More on the Tour de France

I'll be honest. I follow professional road cycling more than almost any sport except for baseball and basketball. And I'm sick and tired of Americans thinking that le Tour is the only bicycle race in the world. Lance Armstrong is NOT the best cyclist in the world. For those that have followed the race, the Italian national champion, Paolo Bettini is the most consistent cyclist in the world. Armstrong is the best stage-race rider in the world. But he has not won a big single day race since he won the 1996 classic Fleche Wallonne.

But this another example of Americans thinking that the Tour is the only race in the world. And unfortunately, Armstrong, and his team sponsors of U.S. Postal Service (a serious waste of sponsorship money if you ask me even though they've done great things for American and European cycling) have focused on the Tour because it is the only race Americans care about.

So watching the Tour for the last 18 years and following professional road cycling very closely for the last 10 years since the proliferation of the Internet (and a great cycling news site, it's a real shame the world does not see more of Lance Armstrong. He's taken a lot of heat the last three years for basically ending his cycling season after the Tour. The season goes on until mid to late October, culminating in the World Championships (this year in Hamilton, Ontario) and the Vuelta a Espana (the Spanish version of the grand tour). This has come to bear with Armstrong repeatedly promising to help teammate and former Vuelta chamption, Roberto Heras and ride in support for him in the Vuelta. But, to no one's surprise, Armstrong has gone back on his word. And it may be for the best because he doesn't have the type of personality anymore that he will ride in support of a teammate.

But there a lot of unwritten rules in cycling and while I would say some of it is sportsmanship, I will put it bluntly in the language of a sport Americans are more familiar with. In baseball, people remember when you throw at them. It could be 10 years in the future, ballplayers remember. But in baseball, it's usually personal between the pitcher and batter. In cycling, you don't just aggravate one rider, you aggravate the entire professional peloton. And they remember. If Armstrong attacked Jan Ullrich after he fell off the road of the Col de Peyresourde in 2001 or attacked in 2000 after Ullrich punctured at the foot of another mountain, the Plateau de Beille, Ullrich would remember as well as all the other cyclists in the peloton. In bike races, when someone pulls off to answer the call of nature, people remember for years if you try to launch an attack to gain time.

Cycling is a sport with all sorts of problems. Just today, there's an article on ESPN.com's Page 2 saying among other things that cycling is boring. Hey, I think football can be pretty boring. What's a sport that has 5-10 seconds of action, then you stand around for 30 seconds before the next play. In a huddle. What are they, girls going to the bathroom? Anyway, cycling has been plagued with drug scandals, deaths, and financial difficulties since 1998 when during the Tour, systematic doping on the former Festina team was discovered. Now, there's almost a presumption of drug use when you see these riders go faster up these mountains (imagine biking up to Big Bear but the road being about 50% steeper) than most of us go downhill.

Cycling is a sport that I know aggravates Americans. Results are often fixed in terms of finishing order. In the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Ullrich won the gold medal in a group that included current 3rd place in the Tour, Kazakh Alexandre Vinokourov and fellow German Andreas Kloden. Even though they were competing for two different countries, when we saw the successful breakaway, it was all but predetermined that Ullrich would be allowed to win. Why? All three riders were on the German Telekom (now T-Mobile) team. So you don't want to piss off your teammate in a big race. But most riders accept that. Why? Because cycling is a team sport and while one person gets the individual glory, the team shares the prizes and the success. There was an F-1 race last year where a team owner had the top two cars in one race and ordered that the leader of that race cede the victory to his teammate because that would ensure his teammate a better shot at the F-1 series championship. Americans were outraged. Europeans lauded it as great teamwork and sacrifice. Americans are all about the individual. Just look at Kobe Bryant's desire to play elsewhere to see how he would do on his own.

As for this year's Tour, I'm happy to see Ullrich flash the form he had in 1997 when he won. He is definitely the most naturally gifted cyclist in the European peloton (and has a very impressive palmares compared to Armstrong) and it's good to see him put it back together. The final time trial on Saturday will be one for the ages.