I've had a phenomenal month of reading--twenty books, all on bicycling, and many of them rare and hard-to-find. If I couldn't be off in some faraway place riding my bike, this was the next best thing. Not only was the reading first-rate, but so were some of my rides to distant libraries hunting down the books. The best was an 80-mile round trip trek for Bernard Hinault's "Memories of the Peloton" from 1989.
Most of my reading was thanks to the indispensable library website worldcat.org that only recently came to my attention. It took me to the Downer's Grove library, 25 miles away, for a copy of Hinault's memoirs, a book I never imagined I could find in America. I didn't bother to call the library to confirm the book was in, as I was happy to make a ride to a library I had never visited. Plus there was the good possibility that a library that had such an obscure cycling book on its shelves might well have others.
But it was not to be. In all my worldcat searches this was the first time it had wrong information. Downer's Grove had no record of ever having the book. The librarian went to worldcat and came back with the great news that the Tinley Park library, twenty miles further south, had a copy. She offered to call to make sure. I told her that wasn't necessary. She printed out directions for me and off I went, delighted to visit another library I had never been to, hoping it had the book, but if not, happy to be able to spend a few more hours on my bike than I had expected.
Tinley Park was a score, but surprisingly, just like Downer's Grove, it had a mere shelf of bike books and no others that I hadn't read. I dove right into Hinault. It felt like Christmas. I had been eager to read this book for years. I couldn't allow myself more than a couple of chapters though, as I wanted to leave with enough time to return home before dark. I wasn't sure how many miles it was, just that it had to be more than thirty and might be as many as forty. It turned out to be thirty-five, giving me eighty for the day, my longest ride since Thanksgiving when I biked over one hundred miles finishing off a three-week ride around the Ozarks and back to Chicago.
It made for another great day on the bike, even though it was entirely through urban sprawl. I encountered not another soul on a bicycle. I truly felt like an alien species going about my business on a bicycle amongst nothing but gas-guzzlers. If I hadn't been on such a glorious mission, I would have been tearing myself apart debating who was the insane one--me on my bike or those in their cars.
Though I was denied any bonus bike books at Tinley Park and Downer's Grove, I hit a mini-jackpot at the Elmhurst library. It was the only library within three hundred miles of Chicago with a copy of Laurent Fignon's memoirs "We Were Young and Carefree." Keeping it company were two other cycling biographies I was thrilled to discover. One was on Sean Kelly from 1991 and the other was the recent autobiography of Davis Phinney.
The Kelly book was written by David Walsh, an Irish author who has long been a thorn in the side of Lance Armstrong. In 2004 he wrote a book called "LA Confidential" that Lance was able to prevent from being published, other than in French, as it alleged without collaboration that Lance had used illegal drugs. Three years later after Floyd Landis was stripped of his Tour de France win, Walsh published "From Lance to Landis, Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France" that included a lot of material from his banned book including a legendary lengthy text message after the 2005 Tour between Frankie Andreu and Jonathon Vaughters with insider gossip on Lance and doping.
I found two other Walsh books at the Schaumberg library. I had gone out for his biography of Stephen Roche, "Agony and Ecstasy," written in 1988 the year after Roche's trifecta of winning the Giro, The Tour and the World Championships in the same year, something that only Eddy Merckx had accomplished. Schaumberg had another Walsh book, "Inside the Tour de France" from 1994. It covered the 1993 Tour de France, the first that Lance rode. He was 21, the youngest rider in the race and won a stage before dropping out half way through in the mountains as was planned. Walsh devoted a chapter to Lance and was a full-fledged fan. It wasn't until he made his return to The Tour in 1999 after cancer that Walsh began to doubt him and made it his mission to prove he was a doper.
With three shelves of cycling books the Schaumberg library had the best collection of cycling books of any library in the area other than the seven shelves at Chicago's main Harold Washington library. Those seven shelves are crammed with multiple copies of books, so Schaumberg might actually have a better collection. It certainly had more insider-books on racing than the Chicago library, such as Mark Cavendish's biography. But neither come close to the hundreds of books in the library of Adventure Cycling in Missoula, Montana. Schaumberg also had several touring books I was unaware of and another besides the two Walsh books on racing--the "VeloNews" book on the 1998 Tour, the year of the Festina Affair and Pantani's dramatic win. The book was aptly titled "Conquests and Crises."
