Cycling is hard; I’m not leaking any trade secrets with that statement, but it feels good to say it anyway. No Cyclist avoids suffering, but of those who venture into our world, there are some who seek to limit it while others choose to embrace it. Then we have a handful of characters who consider playing Whack-a-Mole with the Man with the Hammer to be good sport, particularly when playing the part of Mole.
In the current climate, it’s impossible not to consider the impact doping has on our sport. I, for one, have happily watched professional bike racing and delighted in the spectacle for close to thirty years, aware to varying degrees that doping is part and parcel of that spectacle I enjoy so much. In the last decade, I’ve gone so far as to assume most – if not all – riders are doping; a regrettable situation but one which has done little to temper my enthusiasm for the sport. After all, when all the riders are doing it, then surely what we’re watching is a level playing field of willing participants who understand how the game is played. Cheaters cheating cheaters hardly seems like cheating.
It’s all beautifully romantic so long as all the riders are doping. This is not the case, however; there are those who are racing clean against dopers. These riders are truly being cheated out of a livelihood by a culture which not only turns a blind eye to cheating, but who ostracize those who don’t. These riders who refuse to dope have few voices and last week, the sport lost one of the most forward of these with the retirement of Nicole Cooke.
Nicole has been a force in Women’s Cycling since turning Pro in 2002. A powerful rouleur, she excelled in every terrain and in any race format, but was nigh unbeatable in uphill finishes, taking a total of three La Fléche Wallonne Féminine titles, each of which required such a large laying of The V that it brought her to collapse. I was aware of her as much as anyone can be with the state of the coverage of Women’s Cycling, but she became one of my favorite riders after reading a piece in Rouleur about my favorite hub manufacturer, Royce. In the article, Royce’s Cliff Polton described being at a trade show when a young girl better described as a ball of loosely-contained energy bounded up on his booth and started asking about bottom bracket axles and wondering aloud if he could help her achieve her goal of becoming the wolds most dominant female cyclist.
Given what I understand of her personality, I get the feeling it was more like executing a plan than achieving a goal.
Cooke raced at the top of her sport for thirteen years; she scaled the heights of achievement with wins in every major race on the calendar including the Ronde van Vlaanderen voor Vrouwen, La Fleche, the Giro d’Italia Femminile and Grand Boucle (women’s Tour de France), the Olympic Road Race, and the World Championship Road Race. What’s more, she accomplished it while remaining staunchly anti-doping to the point that she faced sackings for refusing doping products.
Anyone who is a fan of Cycling should read Nicole’s retirement statement – I could never do it justice here. My personal hopes for the Pharmstrong Legacy is that it yields a a blood letting in the UCI and that the energy it spends on covering up its own corruption goes instead into promoting Women’s Cycling.
I’m sad to see Nicole go. Yet, for a rider who thrived in the hardest conditions and who unyieldingly stuck to her principles, I find it very fitting that the final two wins of her career came in Stages V of the Giro Femminile and Energiewacht Tour, respectively. Bravo, Nicole.
Here is the finale of her last Giro stage win:
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@eightzero
One of the reasons I gave up on the cycling shit sandwich scene was if you had a job you'd always get humped by people who didn't; had more time to train and could mysteriously afford better kit and travel.
@the Engine
Really? Those were the deciding factors? The reasons I never started on that sport was because it took me less than one second to realize it was less awesome than just Cycling.
@eightzero
"Seems to me the vast majority of wall street bankers are pretty good with taking huge risks with other people's money. Their job, as they see it, it to maximize their gain and shift losses to their "clients""
Seems to me you dont have the faintest fucking idea of what you are talking about. What type of a banker are you describing with that massive generalization?
Sounds to me like you may have watched too many movies.
@frank
In my defence our coach was the first person in Scotland to do the Imperial Century in less than four hours on a Kestrel with Campag discs circa 1986 and we started a tri-club because there were no cycling clubs in town.
@Marcus
I think he said he was talking about Wall Street bankers.
I have no opinions on individual athletes or individual bankers--everybody's got their story, and nobody has put me in charge of karma, as far as I know. But when--in the U.S.--you nullify a decades-old boundary between savings banks and investment banks and then tell all the banks that, whatever they decide to do in the pursuit of short-term profits, hey, no worries, the U.S. taxpayer has their well-padded asses covered, what do you think they're going to get good at?
/politics off/
Sorry.
@PeakInTwoYears yeah yeah - wall street is a place. It doesn't describe a type of banker - what was referred to in that sweeping generalization above seemed to describe some sort of make-believe trader who could pass losses onto clients.
Anyhoo, will stop - off topic and not very interesting.
@the Engine
Scots will do anything after a few wee drams.
Is it true that a "wee dram" equals 1.25 ounces? I read that recently somewhere, but I wondered to what extent it was true in practice.
(Swimming? If you haven't had your ship sunk by the enemy?)
A wee dram is properly two fingers - the top of the pointer to the bottom of the pinkie. If we are talking single malt that is...
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