The Perfect Amount of Dumb
Welcome to the Kermis. It’s not a recycling, it’s a reintroduction. The idea is to repost an old article that still resonates today and see where it goes. We will endeavor not to abuse this feature.
I’ve referred to Frank’s fantastic Perfect Amount of Dumb article at least five times in my own posts. My reference is usually that I’m dumb but it’s cycling related dumb. I’ve got the dumb part covered, not the Motorcus part. I so love his unexpected title and the post, it needs to do another lap.
I was just watching Tyler Mini Phinney’s post Dubai TT interview thinking, this kid has the perfect amount of dumb to be great. He shops at the Big and Tall shop, so I like him already. And his brain is way up there, in the thin air, so he choses his words carefully, like climbers at 8,000 meters. He’s got It.
No American Cyclist has won a Monument. Abandy has won more Monuments than LeMan? Merckx forgive me for uttering that last sentence. Greg was our last best chance but this new Phinney-Carpenter hybrid might somehow, someday get on the stones, get really incensed, and prove he has the perfect amount of dumb.
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Didn’t Tyler I (or should we call him Tyler 1.5?) win LBL? Also, can we start calling LBL the Doper’s Monument?
@Nate
I think in the last 10-15 years there have been a few suspicious wins (but I think that applies to just about any race), but Phil Gil won in 1911 and I’d rate that clean, Danny Martin’s win last year too. Had Martin not won, Purito would have and I think he’s clean. Look back to the 70s and 80s and you’ll se lots of wins I’d consider clean. Perfect case in point: Hinault in 1980. You would be the biggest dumb-ass in history to put yourself through such hell knowing that you could produce a positive sample.
It’s gotten better but from 99-10 we had the following winners: VDB, Bettini (x2), Camenzind, Hamilton, Rebellin, Vino (x2), Piti (x2), Di Luca and Frandy. If memory serves me only Bettini and Frandy haven’t had positives of some sort among that group.
@wiscot
Actually Joseph Van Daele won in 1911. Phil Gil was 100 years later.
I was wondering who won in 1911; thank you paolo!
Friday afternoon – gotta put it on cruise control and recycle the articles. NICE!
Am I the only one to wonder what these dudes have done with all their shades from over the years? Do they have a big drawer at home with all the old pairs? Do they give them to cousins and nephews?
Bettini. We have a black cat named Cricket. He kinda looks like Paolo.
@Nate
Yes he did win and for some reason I thought it was officially taken away from him. I should check his book…OK, I just did. He said it was the first time he did LBL with a BB (blood bag). I bet he was juiced up something awful. It was a nice win, had he been clean. Either way, I don’t consider him having won a Monument.
@Nate
He won in 2003, but I think he’s been stripped of all his wins due to his confession. It was a great win, though.
@wiscot
Are you on crack? Purito is clean? Seriously? Katousha had to keep their ProTour license only through legal arbitration. Even the corrupt fucking UCI thought they were so doped they should be kicked out.
Martin? Maybe. Gilbert? I love the guy, but have you looked at his face? Those are fucking cortizone/roid zit scars, baby. Unless he was shot in a hunting accident. Also, he didn’t win in 1911, although if a Gilbert won in 1911 and was clean, I’ll take your word for it.
I agree to an extent; I think they were taking crap they shouldn’t – caffeine, cortisone, amphetamine…any number of things. The thing about that kind of doping versus taking Human Growth Hormone or EPO (or blood doping) is the conversion from donkey to thoroughbred as they say.
I don’t really care if Hinault took cocaine to win the 1980 LBL in a blizzard. It did him fuck all good. He still had to ride that with the same aerobic machine he was born with, maybe with impaired judgment, but he was still the same man. Same goes for all those drugs – as Fignon says in his autobiography, back then, a doped rider could never become a champion and a champion could never be routinely beaten by the same doper.
The drugs may have been cheating, but they were also a disadvantage – Andy Hampsten says as much in Hamilton’s book, talking about how easy it was to race against dopers because steroid users were bloated and amphetamine users were stupid. A clean rider could beat them just by using their brain and their resources.
EPO and the widespread use of blood doping and human growth hormone changed that fundamentally.
Any race up to 1989 I consider a pretty clear win, with exception of the obvious outliers. After that it gets foggy. I think the 1989 Worlds and Konyshev getting second to be the ground-zero for EPO use, to be honest. Indurain on Luz Ardiden being the second major example. From there, it gets foggy.
@frank
ASO still have him as the 2003 winner: http://www.letour.fr/liege-bastogne-liege/2014/fr/histoire/
@frank
Spot on — I’ve always read his name as ironic.
I want to believe he was clean in ’11 and admit to being a fanboy but if it is revealed he wasn’t, I’ll be disappointed but not shocked.
@Ron
What part of “not a recycling” don’t you get? Son of a bug! We are not making the big bucks just to put it on cruise control on Friday afternoon. And it was Friday morning, actually, HST. Maybe it looked like I was bereft of ideas on a Friday but no. I may have been bereft of ideas on a Thursday. By Friday I was deep into the Kermis but really, how about that Mini Phinney? He is a strong man, no?