It was the first in a series of yearly books "VeloNews" began publishing on each year's Tour through the Lance era. I was delighted to discover it, as I had just read the "VeloNews" book on the 1999 Tour and was hoping to read as many of them as I could to complete my research on the spelling of L'Alpe d'Huez and references to tears. The 1998 Tour route skipped L'Alpe d'Huez, but there were still four mentions of it. Since John Wilcockson was the chief writer of the book, three of its four mentions were spelled with the capital L. The other reference dropped the L when it called the climb up Les Deux Alpes a "mini-Alpe d'Huez."
It cited four instances of crying, one less than the 1999 book. The first was of Richard Virenque in a press conference after his Festina team was ejected from the Tour six stages into The Race when it was finally confirmed that the Festina team car full of drugs that had been detained on the way to The Tour was part of an elaborate team doping program. Virenque held out for months longer than anyone else on the team, denying, denying, until finally admitting his guilt, no doubt in tears once again.
The 1998 Tour passed the memorial to Lance's teammate Fabio Casartelli near where he died in a crash in the 1995 Tour, the third rider to die while racing in The Tour. The entire peloton stopped. Casartelli's parents were there and unsurprisingly there were tears.
Bobby Julich was the surprise of the 1998 Tour, finishing third, becoming just the second American to finish on the podium along with Greg LeMond. When he secured his third place on the penultimate day's time trial he and his fiancee were in tears as they hugged afterwards. Jan Ullrich had been the favorite to win The Tour, having won it the year before most convincingly. But he faltered and finished second behind Marco Pantani. When he struggled on the 15th stage in the rain there were tears in his eyes.
The 1999 Tour can also be told through tears. This was Armstrong's first Tour since recovering from cancer. The "VeloNews" book recounts Armstrong's battle with cancer. In a press conference five days after he had his first malignant tumor removed Armstrong confessed that he hadn't fully come to terms with his cancer and that he had spells "when I cry all the time." Not soon after when he learned that cancer had been found in his brain he "started bawling," the most emphatic of crying euphemisms.
After he made his remarkable recovery and returned to the Tour in 1999, winning the prologue, it was such an emotional high for Armstrong, confirming that all his hard work had paid of, he cried. It was the only time during the entire race. Friends and teammates were also brought to tears. The book's final crying incident was also cancer-related. The book adds the story of a 14-year old battling cancer who Lance had befriended. His mother is so proud of her son's strength that she can't help but cry.
My February reading also had a couple of quick reads, a pair of coffee-table picture books on Armstrong--"Lance Armstrong, Images of a Champion" from 2006 and "Comeback 2.0 Up Close and Personal" from 2009. Both included commentary from Lance and neither were tear-free. The comeback book describes Armstrong's return to racing after a three-year absence and the 2009 Race. Even though he was divorced, he discussed his decision to resume racing with his ex-wife and asked her permission. She cried, partly because he cared enough to consult her and also partly out of relief that he wasn't telling her he wanted to run for office.
The earlier book is a year-by-year chronicle of Armstrong's career, though skipping the one year he did not race, 1997, and had none of the grim photos of Armstrong as a cancer victim. The chapter of the year he came down with cancer was titled "1996: Triumph Then Tears." The book is interspersed with tributes from prominent people in his life--his mother, Eddy Merckx, Robin Williams, George Hincapie, Jim Ochowicz, Johan Bruyneel and a few others. His mother, who was as tough and determined as he was, commented that after they learned he had cancer, "We could sit around and cry about it, or we could find our way around the roadblocks." They kept their tears to a minimum. Merckx wrote that he was one of the first people Lance called when he learned of his illness. "Both of us were crying over the telephone," he said, and added, "It was the worst experience I've ever had to deal with."
The only other tears Lance mentions are when describing the fan who would run alongside the peloton carrying a Texas flag while wearing a football helmet with long steer horns sticking out. The full-page photo of the fan, who I once met, is accompanied by the caption, "This guy almost had us in tears. How caring can a fan be?"
The photos in the second book are by long-time Tour photographer Graham Watson. He has published some twenty books on The Tour. Among my recent reading was his "Tour de France Travel Guide." He has been attending The Tour since 1977. Several of his first Tours he biked the route as I do. There is no greater authority or lover of The Tour than Watson. I've had a couple of encounters with him over the years, once along the route when he stopped where I was to shoot the riders as they passed through a scenic small village and then at an art gallery full of his photos in London the year it was the Grand Depart. He is a most affable chap.
