win a stage, the stalwart professionals in the truest sense of the word who rode year in and out for more than a decade without a Tour win but also without allegation, and the force of nature that is the peloton. It's guys like workhorse Frankie Andreu who stood up and admitted his own use, though it might not change anything. And it's guys like Eddy Merckx who dominated so thoroughly for years, winning everything in sight, not just skipping everything else so he could taper in time for the Tour.
So yeah, the truth is out there, and the person with the truth either made an unintentional mistake or has a secret. Either way, I'm never going to know. Swift says the truth will eventually be revealed, and he may be right for cycling in general if the truth means drug-free cycling. But I don't think we'll ever know about the Floyds, Lances, or Tylers because the truth will be obscured by legal strategizing. The only thing I can do is embrace the sport, enjoy the drama throughout rather than just the drama of the winner, disdain those who would deceive me, and not put too much into the overall, unbelievable victories. It's a shame that that's been stolen from us by those who would win at any cost but it's a testimony to the sport that it still has so much to offer.
UPDATE: A legal technicality has basically snuffed out the Operation Puerto (the major sting that excluded the top hopefuls from the '06 Tour) case. No proof, no foul, no one caught, and nothing to show for ruining the second half of the season.
posted by jim at 9/14/2006 11:22:00 AM
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