Sage advice from the decidedly amateur ranks of cycling.
By now it has doubtless come to your attention that Lance Armstrong won his 4th Tour de France in late July. Wannabe is a little disappointed that Lance isn’t a British citizen about now because he’d be getting a knighthood for sure in Her Majesty’s New Year’s Honours list. Then again, it is an honorary title and if Mick Jagger can get one for sticking his tongue out a long way I don’t see why we can’t confer an honorary knighthood from over here in the former colonies anyway. So, I’m gonna give Lance one right here and now…Arise Sir Lance! There, done. From this moment forth he’ll be Sir Lance in this column.
Talking of the Limeys, the British cyclists performed extraordinarily well at the Tour de France this year. For starters not a single British rider crashed, not even during the Prologue time trial. Indeed, all the British riders won stages and all finished the race! Well done David. The only major doping incident of the Tour occurred, somewhat mercifully, on the day after the end of the race. Edita Rumsas, the wife of 3rd placed finisher, Raimondas Rumsas, is caught trying to enter Italy with a bunch of drug paraphernalia and is promptly thrown into a French jail. Raimondas is already in Italy having flown out immediately after the prize presentations (Smart move, Raimondas!) and claims total innocence of all drug charges - while staying firmly put in Italy. Some three months on and Edita is still in a French jail. Raimondas is still in Italy weakly protesting his innocence. He’s looking as guilty as an Enron executive with an offshore bank account but Edita stands by her man even if he’s being a chicken s*#t.
Mrs. Rumsas finally gets out of prison in mid October on $20,000 bail. There is some confusion that she may have been misquoted by French authorities while being investigated. They claim she’d defended her possession of growth hormone, anabolic steroids and EPO by stating they belonged to her sick mother in Lithuania. (Is your mom on the Bearded Ladies European Powerlifting Circuit, Edita?) No, no, no, they weren’t for her mother, says Edita, these sorts of compounds are commonplace at her mother’s house on account of it being frequented by many sick people. Ah, right. Thanks for clearing that up for us. We were beginning to think you might start embellishing stories about how the syringes found in your car wouldn’t have fitted Raimondas anyway – and we’d have been a tad skeptical - but your story makes perfect sense.
Meanwhile, Jean-Marie Leblanc makes an uncharacteristically realistic jesture at the unveiling of the centennial Tour de France route for 2003. Breaking with the tradition of showing pictures of the previous Tour’s top three overall finishers the Tour supremo elects instead to show only the winners of the jersey competitions, thereby neatly avoiding the embarrassing situation of having a probable drug abuser on display. Whether or not Edita is ever convicted of any criminal offenses or Raimondas gets a racing ban from the ICF, it’s perfectly clear from Jean-Marie’s words that Raimondas won’t be racing the 2003 Tour de France. He says: “The prestige of the Tour cannot be at the mercy of the contents of a trunk of a car.“ Besides, Raimondas has been fired by Lampre-Daikin and there is no way any other halfway decent pro team is going to risk having its rightful Tour invite sent to some semi-pro French team by picking him up. (J-ML might be secretly hoping Mario Cipollini’s new team come in for him though.)
In September, Wannabe is lucky enough to catch the 2nd San Francisco Grand Prix circuit race. The course is made marginally easier than last year’s inaugural event - just eight times over the Fillmore Street hill instead of ten – but the quality of the teams is significantly increased and the faster pace more than compensates. Stars of the show again are Sir Lance Armstrong and last year’s winner, George Hincapie, ably assisted this year by Vladislav Ekimov and seven other Posties. Other big teams to show include 2nd tier members of Acqua & Sapone, Saeco and all the names of the big domestic teams such as Saturn and Navigators. Last year a meagre 28 finished of 140-odd starters. The stronger field this year means that there are still 51 riders on the last lap when Sir Lance and Ekimov get into a break with Henk Vogels, Harm Jansen, Chris Horner and half a dozen guys you’ve never heard of. The crowd is fully expecting a massive Lance attack up the final hill: Taylor Street. The atmosphere is tense, everyone who isn’t immediately related to another rider having been whipped into a pro-Lance frenzy by some pantomime-esque commentary from an ABC Sports team more accustomed to football. Lance (“Hurrah!”) seems to be cruising, one hand on the bars and the other on the radio to his directeur sportif, Frankie Andreau. As the riders reach the summit of Taylor the group is still together. The atmosphere grows more tense. What now? Surely Sir Lance (“Hurrah!”) will attack and see if he can stay away for the final two miles? It’s obvious! If the attack fails there will be Eki (“Boo.”) sitting on ready for the final sprint. Recall those half a dozen guys you’ve never heard of? Seems they hadn’t read the script. Coming into the final straight there are nine guys in the group and everyone’s jockeying for the sprint. Henk Vogels (“Boo! Hiss!”) hits the front with a couple of hundred metres to go and by now it’s clear the Posties are not going to feature. Eki does his best trying to hang on to Henk’s wheel but the younger guys are too fast. Henk’s flying but not as fast as Canadian youngster Charlie Dionne on 7UP/NutraFig, who blasts past Henk for the win by a bike length. Eki gets fourth and Lance rolls through in 6th.