His travel guide offered photography tips (crouching low on bends on descents) as well as tips on finding places to stay (going to the hotels of teams where you know riders have dropped out, meaning there will be an extra room) and things to see throughout France and insights into the ways of the French. M7It was most worthwhile. He twice mentions close encounters with tears--Fignon after his traumatic 1989 loss and Kelly after an agonizing crash that forced him to leave the race.
When it comes to L'Alpe d'Huez he's all over the place, spelling it as Alpe d'Huez the majority of times, but once with a capital L and five times with a lower case L. Such inconsistency is not uncommon. Much more disappointing was a handful of factual errors--calling the Gorges du Verdon the second largest gorge in the world, giving the route of the Canal du Midi as from Toulouse to Nimes, and calling Le Puy-en-Velay the starting point of the pilgrim route from France to Santiago de Compestela in Spain. Some of his comments on the Tour were wrong as well. He wrote that Laurent Jalabert won at Mende in 1995 on July 13, when it was actually the much more significant 14th, Bastille Day, making him a national hero. He wrote that Armstrong's time trial win on L'Alpe d'Huez in 2004 brought him one step closer toward winning his fourth overall victory. It would actually be his sixth. I know that well, as I was there on L'Alpe d'Huez that magnificent day.
His book was written in 2009. Three things that he said could never happen did happen in the years since--having stage finishes at the top of the Tourmalet and the Galibier and also crossing the Passage du Gois once again. But none of these faux pas diminishes my respect for Watson and his photography one bit. His errors are the fault of those editing the book as much as his.
His slips are very minor compared to the outrageous mistelling of one of the most storied events in the history of the Tour de France by Matt Eaton in "The Escape Artist, Life from the Saddle." This was one of three books that my Northwestern librarian friend Elizabeth was able to procure for me from the network of Big Ten libraries holding over 61 million volumes. It is a quite literate memoir of an English amateur racer who had to give up his passion when his wife gave birth to twins. It ranked number eight on "Cycle Sport's" list of the best fifty books on bicycling, and justifiably so.
When Eaton begins sprinkling in references to Merckx and Anquetil and Bobet and Coppi and Gaul and other Giants of the Road, I assumed he was fully versed in bicycling lore. I should have known I could not fully trust his facts after he refers to a memoir of Henry Miller about growing up in Beverly Hills, confusing him with William Saroyan. Both Miller and Saroyan wrote most fondly about the bicycle and both are frequently quoted in Bill Strictland's "The Quotable Cyclist." Miller though was a New Yorker through and through, who went on to live in Paris for a number of years in the '30s, and then out to Big Sur. Among his many books is "My Bike and Other Friends." Saroyan wrote a book "The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills," and is lauded by cyclists far and wide for his pronouncement "The bicycle is the noblest invention of mankind," taken from his introduction to "The Noiseless Tenor," also known as "The Literary Cyclist."
Thankfully its not until towards the end of "The Escape Artist" that Eaton gives a horribly mangled version of the Eugene Christophe fork-breaking incident in the 1913 Tour on the descent of the Tourmalet. In cycling lore this ranks right up there with Moses parting the Red Sea. It is such a storied event that it was reenacted on its 50th anniversary with Christophe and the young boy who was involved in the incident.
After breaking his fork Christophe trotted down the mountain carrying his bike. It was more than an hour before he reached the small town at the bottom of the climb and searched out a small blacksmith shop, that might have been mistaken as a manger. The rules demanded that he do the repair himself. It took a couple hours while Tour officials oversaw the operation, to make certain that he completed it on his own. They did not intercede when he enlisted the assistance of a young boy to operate a bellows. He was later penalized ten minutes for this infraction, though it was eventually reduced to three. It was mostly a symbolic penalty, as he lost over four hours all told, falling from first place to seventh, but a stringent enforcement of the rules.
Eaton tells the story in a vague, mythological sense stating it occurred back in the early days of The Tour, as if it were the beginning of time, "when there were no stages to the race, but one continuous epic of suffering and solidarity." That's his first misrepresentation of the facts. Every Race has been broken up into stages. The first Tour in 1903 and the second were identical six stage courses from Paris to Lyons, Marseilles, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes and back to Paris. Every stage except the fourth was over 200 miles, with two of them over 290 miles. There were two or three days of rest between each stage. By 1913 The Race had grown to fifteen stages. It was never a non-stop race like the Race Across America or Paris-Brest-Paris.
