Anatomy Of A Photo: Hamburger with Extra Sauce
The EPO Era threw up some surprise World Champions from the early ’90s to the mid ’00s. Riders juiced to the gills meant that the rainbow jumper could go to anyone who not only had the form on the bike, but their program sorted and the luck on the day. You could throw a dart at the start list and wherever it stuck, you’d be a pretty good chance of picking the winner. Confessed juicer Bo Hamburger came close in 1997, finishing 2nd to perennial mullet-sporter Laurent Brochard, who along with the likes of Camenzind in ’98, Vainsteins in ’00, and Astarloa in ’03 wouldn’t have been on many of our radars if the VSP existed back then.
The Burger King was in the decisive break and finished 6th in Hamilton, Ontario in ’03 and did it in style. Check him out; his Gios looks damn sharp in the traditional azzura, its alloy frame with carbon fork and seatstays the pinnacle of the day’s technology. Deep dish carbon hoops and skinwall sew-ups… check. Campa. Obscure Italian Team-issue shorts and helmet with national jersey. Arm warmers neatly pushed down to the wrists. He even manages to pull off the long red socks. Tanned, shiny, sinewy legs and arms straining, head bowed and burying himself under the effort of Rule #5; Badass.
Boo! Stop glorifying the dopers!
Let’s hope everyone in the Netherlands is less souped up! Fed up of seeing people sent home in disgrace.
Do like the rims though…..
@Oli
Says the Armstrong apologist!
Only glorifying his bike and kit Oli…
Bianchi has Celeste, Wilier has Bronze and Gios has Azzura, got to love the tradition, these bikes always look superb.
@MarkP
find it a shame Wilier has moved away from it’s red copper colour in recent years
@Adrian
They need to bring back a classic steel frame, don’t think the bronze / copper would suit carbon frame. Coming from me who is on my second Wilier!
He’s clearly looking for his V decal to remind him of Rule #5…
@brett Can’t you find someone better to do that with? For such an anti-doper your values seem a bit out of whack here. And I think you should know I’m not apologising for Armstrong in the least, and I’m certainly not blogging him and glorifying him. It seems like a weird choice to me, but then I am a wanker cunt.
@MarkPozzi
Agree the ramato cromovelato finish would be hard to recreate on a carbon bike but would have loved for them to have made the graphics for the lampre bikes copper rather than that fluro yellow colour.
@Oli Nipple lube.
Saddle bags and now this.
BTW we need to come up wiith s shorthand for wanker c**t. Wiggo’s muse?
A bit of a Rule #41 violation by the whopper……
@Adrian
Unless his mechanic’s also on the juice that’s a timing sensor or somesuch. The QR lever is always on the non-drive side.
@the Engine
well spotted I stand corrected
@Oli oh Oil take a pill! hehehe
You don’t expect us to do this on mineral water alone?
*OLI!
@Oli
Call me a brett apologist but I don’t think he’s glorifying doping at all. He’s got the facts right and is merely highlighting how well Hambugresa is pulling off looking pro while dishing out some pain. If we ignored all the riders who’ve doped or just wrote about the fact that they doped and nothing else we’d have very little material. Most riders doped in that era, virtually all the winners did. That’s the premise. Accept it. That doesn’t change they rode hard as fuck and looked badass nor does it glorify doping. It’s honest.
Wow, the level TT, Leader’s tape, traditional round bars, and nicely leveled shifters all look magnificent! And then we get to the carbon wheels & skinwall tires. Even hotter!
Also, are you thinking the main triangle is aluminum? I’ve kind of considered Al to suck for framesets because my first road bike was Al and it was too big for me, so I associated Al with discomfort. Then I picked up my Al/carbon cross bike and I’m beginning to think Al is pretty sweet. Light, doesn’t corrode, usually less money than carbone and linked to this, not making me feel like I need to be overly gently with the bike. All of this has me thinking about getting an aluminum road bike again…
Cool photo for sure!
