Lance, for once in your life....

      I would be remiss if I did not share a brief story here in the hours before Lance Armstrong's interview with Oprah Winfrey airs.

      Those who follow my blog (or my life) know that I have been a fan of cycling for more than three decades--OK, probably since I got that Stingray bike for Christmas in 1964.  I have followed Lance's career in amazement--pre-cancer, post-cancer and beyond--and I have defended him in the past.  When riders of integrity--George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer, Frankie Andreu and others--came forward to finally tattle on him, I knew that the niggling thought in my sub-conscious--'But what if he really does dope?'--was in fact true.

      When my youngest son (not Ezra, for those of you who know him) was a boy, he was constantly in trouble--like most boys--for doing hare-brained, goofball things like ironing his clothes on the linoleum floor in the kitchen because he was too lazy to drag out the ironing board. When all evidence pointed in his direction, he would lie, loudly and repeatedly, no matter how long he was interrogated.  I could point to the evidence--in this case a burn mark in the flooring that exactly matched my steam iron--and remind him that only two of us lived in that house and that it wasn't something I had done, but he would adamantly deny any knowledge of the crime.  Why?  Because he is a man of stubborn pride.  He simply couldn't bring himself to confess that he had done something so stupid.  Sitting in a chair, looking me in the eye and telling me over and over he had no idea how it happened was easier for him than admitting he had made an enormous mistake.

      All that is to say, I understand why, up until this time, Lance has denied using performance enhancing drugs.  He is a man of stubborn pride.  He wanted so badly to win and win again and not be called a cheater.  And once he had won a Tour de France by doping, he knew he could never attempt to win without it, because by then everyone in the cycling world--including the sweetest, most moral of men--had stepped over the line.  Which is what I suspect we will hear in today's interview.  I would love to hear Lance--for his own sake--simply say, 'You know what?  I screwed up.  I cheated.  It's no one's fault but my own.  I've let a lot of people down, and I'm deeply sorry.'  But I doubt we will hear that.  We will hear excuses and blame, see shrugs and those hard-as-steel eyes, the windows to Lance's soul shuttered against the light of Truth.

      Many times in my son's life--months or years after doing some knucklehead stunt, then denying it repeatedly--he would tell me, in a moment of sober clarity and confession, the truth.  'Yeah, Mom, I don't know why I lied.  I did that.  What an idiot.'  And we would laugh together.  He always knew--I pray he always knew--that I had forgiven him long ago.

      And I forgive Lance.  But I hope and pray that no governing athletic body ever allows him to compete anywhere ever again.  Because if you can't--eventually--tell the truth, you simply can't be trusted.

It begins

A few of my friends believe that, for some unknown reason (at least to me), I became enamored of Lance Armstrong some years ago and began to watch professional cycling as a result. The truth is, I began watching cycling in the early 1980’s. At that time, there was an arrogant young punk named Greg Lemond who gifted the United States with some long-denied respect in the cycling world. When Lance came onto the scene a decade or so later, he was an arrogant young punk, too. But I liked his style, and it was fun, in those first years, to watch him battle it out with the Europeans in the Tour de France.


His fierce courage and bull-headed determination—especially after the cancer years—made the sport more interesting, for certain. But seeing those qualities plus an indomitable spirit in all my cycling favorites over the years is the lure that brings me eagerly back every year to planning 21 days in July around the Tour de France. Add to that, of course, the drama and intellectual stimulation of cycling’s particular chess game.

At least once a year someone mentions to me that they find cycling “boring,” or they don’t see what all the excitement could be about regarding ‘a bunch of guys in spandex riding bicycles.’ Which actually just reveals they’ve never watched a race. If you can’t appreciate the elite level of athleticism in these ‘guys in spandex,’ try riding 115 miles at an average speed of 30mph. Throw in some steep uphill climbs and maybe some sections of the road paved with cobblestones from the Sixteenth Century. If you’re still alive afterward, let me know how your ride went.

With the debut of Amgen’s Tour of California seven years ago, I now have a mini-drama right here in my own backyard in gorgeous sun-drenched California to look forward to every May. And that race begins today.