Then he tells the story of Christophe breaking his fork, though without mentioning his name. He claims he was leading the race by several hours when he broke his fork, also not true. He began the day in second place, though by the summit of the Tourmalet he had taken the lead, but by just a few minutes. After he completed the repair of his fork and is back on his way, Eaton claims he learned at the next "relay" that he had been disqualified for the bellows assistance, a monumental exaggeration of his three-minute penalty. This event happened less than a century before Eaton is writing about it and has been written about in countless histories of The Tour. Such a grotesque distortion of the facts is inexcusable. It makes one wonder how trustworthy some of the Biblical stories might be that happened twenty centuries ago.
I could thank Elizabeth for two other noteworthy books also on "Cycle Sport's" top fifty list--Matt Rendell's history of Colombian cycling, "Kings of the Mountains," from the University of Michigan and William Fotheringham's history of British cyclists in the Tour de France, "Roule Britannia," from the University of Wisconsin. Both authors are English and both were truly passionate about their subject.
Fotheringham is a true cycling scholar having written quite a few books on the sport. The nearest copy of his biography of Coppi, "Fallen Angel," is at the Fort Wayne, Indiana library, 145 miles away. I plan on taking a bike ride over to Fort Wayne before the month is out. Rendell is catching up to Fotheringham. His Colombia book was the first of five he has written, among which is "Blazing Saddles", an entertaining history of the Tour de France.
Rendell had been a university lecturer who had grown tired of his job and decided to head off to the tip of South America to bicycle the length of the continent with a friend. When he reached Colombia at the end of his trip he was astounded to see so many racing cyclists out training and such an interest in cycling. He was fascinated to learn about the many great Colombian cyclists, many of whom had competed in the Tour de France. When he discovered no one had written a book about Colombian cycling, not even in Spanish, he decided to tackle the subject himself. He made six lengthy trips back to Colombia over five years researching. Not only did he find a career in writing about cycling in Colombia, he also found himself a wife.
Among his sources was a twelve-part biography in Colombia's leading newspaper in 1955 of Colombia's first great cyclist, Ramon Hoyos. It was written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia's Nobel prize-winning author, before he started writing novels. Hoyos was so revered that many people had a picture of him in their homes besides that of Jesus. He was depicted on two 1957 postage stamps marked "Extra Rapido." Though he raced in Europe he never competed in the Tour de France.
The first Colombian to hold that honor was Martin "Cochise" Rodriguez in 1975. Five years later I saw him race in Chicago against a 19-year old Greg LeMond and the recent speed skating champ Eric Heiden and others. I didn't know anything about Cochise at the time, other than he had a cool name and that he got a lot of cheers from the Hispanic fans. Only from this book did I learn how revered he was in Colombia. Twenty years after I saw him he was named Colombia's athlete of the century. He became a national hero in 1971 when he set the amateur hour record and won the world pursuit title. Later he won a couple of stages in the Giro while serving as a domestique for Tour de France winner Felice Gimondi.
The first British cyclists to compete in the Tour de France were Bill Burl and Charles Holland in 1937, though neither completed the race. It wasn't until 1955 that another British cyclist participated in the race, a year when there were national teams rather than trade teams and a team of ten Brits was scraped together. Only two of them finished, and one just barely as the lanterne rouge. In the next fifty years there were only two years that a British cyclist wasn't at the starting line--1976 and 2004--though there were quite a few years when there was only one. Slightly more than fifty British cyclists had competed in the race up to 2005 when "Roule Britannia" was published, with less than half of them making it to the finish in Paris.
Fotheringham devotes full chapters to the few significant Brits--Brian Robinson (the first Brit to win a stage in 1958 and to finish the race in 1955), Tommy Simpson, Barry Hoban, Robert Millar, Sean Yates, Chris Boardman and David Millar. Fotheringham did not anticipate Mark Cavendish, as he predicted that no Brit was likely to match the eight stage wins by Hoban in the '60s and '70s. Cavendish has been averaging five wins a year the past four years and with twenty at the age of twenty-seven is a threat to break Merckx's record of 34.