This is the Kwintessential Kule of the 90’s and 00’s – man, what a shot. I love the team kit with national jersey, it just looked so immaculately Casually Deliberate.
And those aren’t just any old “deep dish carbon hoops”; those are Lightweight Obermeyers. Better hope they were true coming from the factory, because ain’t no one ever gonna true ’em for you.
Looking at his physique and the way he’s drilling it brings into focus the fundamental issue I have with the doping era (we’re still in it, by the way): You can’t dope for Rule #5. You either got it, or you don’t. The jetfuel upped the speeds and so forth, but the grinta came from the heart.
@Marko
+1
Acknowledging and glorifying are two different things. It happend, and pretending like it didn’t or ignoring that period of our sport’s history doesn’t do anyone any good.
In other news, I think this is great to see coming from the Apostle Museeuw; massive respect for his courage and I totally agree with the premise of his view.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/museeuw-calls-for-doping-confessions-from-past-riders
@MarkP
I always wanted one of those Gioseses. Super classy bikes, and good enough for De Vlaeminck is good enough for me.
http://www.cycleexif.com/roger-de-vlaemincks-gios
@Marko
Jeeeeeash, Guys, careful or Oli will quit the site for twenty minutes this time!
(just kidding with you, Oli)
@Ron
Although if you’re on the large side and powerful, aluminium does have a tendency to fatigue and get wobbly.
the Engine – Ah, right. Forgot about that, but maybe because I ain’t on the large side. I would still like to think I’m pretty powerful, but definitely more of a medium than a large.
Oh wow, someone has a new little screen square. Hardly recognized ya, Frank!
@Ron
I reckon it’s alu. Aside from @frank’s cross rig I haven’t seen steel with carbon. My Pegoretti is alu and has a wonderful ride and is light. Every other alu bike I’ve had has also been fairly light but also has been a jackhammer.
@Ron
My bike is Alu w/ Carbon fork and seatpost and I like it quite a bit. No complaints from me about the quality of the materials. But I’m not a huge feller either, so there’s that.
The main advantage is that is was a bit (like $600-$800) cheaper than the next version up which was all carbon, yet hardly weighed any less and shipped with the same hodgepodge mix of 105 Shimano and FSA parts.
My bike started out at just under 20 lbs from the factory, and since then I’ve gotten lighter wheels and a lighter saddle, so I imagine that it weighs less than it used to.
I’d love an all-carbon bike if it meant shaving off 4-5 lbs from the weight of the entire build, but those seem to cost thousands more than what I had to spend at the time.
@Oli Not anti-doping, but anti Omertà , anti-Armstrong and anti-pricks like Jens who avoid doping questions and issues and keep their heads in the sand about it. At least some dopers finally ‘come clean’ about their past. Burger King did that (and never could say I was a ‘fanboy’ of his).
@Oli
Ahem, insert Tui billboard here… http://oli-roadworks.blogspot.co.nz/2010/08/heroes-and-inspirations.html
“I first read about Lance Armstrong in a tattered and grainy newsprintVeloNews when he won the prestigious 1991 Settimana Bergamasca as an amateur. The rest of his career is so well documented I’m not even going to try and precis it, but his magnificent Worlds win in the pouring rain of Oslo, Norway over Indurain himself sealed him as my new favourite rider…
“Of course Lance went on to become the greatest Tour de France Champion ever with seven consecutive wins in an amazing and enthralling series from 1999 to 2005…
“…during that era and since I have enjoyed the performance of many, many riders (and I hope to keep enjoying many, many more) but Lance for me feels like the last time I’m really going to be a fanboy for any of them. The current climate of drug scandal and suspicion make it hard to give your heart to these athletes any more…”
http://oli-roadworks.blogspot.co.nz/2010/05/dopage-and-giro-dwelli.html
“In the same way that people still believe that God is real or that John Key is a nice man and good for New Zealand I choose to believe that Lance Armstrong doesn’t dope.”
Glass houses, etc…
@brett
I draw the line at calling Jens a prick! Hold your tongue, boy!