In recent weeks, the spring classics in Europe have been going full tilt, and fortunately for me, NBC Sports has been providing great coverage. I’ve watched big Tom Boonen win the Tour of Flanders and then, a week later, Paris Roubaix (his fourth win in the latter, tying a record). He will be here this week with the new team, Omega Pharma Quick-Step, and I’m excited to see how he negotiates the tough terrain of Mt. Baldy next Saturday.

Levi Leipheimer, a favorite of mine for years, will also be riding in the Amgen ToC this week. Levi survived a wicked crash in the second to last stage of the Paris – Nice race some weeks ago, only to be hit by a car during a training ride last month which result in a fractured fibula. Levi has won the ToC before, though he is saying at this point he doesn’t expect to be a contender in the overall standings. His leg is still on the mend, so props to him for coming out and competing anyway. How could he not? The ToC begins in Santa Rosa, where he currently resides.

Here’s hoping all my favorite guys ride safe, ride fair and sans performance enhancers for the next week. As I did last year, I will no doubt post quick daily updates on the race—if I’m not too busy watching.

Cheaters usually prosper....

Please click here for the original source of this photo.

Congratulations to Chris Horner on winning the 2011 Tour of California (because all he had to do in Sunday’s final stage was not let anyone get more than 38 seconds ahead of him—well done, Chris, Team RadioShack, and Matt Busche, who looked like a young Chris Horner as he gave 110% to get Chris and Levi where they needed to be in the race on Saturday and Sunday).

And my condolences to Horner as well. His glory will now be tarnished, the wind sucked from the sails of victory, by allegations of doping in professional cycling. Again. In all the years that Chris quietly worked to bring other teammates like Levi Leipheimer to the podium, no one questioned his lifestyle. Now that he’s a champion, people will murmur behind his back. The words sound something like this: “He’s probably doping like the rest of them.”

I have written in the past about Lance Armstrong (6 June 2010), about not being a starry-eyed fan as I followed his career. Last week, several days before Sunday’s “60 Minutes” interview with Tyler Hamilton about his federal grand jury testimony regarding the use of performance enhancing substances in professional cycling, Lance posted a message on Twitter. The gist of it was this: In 20 years of cycling and 500 drug tests, I never tested positive. “Enough said.” Hmm, I thought at the time. Not enough said. Saying you’ve never had a positive result is not the same as making the declaration, ‘I’m not concerned about these allegations because I’ve never used performance enhancing substances.’

Let me interject a brief education here for my non-cycling-enthusiast friends. The term “performance enhancing drugs” is a misnomer. The substances named in the allegations are not “drugs” in the sense that we think of them but rather those chemicals which are already found naturally in the body, such as Human Growth Hormone, Testosterone, and a rider’s own blood (withdrawn pre-race and then secretly transfused back into the exhausted rider’s bloodstream, replacing the depleted blood with fresh and lively red blood cells). These practices are banned, of course, by the authorities who govern professional cycling. Tyler Hamilton mentioned that Lance Armstrong used these aids “in preparation” for the Tour de France, not during, but I think the poor bedeviled man was splitting hairs in order to find some way to not be the world’s most hated whistle-blower. Too late, my friend.

Regarding Tyler Hamilton: Someone, please, keep an eye on him. By his body language alone, it is clear that he is deeply distressed, so awash in emotional pain that he is hurting physically as well. I have no doubt that he is suffering monumental depression. Someone, please, watch over him and keep him safe. I would applaud him for his courage in coming forward… had he done so of his own volition. (He was subpoenaed by the court; he gave his testimony reluctantly and only after assurance of exclusion from prosecution.) Keep teaching those young guys how to ride, Tyler. You’ve a long way to go, but like anyone, you do have the opportunity to redeem yourself if you work hard enough.

Hamilton said that when he was offered performance enhancers, it was with the lure of being able to step up his game, ascend to the next level. He’d worked so hard for so many years to get to that point, and he could see it… just one step over a thin line. In his mind’s eye, he saw glory and adulation, and he reached out to grab it.

And it is my position that we should all be held accountable for his error in judgment. This is what occurs when we raise our children to believe that fame and fortune are the only goals of value in life. If you don’t agree that we teach them that every day, turn on your TV set. Nobody is anybody unless he or she is winning big or earning big.

