What Might Have Been

This is from a friend of mine in an email.  I don't know if I agree with everything he says but he brings up some good thoughts.

The Chicago Criterium was great today – great course, great weather, great results for SCW, which I was able to enjoy from my bird’s eye view in the "lap track" of the Masters 4/5 race as Pilot Dan was winding up his winning big-guy sprint. I loved every minute of it.

My real disappointment of the day was in the final commentary for this year’s Tour De France. I have to write about it; so I offer you this as evidence that my cycling fanhood is stronger than my racing.

I’ve watched Phil Liggett for 23 years now, and never have I heard him offer fewer insights into the real drama of the Tour. Maybe it’s obeisance to the conventions of the peloton? Willingness to let Lance’s win-at-all-costs persona go quietly?

Either way, I’m disappointed that we didn’t get the real story about this year’s Tour. Contador didn’t win it on Stage 15, or on the time trial, or on Ventoux. He won it on Stage 7, with his cheeky little attack on the climb that reversed the 1-2 standings among GC contenders Armstrong and Contador.

Without that move, Lance Armstrong emerges from the first mountain stage as the presumptive Yellow Jersey when the intervening sprint finishes are past, and on Stage 15 Nocentini yields the Maillot Jaune not to Contador but to Armstrong. In fact, by the time of the mountain stage 15, Contador might actually have been working for Lance – and not just Contador. Lance's great friend Hincapie, a free agent at the end of this season, might have had more to do than just work into breakaways and lead out the Renshaw-Cavendish finishing train. Do we think it’s a coincidence that Lance got his first few seconds’ advantage over Contador by being on the right side of a crosswind split engineered by Team Columbia? Or even that only Armstrong among the GC contenders got the better half of the split at the end of Stage 19?

Without Stage 7, Astana (with Contador working hard and Lance on his wheel at Lance’s chosen climbing pace) drives the legs out of everyone before any steep climbs, including on 15. The Schlecks never see the light of day. Bruyneel and Armstrong script another Lance victory, even if only a few seconds' advantage at a time. Wearing yellow, Lance trounces everyone but Cancellara in the final time trial; without yellow, Contador rides great but behind Lance. Even the encouragement from the car would have been different for him.

The truth is that even four years removed from his last Tour win, Lance is still the Patron of the peloton, and the sport, at least among the riders who matter. Contador, still one of the young pros, won the race essentially by himself, whereas if he hadn’t pipped Lance on stage 7, Armstrong and Bruyneel would have been able to structure the team’s ride and control the stages to win number eight for Lance, erasing Contador’s minutes of advantage. Then after Bruyneel, Armstrong and Hincapie form the nucleus of a Yankees-style all star team for Radio Shack next year while Contador rides for some weak orange-jerseyed Spanish team that can’t dictate stages or win team time trials, we might be talking about the possibility of a Timeless Ten victories, never to be repeated, instead of whispering about the outside possibility of an improbable comeback eighth. Listen to Lance when he says he sees weaknesses in Contador’s game that he doesn’t want to talk about yet.

Not only would Hincapie likely have worked subtly for Lance, but possibly both American teams and several other important individuals in the peloton. Instead of talking about how Garmin Slipstream screwed Hincapie out of a day in yellow, we’d be talking about how Lance inspires allegiance in all kinds of riders. What Contador did on Stage 7 was prevent Lance from doing to Alberto what Bernard Hinault did to Greg Lemond in 1985 and tried to do again in 1986. Clearly Contador was the strongest rider in the race this year, but so was Lemond when Hinault won in 1985. It even makes me pause when LeMond suggests that Contador has won with the help of drugs. Sour grapes after watching an aggressor who avoided the same fate that befell Greg?

To his credit, Contador is enough of a winner to have seen the writing on the wall after the first six stages. And to Lance’s credit, he is enough of a winner also to play by the "rules of the sport" and graciously take his podium finish with Contador’s considered restraint on Ventoux, accomplishing everything he said he wanted from this tour and taking the bonus of being seen by the French and Sports Illustrated as a true sportsman worthy of his legacy. But have no doubt that he is seething within, skipping Contador’s victory party last night and getting ready for a momentary launch of his Radio Shack bid for next year.

I am a huge Greg Lemond fan, even more so than I am a Lance Armstrong fan. Without Hinault’s dictatorship, maybe LeMond wins in 1985, and without his brother-in-law’s buckshot, maybe he then could have won six. Without Contador’s youthful assertiveness on Stage 7 (and he is, after all, a prior winner who had both Armstrong and Leipheimer as potential spoilers on his own team, so it wasn’t that big of a violation of the rules), Lance might have won eight and be dreaming of two more with Radio Shack to make Ten for cancer patients and cycling fans everywhere. LeMond was a great American champion before chemical assistance played such a huge role in the sport. Fate, and hunting, were unkind to him and his possible place among the pantheon of five-or-more Tour winners. Lance may or may not have won clean all those years. Although circumstantial evidence, and the times, suggest that he didn’t or couldn’t have, we can not only give him the benefit of the doubt but also, if he did, appreciate that he respected the sport, its fans, and winning enough not to get caught.

Life, and sport, doesn’t work on what might have been. LeMond won three, and since then his star has been eclipsed by Armstrong’s and his youthful loss lived down by Contador this year. Lance won seven, and Contador has now assumed the throne of rightful heir and limited it, for now, to seven. We can all enjoy that progression in sports and the lore of cycling. And we can appreciate Lance now for riding so well – even the podium finish is amazing – without the possibility of doping, since the controls have become so stringent.

What is a shame is that with worldwide viewership up 50% for Lance’s return, Messrs. Liggett and Sherwen and Bobke didn’t seize the opportunity to better educate the public about how the peloton works, how Lance came so close to winning, and how it replays the historic echoes of Hinault and LeMond. Their commentary barely scratched the surface of the most interesting drama in an otherwise magnificent Tour. While the podium finish was great, Lance wanted so much more, and as American fans we should have been able to at least share in his desire and the brilliance of Contador’s disallowance.

That’s my $0.02.