My bicycle reading is far from over as Elizabeth has two more books in the pipeline for me--a history of American cycling and a biography of Louison Bobet. I also have a stack of touring books I've been resisting, knowing that if I indulge in them the pangs to be off doing it myself would be killing me. And those aren't all. I keep finding more. One of those I'm most eager to read is a history of Indiana University's Little 500 bike race. I just hope my eyes hold out.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Christian and the Water Bottle and the Multiple Spellings of L’Alpe d’Huez
I once asked Christian Vande Velde at one of his public appearances if he just randomly tossed his empty water bottle during a race or if he did it with any calculation, aiming it for a fan with an American flag or someone wearing a Garmin jersey or someone with a pretty smile. He said he tried to be selective, but didn't offer any specifics. He just said that he hoped whoever got his bottle washed it out before using it.
The next time I see Christian I will have to ask him why he didn't mention a water bottle incident that his teammate Frankie Andreu wrote about in the book "Lance Armstrong and the 1999 Tour de France," by John Wilcockson and Charles Pelkey. The book included Andreu's diary from that 1999 Tour, easily the best part of the book offering up many juicy insider stories, including a couple involving water bottles.
Andreu wrote that on one stage as he and Christian approached the daily feed zone, where they get fresh water bottles and a bag of food, they challenged each other to try to throw their empty water bottles into the open hatchbacks of cars. Christian succeeded, but he didn't. He added that George Hincapie, "being the nice guy that he is," gently tossed his to a guy standing along the road. It hit him square in the chest and nearly knocked him over as that water bottle had the same velocity as the speed Hincapie was riding, about 25 miles per hour.
He mentions another Christian water bottle incident late in the race on a very hot stage. It was towards the end of the stage and Christian was riding with the gruppetto at the back just trying to survive. Many of the riders were out of water. Christian had some to spare. He was making deals left and right of water for beer to be collected at the race's end in Paris. He earned himself nearly a case.
1999 was Lance's first Tour win and Christian's first Tour. At 23 he was the youngest rider on Lance's nine-man Postal Service team. The 32-year old Andreu was the team elder and captain. He said they babied Christian the first week of the race, but he grew stronger as the days passed, and by the end, "he was floating like a buoy instead of sinking like an anchor." More than once he comments how good Christian's legs were, leading the team on a mountain stage where he wasn't expected to be so strong.
My personal library includes several of these books devoted to a single Tour published by the Velo Press, books I've found in used book stores for a buck or so, but have never gotten around to reading. I've been letting them age, assuming the Tour they're describing is too fresh in my memory. I figured they weren't much more than a collection of Wilcockson's stage reports I'd already read in the "VeloNews." That is true to an extent, but there is much bonus material, including the Andreu diary in this one and other rider diaries in others, along with stories leading up to the Tour and post-Tour reflections.
Enough time has passed that reading the pedal-by-pedal account of Lance's first Tour triumph was riveting and a delight to relive. It made for a fine winter read, especially since I am now so familiar with so many of the towns and mountain passes the book mentions having ridden The Tour route the past eight Julys, I have a warm set of personal memories to associate with a good many of them as if they were fond friends, just as I regard the many buildings I go in and out of as a messenger. The book made me all the more eager for this year's Tour and also to read more of these Tour books.
One of the reasons I was inspired to finally dive into the 1999 book was a comment to my blog post on the book "Team 7-Eleven" from Dave Trendler of Velo Press, which published the book. He thanked me for bringing attention to the book, but wanted to challenge my pointing out the book wasn't consistent in its spelling of "L'Alpe d'Huez." He cited a recent letter-to-the-editor in "Velo" magazine about that very same issue, not realizing I was the one who wrote that letter-to-the-editor.
I wrote him back saying I'm highly attuned to the spelling of "L'Alpe d'Huez." It has almost become a crusade for me. I've read dozens of books on bicycle racing and all too many of them can't decide on which version of the three possible spellings they wish to use. My preference, as it is with the French, is to accord this iconic climb the honorific capital "L." Others prefer spelling it with a lower case "L" or no "L" at all. I have no quibble with which choice a book or publication chooses. But when it obliviously hops from one spelling to another, sometimes on the same page or same paragraph, it is an indication of sloppy editing and a grave insult to the dignity of this most revered climb. The worst sin a writer can commit is misspelling someone's name or even worse a hallowed shrine. L'Alpe d'Huez isn't alone in being so dishonored. It happens to Greg LeMond (as Lemond) and Christian Vande Velde (as Vandevelde) from time to time as well.