@Nate
National Road Race Championships (2011)
National Time Trial Championships (2011)
Amstel Gold Race ( 2011)
Brabantse Pijl (2011)
Clásica de San Sebastián (2011)
Liège-Bastogne-Liège (2011)
GP de Québec (2011)
La Flèche Wallonne (2011)
Strade Bianche (2011)
His last year with Silence Lotto. Has anyone had a run of form like that? He had the look of a super-human that year, whippet thin, aero face. If he wasn’t on something illegal, I want whatever he was on.
@Gianni He was on the “I want those BMC big bucks” run apparently. Merckx I hope he has another run like that, it was a lot of fun to watch him race his balls off that year.
I thoroughly enjoy hearing the announcers pronounce Konyshev over and over. Nice name!
I also enjoy two things:
1) the history lessons of cycling I always get here
2) the ability to separate the love of watching people race bikes from the shadows that zee drugs cast.
Awesome!
I Want Those BMC Big Bucks
should be a game on The Price is Right, after you win the initial 3-up bid-off, of course.
Gianni – I live, and love, to recycle. I meant no harm. Inter-time zonal insults are not the way to begin any weekend.
Phinney. I’m still intrigued by Stage 2 of the Dubai Classic. Where did Cavendish go? How did Phinney finish 3?
Since the doping door has been opened with the previous posts: blood transfusions were LEGAL in Olympic events up until and including the 1984 games. The very games in which Alexi and a few others kicked ass cyclingwise…just to segway back to the opening paragraph about Taylor and his gene pool.
He’s a physical freak by the way, who’s going to win Roubaix one of these days, maybe this year.
@Ron
No worries, I was attempting humor.
I have no idea how this Kermis immediately segwayed into doping (I didn’t read it that way at all @Gianni). A few of us have brought this subject up over on Assbookâ„¢ from time to time over the last few months, including myself just today. There was an article about how some of the members of the Stupid Bowl champs had been caught earlier in the year using PED’s (tho no mention of what they got caught using). Their punishment? Sit on the bench for 4 games of a 20 game season. A few beers and some introspection has led me to this conclusion: I’m done caring about PED’s. Our sport is doing 1000000X more to prevent it, and some are still gonna try and cheat the system, but at least we acknowledge the problem. I’m tired of the discussion.
I think I’ll go off-topic by commenting on the actual article.
‘. . . these are the men who flog themselves for hours on end and, when their bodies are about to break, dial it up a notch and lay it all out on the road. A smarter man would, under those circumstances, say, “You know what? This is nice, but I can also go less hard.”‘
A timely Kermis. Just yesterday I was trying to explain to my boss why cyclists willingly endure suffering of this sort. My explanation ended up as something of an affirmation of Rule #10. Except for recovery rides, if the adjectives “easy” or “nice” come to mind, I am compelled to go faster and harder.
The look he gave me essentially said “that’s kind of dumb.” Quite.
Watching post race interviews, Phinney is definitely “the perfect amount of dumb”- at least, whilst he’s currently sporting a riduculous hairdo he wears a cycling cap, not a baseball cap, for interviews. In contrast to Kittel, who’s also got an idiotic hairdo, and wears the wrong headwear.
The right amount of dumb is by far the best way to describe how these guys get the results they do. In my less articulate way of describing their talents, I would explain to my non cycling friends how I couldn’t get the same results if given their talents, and they would win a lot more races at my level if they had my abilities.
Didn’t Tyler podium at the Giro with a broken coller bone he got on stage 3? Ironically the tests for narcotics are much better than those for PED’s. You can’t dope grit brothers and sisters.
Looks like some of the traceable PED substances could be history anyway based on this http://road.cc/content/news/110533-xenon-next-big-thing-legal-doping
The right kind of dumb: that’s the bit. Stupid doesn’t qualify.
My best friend has a saying about me: “Hi, my name is John, and my favorite color is clear.” I’m not the least bit stupid, but dumb, maybe a touch clueless? Yes, sometimes.
The key thing is that it never occurs to you to quit. Why the fuck would you even consider it? Abandoning is antithetical to our art.
@scaler911 Spot on, and my bad on raising the dopage discussion. I’ll be tired enough of it by the time the Grand Tours come around if not before. Somehow I got on that topic from raising Hamilton’s LBL win.
@Ron
A-Merckx, brother! Separating the two is key, otherwise you’ll just starting hating it.
@Cjcosgrove
True enough, but even then when you read about the ’84 road race, one a few of the members of the team were OK doing it and actually went ahead with it.
Pappa Phinney was known as being vehemently anti-doping, even back then.
@Al__S
I’m amazed at how classy he is. He looks great, loves style, is funny, and just seems to be comfortable in his own skin.
Possibly the only person I can think of who could eventually fill Cipo’s shoes as far as showmanship goes.
