Categories: Defining MomentsMusings from the V-Bunker

The Tangled Past

Tied up in the stories of the past.

For more than three decades, I’ve been obsessed with Cycling. Not just the business of being in love with riding and training, but with following Professional Cycling as well. When I was young, I pored over the photos in Winning and other magazines that made their way into my possession; their spines were cracked to pieces with the pages falling out by the time I would retire an issue, and even then, many of the photos were cut out and hung on my bedroom or workshop wall.

The Pros were my muse; they gave me their style, position, and technique queues but they also inspired me to ride more. I would imagine myself racing with them when I was out training, I would envision myself dropping Greg LeMond on the local leg breaker or barely pip Steve Bauer in a two-up sprint to some imaginary finish line. (Poor Steve, the unluckiest rider of his generation, he couldn’t even beat me.) Those heroes retired and new ones emerged; the cycle continued.

They were my heroes, but in many ways they were my riding partners as well. They were role models who mattered to me deeply, more deeply than perhaps they should.

It was some time during the Armstrong Era that it started to change. Being lied to pathologically works like that; you believe the lie because the truth seems so awful. When that awful truth comes out, we want to find a way back to the old, happy story. It was just one rider, one crazy cheater who is ruining it for everyone. Then the lie comes out again, and we believe it again. Slowly, our willingness to believe is damaged, until finally you see the lies in everything, even in the truth.

Motors, TUEs, doping. It all tastes bitterly of the past, and the accused are going back to the same scripts that were used by the previous generation. We’ve heard it all before, and I’ve grown tired of hearing the same denials defiantly made against the same accusations.

I feel a certain amount of shame for not believing that Chris Froome or Brad Wiggins won the Tour de France paniagua; I want to believe in them and I would rather be the naïve hopeful who believes a liar than the cynic who accuses an honest man of cheating. But Sky is not going out of their way to make it easy for me to believe them.

I’ve never gotten myself too tangled up in whether or not a particular rider or team is doping, and in general I haven’t let the truth tarnish the nostalgia I have for my favorite riders and races of the past. And it certainly hasn’t touched how much I love actually riding my bike. But if the all this lying has had a lasting effect, it is that I don’t imagine myself riding with my heroes anymore.

frank

The founder of Velominati and curator of The Rules, Frank was born in the Dutch colonies of Minnesota. His boundless physical talents are carefully canceled out by his equally boundless enthusiasm for drinking. Coffee, beer, wine, if it’s in a container, he will enjoy it, a lot of it. He currently lives in Seattle. He loves riding in the rain and scheduling visits with the Man with the Hammer just to be reminded of the privilege it is to feel completely depleted. He holds down a technology job the description of which no-one really understands and his interests outside of Cycling and drinking are Cycling and drinking. As devoted aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it. Frank is co-author along with the other Keepers of the Cog of the popular book, The Rules, The Way of the Cycling Disciple and also writes a monthly column for the magazine, Cyclist. He is also currently working on the first follow-up to The Rules, tentatively entitled The Hardmen. Email him directly at rouleur@velominati.com.

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View Comments

Ron says:

Oct 11 2016 at 7:27 am

@Oli

It’s a fucking bummer, innit?

Exactly my feelings! Nice piece, Frank.

Alright, maybe this will cheer us up...it's from last year, but a DAMN important bit of science:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/the-close-ties-between-exercise-and-beer/
Rick says:

Oct 11 2016 at 7:36 am

You'd have to be an imbecile or hypocrite to imagine that a professional cyclist who rides 235 days a year can hold himself together without stimulants.

Jacques Anquetil
Ron says:

Oct 11 2016 at 7:37 am

@Cary

they could all cycle with a blood bag on their back like a camelbak, and i wouldn’t give a shit. i realized the world was lies and liars when i was 8. thus, i’ve never really had the burden of morality to carry around when it came to evaluating reality.

