Americans. Honestly, why were they allowed get involved in the great sport of cycling? When they popped their colonial heads over the garden fence and asked “Can we play?” why didn’t everyone tell them to sod off and stick to that version of rugby they indulge in while wearing leisure armor or the game of rounders that only they play under the auspices of the ironically titled “World Series?”
- 1983 Worlds team: (l-r) John Patterson, Greg LeMond, Eric Fetch, Gavin Chilcott, Jonathan Boyer, John Eustice | Photo ©: Assos clothing ad
The sharper among you will be asking how I can possibly say this when I, myself, was born in the good ole US of A? It should then be pointed out to you that I am from New England. Not really America at all, you see. I’ve also spent much of my professional life working outside of America, so it is not that disingenuous of me to side with the Europeans when it comes to matters of a cycling nature. When it suits me, of course.
I remember commenting to Cyrille Guimard at the time that “no good will come of this,” after seeing Jonathan Boyer line up for the start of the 1981 Tour De France. As such he was the first American to compete in the Grand Boucle. Guimard thought he was crazy, calling him “un-marginal.” He seemed to live on nothing but fruit and nuts and read his Bible all the time. Of course it didn’t help that Félix Lévitan, as organizer of the Tour, told him he should wear a Stars and Stripes jersey and not his team kit. Bloody imbecile! You see if it hadn’t been for that stupid publicity stunt, the Americans probably wouldn’t have noticed some skinny hick from Utah riding round France on a bicycle. But of course they did. American journalists noticed him. American newspapers ran small, polite, but slightly baffled pieces about him which did nothing other than encourage other Americans to believe that they could do this “Tour of the France” thing, too. “Gawd dammit,” they thought, “one of us might actually win this darn thing one day!”
Cue Greg Lemond who, only three years later, did exactly that.
I have little issue with Greg. He’s a nice man and was always nice to me. However, I simply can’t forgive him for the fact that after Bernards Tapie and Hinault approached him in the wake of his 1984 Tour win with a one-million dollar contract offer – the first in cycling history – he encouraged that money-grabbing-swine Armstrong to believe that his arrogant, grubby paws should be due a slice of this action too. At some point, Armstrong seems to have realized that “I don’t just want a slice, I want the whole fucking pie!” “In fact”, went the skewed logic in the Texan’s head, “play this right, beat these dumb-ass Europeans at their own game and I could see myself with a shot at the White House.”
Of course it could be argued that this ludicrous outcome was a thought that is beyond Lance Armstrong, and that the phalanx of money-hungry ‘yes men’ that have made up his entourage over the years planted this seed for him. That he also became the Cancer Jesus somewhere along the way was masterstroke of ‘on-message’ public relations gold.
Throughout Armstrong’s stranglehold on the Tour de France – I say the Tour specifically as he rarely bothered throwing his leg over a top tube for anything else the sport had to offer, the cretin, but I digress – and during his Parisian tenure, my collegial hacks were desperate to find the heir apparent, the next Lance, the next all-American hero who would continue the Stateside dynasty. Would it be molar-muncher Tyler Hamilton? What about George Hincapie? Hmmmm, maybe not. He looks too much like a minor cast member of The Sopranos. Oh, what about Dave Zabriskie? Well, now you’re just being silly. A fucking vegan? How do we make money out of a vegan? Most Americans think a ‘Vegan’ is someone from the same planet as Star Trek‘s Mr. Spock, for God’s sake!
No, the answer came in the form of the all-American farm boy, Floyd Landis, who (conveniently enough) hailed from Farmersville, Pennsylvania. He had a dodgy hip and grew up a Mennonite. Granted, most people in the country of my birth think that a Mennonite is a rare mineral, but we could work around that. There was gold in them thar Pennsylvanian hills! But, of course, in reality there wasn’t. All there was instead was a scandal that made “crack whore Whitney Houston” look like a minor domestic quibble over why Bobby Brown couldn’t remember to leave the toilet seat down.
It’s a scandal that it is still running. Which brings us neatly to my 30-year-old assertion to Cyrille Guirmard that “no good will come of this.” And so it has transpired.
Asking the question “What has America done for cycling?” is like that famous scene from the Monty Python movie Life Of Brian where the plotting Peoples’ Front Of Judea ask “What have the Romans have ever done for us?” Cue a litany of benefits ranging from “The roads – well, of course the roads” to “Medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, the fresh water system and public health.” But from the point of view of those conquered by the Romans, it was hell on a fucking stick.
So America can point to its ten Tour de France wins (no, I’m sorry, we can’t include Landis’ revoked title), the huge growth in its bicycle industry with Trek and Cannondale among others, a generation of riders who were able to compete at the top level, a number of successful teams, and a significant contribution to making the sport richer and more globally diverse. But in the traditional heartlands of cycling, those to which America came, saw and conquered, the US invasion can be seen as nothing more than a tortuous experience where a Tour winner was stripped of his title and federal investigations into the sport’s greatest-ever champion threaten to rip at the fabric of cycling itself.
Don’t get me wrong. The Europeans are corrupt as the day is long. But they knew how to play the game properly. Play it right, keep your mouth shut and you might be lucky enough to be able to open a bar somewhere near Roubaix when you retire.
We Americans though? We brought our money and our flashy smiles. Who the fuck wants a bar in Belgium after that?
No Comments