@frank Agree, and the national jersey is Danish ! Our weather conditions breeds Rule #9-riders
@brett Haha! So predictable! That was from TWO YEARS ago. I, like most of the head-in-the-sand fools like me, have had to readjust my opinions on these issues in the face of what seems incontrovertible proof that we were wrong all along.
Anyway, I’m not talking about my tinpot website read by three or four people, I’m talking about Velominati, one of the worlds premier cycling forums.
And I suspect Hamburger was as much a part of the “Omerta” as any of them, so that’s just bullshit justification. It’s not as if he fessed up immediately, in fact he denied it and fought the Danish federation for years, and if he was the first guy to ever be sanctioned for EPO he had to be up to his nuts in the whole squalid scene.
This seems like an appropriate place to toss this image:
And here’s a large part of the quandry. Fan, sponsors, magazines, don’t want human riders, they want supermen. People want to suspend their disbelief and think that the pros really deserve to be there thanks to unnatural physical and mental gifts, and complain when riders ride like mortals by cracking, pacing themselves using a power meter etc. There are a lot of after the fact justifications being thrown around for people’s behaviour; imagine trying to get out of a traffic offence by stating that:
everyone was doing it
At least I looked good at the time
I won didn’t I?
It was good for cycling in my home nation
I have a charity.
I’m clearly far more simple than some and I don’t like doping, and i’d like to see it removed from cycling going forward. That means not celebrating dopers.
And anyway, if you want to admire a photo of scraggly weatherbeaten old men, most towns have at least one amateur who fits the bill.
@Oli
+1!
(I love you man…)
@brett Hey, no fair! You can’t use my own self-deprecating admissions of failure against me!
Anyway, I know you only did that to avoid dealing with your own contradictions and hypocrisy.
(love you too, bro)
@frank Spot on with the referenced article… and when I read this quote,
“We must break with the hypocrisy. The only way to come out of that murderous spiral is to break the silence, the silence that continues to haunt us.”
I can’t help but consider the fragile-minded introvert (when off the bike of course), Pantani. The sport that he dedicated his soul to tossed him under the fucking bus. The dude couldn’t cope with the hypocrisy of it all and nobody had the sack to step in and get his back… pathetic!
Museeuw has the stones to step up and point the finger… doubt he was speaking with any parallel to Pantani (that’s just where my mind went when I read it), but his point is rock solid.
As far as the photo… it’s an ass kicker! Love it!
@frank
A++++++1
I love the North Wave shoes and socks.
@JFT
It’s too bad Museeuw only alluded to doping (EPO) in his last season and has not been open about a professional career of it. If he admitted that I would be impressed. Maybe he did and I missed it? Obviously not just him, a lot of riders used through a portion of their careers.
I’m reading David Millar’s book right now, Hamilton’s next. Book review eventually. The bottom line is many riders were doping with the help and pressure of their team management.
@brett
Great post, it captured an era. Mullets, Romans, all that.
@Gianni
Problem I had with both of those stories when I read them was that both of them got caught before they confessed to doping……. going clean and confessing without getting caught now that would be something……..
@Adrian Like Zabel did?
@Gianni When a rider professes his willingness to partake in the systematic doping process, gets caught – or otherwise, then finally admits to it, I’m taking that as a confession that he had been that way for many years… not just one. Again, this is just my assumption.
I’m hopeful that the push for immunity will open the flood gates… lead to a great purge. What I REALLY want to see is an attack on the Directors and “Sponsors” of doping. J.V.’s confession was a start, but come on already… spit out the name of the “coach” that convinced him that doping was THE ONLY way to take the next step.
Want to get rid of doping… punish the entire team when one rider gets caught. Kick the whole f’ing team out for a year, including the director, doctors, everyone.
@Adrian That would be something… confessing before getting caught. Perhaps the immunity push will open the door for some riders to step forward. I’m not holding my breath though.
@Gianni
I thought I read within the past month that he had said he had systematically doped.
I GET PAID TO HURT OTHER PEOPLE!
Fun little Jens soundboard link to play with!