The 7UP guys are unsurprisingly thrilled even if the San Francisco crowd turns into cold custard the moment the results are known. 7UP had started with a small team of just five riders and weren’t expected to get anyone on the podium, let alone win. Dionne had been very ably assisted over many of the middle laps by 7UP’s Team Florida alumus, John Lieswyn. (Surely all that climbing power can’t have been honed doing hill drills on Mebane…? Is there hope for us wannabes yet?) Even after all the work for his sprinter John finishes a very credible 16th, just over four minutes back. Check out John’s race report in his diary at www.team7up.com. And for a hilarious amateur journalist’s review of the 2001 and 2002 Grand Prix go to www.littlechainring.com. Some of the photos on the site are well worth blowing up and sticking on your wall.
While Sir Lance’s group of Posties are dodging cable car tracks at 60 mph in San Francisco, Roberto Heras is in Spain with senior directeur sportif, Johan Bruyneel, trying for a 2nd Vuelta win in three years. Roberto is always going to have a hard time competing for the golden jersey without the support of riders like Ekimov and Hincapie to defend a lead on the flatter stages, but the route takes in some murderous ascents and Johan clearly feels Roberto’s climbing ability might just be sufficient on its own.
Stage 15 is what is know in the technical lexicon of the sport as una total perra. The stage finishes atop L’Angliru after 9 km of brutal grades as steep as 24%. (In England we call this sort of grade a “flight of stairs.”) To add to the general merriment it’s raining cats and dogs and the entire mountain is shrouded in cloud. Visibility is ten metres tops. Many of the support cars can’t even get up the steep, wet roads without their occupants hopping out and pushing. Roberto attacks with just 4 km to go but sticks almost two minutes into everyone, leapfrogging Kelme riders Oscar Sevilla and Aitor Gonzalez to take over the golden jersey in the process. Roberto climbs so fast he’s in real danger of getting the bends.
Ascending like a helium-filled balloon is one thing but a 41 km flat time trial requires a different physiology entirely. Roberto has a 1 min 8 sec lead going into the final stage and all the pundits are expecting a close finish. Gonzalez and Sevilla, in 2nd and 3rd, respectively, are the much better time trialists. Roberto can’t afford to lose much more than a second a kilometre to the Kelme boys. Nailbiting stuff…! In the event all the anticipation is sadly misplaced, however. It’s clear within the first 10 km that Roberto’s legs just don’t want to pedal any more and he loses almost 5 seconds a kilometre to Gonzalez by the end of the stage. Roberto is fortunate to get a podium spot, finishing 2nd overall, after Sevilla has two mechanical problems that require bike swaps and cost him all sorts of time. This allows Joseba Beloki to capture 3rd place overall by 15 seconds from Sevilla, 57 seconds behind Heras.
The last major race of the pro season is the World Championship Road Race. The course - Zolder in Belgium - is flat and fast. Mario Cipollini has been tremendous on flat stages all season and he’s been part of a predominantly Italian Acqua & Sapone squad to boot. Hmm, what odds Giovanni Lombardi leads Mario out over the last 200 metres for the rainbow jersey? As predictable as the result might have been it was still a terrifically exciting end to a truly magnificent season for Cipo. Love or loathe him, even the most ardent underdog supporter couldn’t help but smile as he donned the famous jersey for the first time at age 34. And the win all but guarantees that he’ll be back for more next season. Wannabe’s hardly going out on a limb in predicting that next year’s grand tours will be laps of honor for the man who was deemed incapable of racing around France this year. Wouldn’t it be terrific to see Mario lead Lombardi out for a sprint or two next season? Or see him going for more one day classics to add to his Milan-San Remo victory earlier this season? Let’s face it, even if O’Grady, McEwen and Zabel all get on the same team there’s nobody going around the Mario/Giovanni partnership. Roll on the 2003 season!