Kinda reminds me of Woody Allen speaking in a documentary about him. He says that he was a very happy boy, until the age of 6. He realized all of this would end at some point, that death was waiting out there. He said that's when he wanted to cash in his chips, get out of this life, and I think essentially when he became a cynic for life. Pretty amazing that he was only happy for six years...
frank says:

Oct 11 2016 at 9:35 am

@cronoman

professional sports – all of them, not only cycling – are essentially a circus. in our current culture if you flood a system with huge amounts of money and a shot a celebrity the only possibile outcome is that human beings will do anything and everything in their power to grab it. you watch professional cycling like you go to a cinema to enjoy a good movie. you know it’s a show, a temporary escape, it isn’t about reality. if movie-going is your kind of thing, kick back and enjoy the show of pro cycling without fooling yourself about what it really is.

i much prefer investing the time in training for my next race. ours really isn’t a spectator sport. if you want to find the soul of cycling, i think it’s at amateur races. it’s the real deal. there are people who cheat here too, but it’s a very small minority and they always end up paying the the high cost that DIY doping exacts. the rest of us do glorious and epic battle every weekend (and when we’re lucky, during the week too), immersed in the total craziness of juggling impossibile schedules to get in some quality training, inventing the most outlandish excuses to duck social events and work appointments to get to the races and hang out with kindred spirits.

Very, very nicely put; I want to be clear that the doping has done nothing to dampen my love for Cycling; I just don't imagine myself racing against these guys anymore because I don't really care about them.

@Cary, @Teocalli, @RobSandy,

@Ccos

As long as there has been competition, there has been cheating. Just gotta look past the douchebags.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the cheating; it has never affected my love for watching the sport. I mean, Ullrich and Pantani are some of my favorites of all time and it doesn't matter one iota what they did or didn't take.

What bothers me is the same old bullshit around it. The worst is the incredulity by people like Brailsford, the attitude of them. We should just take the same old stories and accept that this time its different. I don't really care if Sky abused TUEs in principle (so long as no one was injured). I am just disappointed that they can't come up with a better explanation than to copy the style that USPS had.

And on that subject; I love that Armstrong asked Ger if he was crazy when he asked him if he'd ever used mechanical doping. Because I'm having a hard time imagining anyone with less credibility when it comes to telling the truth and/or stopping short at nothing in order to take an advantage.
frank says:

Oct 11 2016 at 9:37 am

@Rick

You’d have to be an imbecile or hypocrite to imagine that a professional cyclist who rides 235 days a year can hold himself together without stimulants.

Jacques Anquetil

Coppi:

Question: Do cyclists take la bomba (amphetamine)?

Answer: Yes, and those who claim otherwise, it's not worth talking to them about cycling.

Question: And you, did you take la bomba?

Answer: Yes. Whenever it was necessary.

Question: And when was it necessary?

Answer: Almost all the time!
Cary says:

Oct 11 2016 at 12:31 pm

@Ron

@Cary

they could all cycle with a blood bag on their back like a camelbak, and i wouldn’t give a shit. i realized the world was lies and liars when i was 8. thus, i’ve never really had the burden of morality to carry around when it came to evaluating reality.

Kinda reminds me of Woody Allen speaking in a documentary about him. He says that he was a very happy boy, until the age of 6. He realized all of this would end at some point, that death was waiting out there. He said that’s when he wanted to cash in his chips, get out of this life, and I think essentially when he became a cynic for life. Pretty amazing that he was only happy for six years…

i never said i wasn't happy. it's just that since well before adulthood, i've had a very realistic and clearheaded view of human nature. i'm all in, every day, despite this, i promise you. i get off my bike every day with my heart in my throat, and ya know, so do the guys that dope. i did a few cycles of steroids when i was in the Marine Corps, and Rule #10 applies, for sure. in fact, in the weight room, steroids only INCREASE your capacity to throroughly cripple yourself.

none of this really matters to me very much, now. i'm going to ride my bike, watch races, do my job, enjoy my family, and sleep well, no matter the fools that dope, or the hypocrites that police them.
Jim says:

Oct 11 2016 at 1:17 pm

Frank: It's hard to be enthusiastic about your ride imagining that just as Lance's battery begins to die, you have a fresh one, switch it on, and start to gap him. Not really inspiring stuff.
frank says:

Oct 11 2016 at 2:38 pm

@Jim

Lucky for us, Cycling is still incredible on its own merits and we can still love turning the legs around with or without the Pro cycling scene.
Cary says:

Oct 11 2016 at 2:54 pm

BINGO!
Ccos says:

Oct 11 2016 at 5:56 pm

@frank

Right, I've amended my post: Just gotta look past the douchebags. Brailsford is annoying for being just that. He fails the look test fo sho, truth telling or not.