Do Tyler’s revelations change the way I feel about professional cycling? No, not really. We weathered this storm with baseball, for the most part, and I still find the game fascinating and thrilling. I loved Mark McGwire, too, and despite his eventual admission of guilt (if you can call it that) regarding steroid use, I’m pretty sure we’ll never know the whole story there, either, just as we won’t with Lance Armstrong. Keep in mind, before there was steroid use, there was pine tar. My point is that, wherever athletes strive to be the “best,” you’re going to find those who are willing to cheat. This is no different than the day-to-day world we live in. People cheat every day—on the diets, their taxes, their significant others. I’m no longer horrified by those who make such choices. In fact, I feel a certain amount of compassion for them. As I said, for some folks, the pressure to ‘be somebody’ is overwhelming these days.

My guess is by now Chris Horner has been asked about a hundred times in the last two days what he thinks of the current doping scandal and whether he’s ever used banned substances. He will be asked these same questions again—a thousand or so times—when he competes in the Tour de France in July, and that’s unfortunate. Someone, please, just ask him how it feels to be one of the oldest guys out there still competing on this level… and maybe what he ate for breakfast.

2011 ToC Stage 6: One for the record books

Photo courtesy of the Amgen Tour of California official  website.

It only took me a few minutes this morning to find my journal from 2005 and hunt up the July 4th entry on David Zabriskie. Two days prior, Zabriskie had won a time trial in the prologue stage of the Tour de France, thus having the honor of beginning the Tour wearing the yellow jersey. Back then, he was only the third American to have worn the maillot jaune, after Greg Lemond and Lance Armstrong. (George Hincapie would wear it the following year, making him the fourth.) Here’s how my entry for July 4, 2005 reads:

“Today a young man from Utah, David Zabriskie, wears the yellow jersey. He is only 22… and beat Lance by 2 seconds in the prologue time trial… so Lance—bless his heart—gave him a tip for yesterday’s stage: 'Don’t get any further back than 20 guys.' So Zabriskie made that his goal, and kept the yellow jersey, and he wears it again today!”

Of course, it was Lance Armstrong who went on to win the TdF that year—for the 7th time. But for awhile, the soft-spoken man who has now made California his home was proud to wear the yellow jersey for a few days.

I recalled all of this yesterday as I watched David Zabriskie push himself across the line in Stage 6 of the Tour of California. For those unfamiliar with stage particulars, in a time trial, riders compete against the clock, leaving a start house at one-minute intervals, riding as fast as they can to a finishing point (but having no one to ‘help’ in terms of drafting). The man with the fastest time wins. Yesterday, for Stage 6, it was David Zabriskie. Though Levi Leipheimer holds the record for that particular time trial, he could not beat Zabriskie’s time. Neither could Chris Horner. And while Horner still has the fastest time overall, Zabriskie can take away a stage win in the ToC—and a new course record in the time trial.

And now, my friends, the day has come. As I write this, it is 4:30a.m. I can still feel the electricity that was in the air last night on Mt Baldy. Of course, part of that electricity was bristling tension from Baldy cabin owners who lost all water pressure at 7:00 last night. Seems the work crew setting up tents uses water in 55-gallon drums for ballast. They turned off our main water supply so they could use their hoses to fill the drums. So I was happy to speed off on an adventure with neighbor Rob in which I impersonated—not for the first time—a member of the water board up here. Well, I actually was a member of the board up until last fall, so it wasn’t that big of a truth-stretch. And the crew members were cheerfully compliant. Rob turned the big valve and water was restored. Whew. It’s nice to be able to shower and make tea.

Meanwhile, there are crazy people camped in odd spots all over the mountain. Rob and I laughed about some people who had a camper set up and lawn chairs situated inches from the highway and were just sitting there, watching—as if the arrival of the peloton was imminent. And on the way home yesterday, I saw a big pick-up truck dragging a boat up the mountain. Apparently no one told those fans that Baldy doesn’t have a lake.

I’m sure the morning will hold more opportunities for adventure as I wander among those who spent last night down at Snowcrest Inn or over in the campground.

Most exciting, though, is that Chris Horner still holds first place, so he’ll be wearing the golden-colored leader’s jersey—easy to spot if he is the first rider pushing his way up the switchbacks a few hours from now.  I can already hear Phil Liggett saying, "Well, the wildflowers are blooming in Mt Baldy as we prepare for Stage 7 of the Amgen Tour of California!"