Categories: NostalgiaThe Hardmen

The Experienced Mr. Hincapie

George Hincapie - photo Luc Claessen

Experience is something that we can only develop over time. We take it to imply there is some associated wisdom, garnered principally through those experiences that contributed that wisdom through hardship of some kind. As a society, we also refer to this as “learning from our mistakes”; mistakes make a much more convincing guide than does success.

I happen to be a semi-professional mistake-makerer, although I do feel as though I should have much more wisdom in my bones than I demonstrate. It sometimes feels as though all I make are mistakes. One gigantic snowball of mistakes that continues to build on itself with each successive heave down the snowy slope of life. At times, I fully comprehend the mistake as I’m making it, but soldier forth in the misguided hope that it will somehow work out for me despite my imminent failure. Other times, I’ll be certain that I’m right and true, only to discover later my fallacy.

The severity of all this mistake-making is lessened somewhat if one is able to learn from their mistakes and convert it into something resembling wisdom, as I optimistically believe I am. In fact, learning from my many mistakes is perhaps one of my greatest talents; it seems this particular  skill helps me forge long-lasting relationships and hold down jobs without getting fired for sucking so much.

George Hincapie and I have in common the fact that we are both “experienced”. But it is in this last respect, that of learning from one’s mistakes, that George Hincapie and I differ, aside from athletic ability and, I’m assuming, body odor. It is for this reason that being his fan necessitates that one be a masochist. Our hopes rise each season and for each classic, yet every time our hopes are crushed as we watch helplessly as he misses the opportunity to win.

Here is a rider of immense talent, not to mention America’s best hope for victory over the stones of Belgium and Northern France. As his career draws to a close, his huge potential remains unfulfilled. With one exception, when the stakes were highest, Big George repeated a chronic string of mistakes. Time and again, he would let the critical move go, look around for others to take initiative as the race exploded ahead, would mysteriously disappear from the front, or simply fall into a ditch.

A rider needs luck to win at the classics, but the most successful riders seem to make their own luck. Hincapie faltered each time victory was within his grasp, yet always found a locus of responsibility that lay outside himself. With the exception of his snapped steerer in the 2006 Roubaix, by and large, his were missed opportunities, with the prefect example being Stage 14 of the 2009 Tour. Hincapie was in a break which was set to place him into the Yellow Jersey when Sergei Ivanov broke free 10 or so kilometers from the line.

The bunch was bearing down on the group, and the gap was dropping quickly. As the gap neared the critical point where George might lose the buffer required to end the day in Yellow, he sat in the group and looked around for another to take up the chase. The bunch continued it’s unstoppable march and, sure enough, Yellow was missed by a scant 5 seconds. Afterwards, a downtrodden and bitter Hincapie blamed the Astana and Garmin teams for chasing too hard and stealing the jersey from him when in reality he squandered his chance by sitting on rather than taking the initiative to chase himself.

The Cobbled Spring Classics are one of the pinacles of our sport, and riders who specialize in these brutal races are few in number. Unless you’re Belgian, most countries boast few riders who are able to ride over the stones and stay in one piece, fewer still manage to arrive at the finish. Rare is the rider who can do so consistently. George Hincapie is the only American rider I can think of who fit this mold, and I’ve always loved him for it. But sadly he’s lacked the je ne sais quoi that would see him outmaneuver, outgun, or outsmart his opponents.

But I never stopped hoping. On the occasions that he arrived at the finish with the scent of victory on the handlebars, the excitement was palpable. Setting foot on the podium did nothing but bolster my belief that he would one day take either the Ronde or Roubaix, and it is sad that there appears to be little hope of seeing him atop the podium as his retirement seems imminent. It would have been glorious to see him atop the podium in Meerbeke or Roubaix, and if he races again next year, I will, against my better judgement, hold high expectations for him. So much for learning from my mistakes.