@frank Except he fudged the whole frame-size thing since these photos were posted: At the Dubai Tour he was racing with this oddball combination. A -17 stem that appears to be 130-140mm long – so far so good. But then a healthy 20-30mm of spacers? Seems like the lad does need a larger frame after all if he wants to remain as fantastic-looking as usual… Or ditch the TMR01 for something with the head-tube he needs.
@scaler911 Totally agree with you…enough of the discussion about doping. Let’s get on with the joy of the V! Hope you are enjoying the snowstorm here in Portland Scaler…can’t even get out of our house and more snow on the way!
@tessar
Nice catch. That is interesting and confounding. Maybe he has to work into that position. He is built like a Dutch Monkey.
@frank
I agree about Dad. I was thinking about his Mom when I wrote that. The track cycling team also used autologous transfusions. Again, all legal at the time.
I would like to contribute to this important thread.
Seems to me that time trialists seem to have a stronghold on the perfect amount of dumb.
I’d like to nominate…Captain Zabriskie
@Harminator I wonder if Dave is using that Captain America outfit in retirement. I felt a little bad for him ending his career at Lombardia last year, without any fanfare.
He told a funny story about his early cycling career in the US, maybe riding for Saturn, a doomed US car brand. He and a fellow Saturn rider showed up at a race, ready to clean up, show the local Saturn dealer what a good investment they were. One of them led the other out for the bell lap instead of the real finish, so they were totally out of the money then they crashed up the Saturn car the local dealer had loaned them. Doh! Maybe some dumb there.
But yes, TT riders really have to shut off the voices in their head, ignoring all reason and stay at the dark end of the pain cave. Tony Martin too.
@jeff
Snow’s been fun, but bad for getting any outdoor riding in this weekend. Dirty Circles is just around the corner (and Cherry Pie!)
@Gianni that’s for you, DZ the day of Il Lombardia 2013
And this is the son of Thor
@scaler911
We’ve got rather too much of the raw variety of snow over here and conditions are too often like the below. But today we had a brief respite and I managed a 60 Km ride mostly on dry roads. Bliss.
Just what level of dumb do luge riders possess? 140 kph on a glorified children’s sled? I’m surprised their ten-tonne balls can fit down the track.
@Pedale.Forchetta
Grazie, great photo of DZ. He actually looks a little pensive here, knowing this is his last race. Well snapped.
@scaler911 I’m still shoveling the driveway and our streets are totally snow packed…..Tigard…..can’t see anyway to get any outdoor riding in but definitely looking forward to it. Waiting for some new R3’s to arrive in the mail along with Speedplay Zero’s…so as soon as the weather clears it will spin time for sure.
@Pedale.Forchetta
This photo makes me feel like I’ve got a headful of hallucinogenic mushrooms coming on.
I always enjoyed that feeling.
There’s dumb and then there is dumb and a few not so dumb riders come to mind, the Professor and Andy Hampsten, who, it was reported actually read books. Most of the top riders (domestic) I saw in the wild never owned a book let alone read one.
and I know we’re talking about another kind of dumb but it just seems that maybe a non intellectual approach is helpful in the top ranks?
I allways thought you you have go into a Dumb mode in sports, but of course that can only happen with being crazy smart in the traning so you can shut all those power zapping thoughts off when you need too. Running on auto pilot is an awesome thing and a dumb thing for sure
Jens is something else isn’t he. I mean the guy coined the phrase “Shut up legs”. That’s all I need to know about the guy. They say this is his last season and so is wanting to be seen for the sponsors whilst not caring about results. I say bollocks, it’s just what he does.
Thrilled to see him drive a breakaway on stage 5 at the Tour Down Under, only to be caught after being away for hours. After 50km, he has 8 minutes on the peleton. Caught at the top of the first time up Willunger Hill. Does he just settle in for the remainder, his day over? Nope, screw that, he recovers in the bunch, then second time on the hill he attacks again! A mere mortal would have been crying in the fetal position on the side of the road after that much work on the front and a massive climb to come but not Jens, he freaking attacks again, on the climb. Respect.
I saw this on the Twitter after Jens was the Most Competitive on Stage 5 of the TDU this year:
[Voigt] is not in a break only when:
1 – it is a TT
2 – race is not started yet
3 – race is already finished
Sounds about right.
The perfect amount of dumb is required to be the unique beast that truly smiles on those Rule #9 days. The weather gets to be so much fun here in Colorado that my winter road bike (see rigid 29er mtn bike donning Nokian Gazzas) will be two wheel drifting on climbs. Laughing and telling my bike to swim faster is all I can do since the V meter is redlining on anything above 5% when there has been 91.5 cm of snow over the weekend.
On a totally different note, a friend and I may have exhibited very nearly the perfect amount of dumb on Saturday.
@joey Where are you based? We’ll be out in Crested Butte in a couple of weeks. Loving the amount of snow coming down up there.
@Jamie
I’d say that was just about the perfect amount of dumb. Well done. But missing the malted recovery beverage and returning to unappreciative VMH, just cruel.