If you're in my apartment, you may notice I don't have a lot of stuff on my walls. It's not for the lack of trying. I'm lazy, and photos are expensive. But I do have one picture up. It's a picture of the Tour de France. The backs of anonymous riders facing another day in the mountains. It's simple, dramatic and majestic all at the same time. It's why I love the Tour.
The Tour.
It's not a perfect relationship, we've had our ups and downs, It can be boring, and frustrating. There have been doping scandals, and the Lance era. But every Tour de France has a different feel, a taste, because every Tour is different, the route is changed yearly And every Tour has a moment of pure beauty, not just a visual beauty, but a moment of pure sport perfection. Something so real, a chill runs down your spine. That's why I watch. The complete opposite of whenever I see Lebron, or Kobe play. I'm talking authentic. The news always only tells you when the Tour is over, then they show them riding down the Champs Elysees. That's not the Tour, the race is over, your watching a ceremony. It's like watching the last 5 minutes of the Academy awards.
And that's why I think a lot of people don't get it. The Tour de France, is like a Telenovela. You watch every day, for 21 days. Bad decisions or a crash in stage 3 could have huge effects in Stage 16. The Tour does not have have time outs. It does not wait for your approval. It can't be recapped in 30 seconds on the evening news. You have to watch it to feel it. It's like watching a football game in slow motion. It's takes a moment to see the intensity of what's happening. Might take a day or a week, or the whole race. It's unpredictable. It's not in a stadium, it's on the roads of France, and it's free for anyone to see. It's a juggernaut.
I started to watch the tour in 1984. CBS sports ran recap shows on the weekends. They would summarize a whole week of racing in one 90 minutes. They added music, and it was edited very well. Phil Liggett commentating. John Tesh's music. It was exciting. It didn't matter there were any Americans in it, or that it was a European sport. Didn't matter, didn't care. It was exciting as hell.
Excerpt of the CBS 1987 Tour de France coverage
The best days when were Greg Lemond was winning. Lemond was the Anti-Lance. Which makes sense, because they have never got along. Greg Lemond was a unassuming, personal family man who, learned French in order to get along with his teammates. There was no attitude and no doping for Greg. He made that clear from the beginning. He won the Tour in 1986, after wrestling the tour away from his teammate, Five time winner Bernard Hinault. First American to win the tour. In 1987, Lemond was accidentally shot on a hunting trip, he almost bled to death. He came back in 1989 to win the Tour and won it by 8 seconds, and with 50 shotgun pellets in his chest still in his body. Lemond quit at the rise of the doping area with three Tour de France wins, and the rise of Lance Armstrong.
Greg Lemond winning the Tour in 1990
When Armstrong rode the Tour in the early days, results were mixed. He won a couple of stages, but it was clear he was not a rider for wearing the Yellow Jersey. After coming back from cancer, in 1999. His timing was perfect. The year before, the Tour de France had a devastating drug scandal called "The Festina Affair", an entire team had a followed a fully organized doping program, and was lead by popular French rider Richard Virenque. That year, teams quit due to police raids (and afraid of being caught with doping products).
The Tour almost stopped, almost died on the side of the road. It barely made it Paris with 99 riders, won by Italian Marco Pantani, a man who's doping and demons ate him alive. He would be dead of a cocaine overdose in less than a decade.
We needed someone to save it, and that's when Lance came back, and he was a totally different rider. He lost a ton of weight, and could climb in the mountains. Lance didn't just ride, he dominated, he controlled it in a way we had never seen in the Tour. We thought we had another Lemond dream story.
We did not. Our worst fears came true:
It was all a fake. A sham. A Fraud. And the Tour de France was a victim, too.
Lance may apologize for his past behavior, his cheating, his win at all costs attitude. But I don't want an apology. I just want my Tour de France back. Lance treated the tour like everything else in his life. He used it and exploited, and threw it away.
We Tour fans now have to have collective amnesia. We have to forget the years between 1999-2005. Like they never happened. I've thrown away my Lance DVD's and books.
But the Tour is gaining it's strength, it has to adapt in order to survive. It will. It's smarter, it knows it can no longer avoid doping or shove it under the rug, there has been too much lost, dignity, and riders themselves. Tom Simpson dying on the road on Mount Ventoux in 1967 of a drug overdose. An entire decade of riders lost to doping. There is no one to give Lance's wins to, they were all doping. But it will come back stronger than before, it will take time, But for now on when I watch it, I know have to think "Is that rider doping?"
Maybe I should. The days of trust are over.
In 1999, during the Court trial of "Festina Scandal", Team Manager Bruno Roussel, said:
"We took every doping product you could think of EPO, Testosterone, steroids. And you know what? We never won the Tour de France."