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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  • roadslave:
    @frank... great article. I ride with a guy who used to be a US-National Team rider and ex-pro, who rode a lot with Big George. I made the fatal mistake of calling Big George a pussy on a ride one day... the withering look I got back was only the start... the lecture that followed (dished out on the biggest climb of the day, where I was in bits, and this guy wasn't even out of breath as he berated my ignorance)... in his view, Big George is one of the hardest men he's ever ridden with... his point was there are two things: 1. your talent; 2. your ability to push yourself... there are many people with lots of 1. who fall down because they lack 2. His view of George was that he actually doesn't have as much of 1. as people think, because he has bucket loads of 2.... and in his career he has far surpassed what could reasonably be expected of him to achieve given his ok-ish (in respect to the rest of his peers in the peloton) talent... I like this description of him, as it gives all of us average (in respect to the other middle aged fat people who live in London) men hope that by laying down enough of The V we can overcome our physiological shortcomings....
    A good tribute to a great guy. My heart went out to him in 2009: it would have been nice for him to wear yellow again.. he's spent his grand tours in the service of others, and that is noble

    I'm kind of confused. The V community are pretty agreed, I thought, that "Pharmstrong" was on kind of go-go juice, yeh? Hence that nickname, along with COTHO (although that's personality-based as well, I'm sure). In the Lexicon, the definition of Pharmstrong says "his organization could easily have doubled as a pharmaceutical business". George is the one(?) constant in that organisation, as far as riders went.
    So...
    What's the verdict on Georgie?

  • @jb
    yeah I had actually been wondering about that, given how the NCAA is such a stuckup twit about such things. thanks for the clarification.

  • @G'phant

    Oooh I bet he enjoyed that.

    It's defensive for me. I wouldn't say my wife is a pedant but she gets very worked up about simple mistakes like apostrophes and the use of 'less' instead of 'fewer'. And don't get her started on subject-verb agreement. Our children squirm but they are better people for it, and I have to watch myself ;-)

    She also speaks pretty good French with a nice accent whereas mine is barely schoolboy and like something out of Allo Allo.

    So I say things like "The Tour is going over Croix de Fer today" or something of the sort, and she looks at me like I'm a toddler trying to articulate quantum theory. Then she makes me repeat it and puts on a face of slow but kindly enlightenment before saying "Ah you mean Croix de Fer" in EXACTLY the same way I said it. I'm with the kids on that one.

  • Funny timing for this article, as I just made my first mistake of the day by asking my computer to cooperate and submit a line-up change for my Giro VSP. It subsequently froze & I missed the cut-off. Annoying, but oh well.

    I have learned from this already - the VMH has a Macbook Pro and the thing never, ever goes haywire. Now...if I could just stop putting all my money into bikes, I could buy a computer that works well more often.

    As I'm about to pour money into a CX bike, I guess I'll ride top-notch machines & put up with crappy computers.

    Nice write up, Frank!

  • ChrisO:
    @G'phant
    Oooh I bet he enjoyed that.
    It's defensive for me. I wouldn't say my wife is a pedant

    I would hope not mate! It's a pretty crazy thing to say that your wife has the hots for little kids. You should be ashamed of yourself.

    NB. Clearly it's a flat stage today and I am bored.

  • @Nof Landrien, @Blah
    It's not so much an issue of is he a doper or not; it's the arrogance and assholeishness of Pharmy that makes us hate him so. I think the two massive Pharmapricks were Bruyneel and Armstrong; many of the teammates - if they were doping (probably) - were just doing what they were told. There's a difference, even if they're still cheats.

    Personally, I think there were (are?) very few riders who didn't dope during the Armstrong era, so to be a fan of any rider of that time means to accept the fact that doping was going on. But to lump a genuinely nice guy in with an asshole like Armstrong is a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Big George is obviously not a doping mastermind, so if he doped, I'm going to be pretty lenient on him. Seems clean enough these days, anyway.

  • @beev
    What I'm talking about there is really the last couple K's before the finish when Ivanov was up the road and George was sitting on, looking around for others to work. Those were the critical moments and the moments when the difference is made between winning and losing. That's all.

  • @ChrisO
    I appreciate the feedback; anything to suck less at French. I can kind of sort of get by speaking, but don't really have the writing down...it's all pretty much sounds to me, so I easily get "sais" and "c'est" confused. And enough people on the Google make the same mistake, so it's hard to validate it in the 3-second window I give myself to "research" facts. Thanks.

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