This VeloPress 1999 Tour book offered a classic example of not knowing how it wanted to refer to L'Alpe d'Huez. I pointed out to Trendler that among the staff of "VeloNews" (now "Velo") John Wilcockson is one writer who invariably spells it with the capital "L." Wilcockson grew up in England as a fan of the Tour and has followed it as a reporter for over forty years. He is a genuine authority. I was not surprised at all to see that he stuck with the capital "L" in this book, except for two occasion. The first was when he quoted Tyler Hamilton, showing great journalistic integrity, not altering the quote to reflect his preference for the spelling even though he uses the capital "L" spelling in the preceding sentence. The second instance though was simply a slip up by whoever was editing his copy. But my "L'Alpe d'Huez" spelling alarm went berzerk when it saw Andreu's copy. His daily stage diary, right along side Wilcockson's stage reports, spells it "Alpe d'Huez." Same book with two authors allowed to spell it two different ways. One is left to think "who is right?" and why couldn't this issue be settled before this book went to print.
I have a French friend who is much much more fluent in English than I am in French, so we converse in English. If I happen to stumble and refer to the climb as "Alpe d'Huez" when I am conversing with him, he looks at me with a befuddled look, his ear not quite attuned to realize what I am saying. When I quickly correct myself with "L'Alpe d'Huez" his face lights up with immediate recognition.
Multiple spellings of L'Alpe d'Huez does not happen in European publications. They decide on one version and stick with it. It is only us Americans, who haven't had the argot of bicycle racing ingrained in us since birth, who make a hodge-podge of it, sometimes even dropping the "e" from "Alpe." The various spellings are all close enough that they don't seem to register with American copy editors. But for someone with an attuned eye to such a thing, it is as painful to spot as it would be for an American to read a French book on baseball that alternately referred to the great Yankee slugger as Babe Ruth and Baby Ruth.
The next time I see Christian I will have to ask him why he didn't mention a water bottle incident that his teammate Frankie Andreu wrote about in the book "Lance Armstrong and the 1999 Tour de France," by John Wilcockson and Charles Pelkey. The book included Andreu's diary from that 1999 Tour, easily the best part of the book offering up many juicy insider stories, including a couple involving water bottles.
Andreu wrote that on one stage as he and Christian approached the daily feed zone, where they get fresh water bottles and a bag of food, they challenged each other to try to throw their empty water bottles into the open hatchbacks of cars. Christian succeeded, but he didn't. He added that George Hincapie, "being the nice guy that he is," gently tossed his to a guy standing along the road. It hit him square in the chest and nearly knocked him over as that water bottle had the same velocity as the speed Hincapie was riding, about 25 miles per hour.
He mentions another Christian water bottle incident late in the race on a very hot stage. It was towards the end of the stage and Christian was riding with the gruppetto at the back just trying to survive. Many of the riders were out of water. Christian had some to spare. He was making deals left and right of water for beer to be collected at the race's end in Paris. He earned himself nearly a case.
1999 was Lance's first Tour win and Christian's first Tour. At 23 he was the youngest rider on Lance's nine-man Postal Service team. The 32-year old Andreu was the team elder and captain. He said they babied Christian the first week of the race, but he grew stronger as the days passed, and by the end, "he was floating like a buoy instead of sinking like an anchor." More than once he comments how good Christian's legs were, leading the team on a mountain stage where he wasn't expected to be so strong.
My personal library includes several of these books devoted to a single Tour published by the Velo Press, books I've found in used book stores for a buck or so, but have never gotten around to reading. I've been letting them age, assuming the Tour they're describing is too fresh in my memory. I figured they weren't much more than a collection of Wilcockson's stage reports I'd already read in the "VeloNews." That is true to an extent, but there is much bonus material, including the Andreu diary in this one and other rider diaries in others, along with stories leading up to the Tour and post-Tour reflections.
Enough time has passed that reading the pedal-by-pedal account of Lance's first Tour triumph was riveting and a delight to relive. It made for a fine winter read, especially since I am now so familiar with so many of the towns and mountain passes the book mentions having ridden The Tour route the past eight Julys, I have a warm set of personal memories to associate with a good many of them as if they were fond friends, just as I regard the many buildings I go in and out of as a messenger. The book made me all the more eager for this year's Tour and also to read more of these Tour books.
One of the reasons I was inspired to finally dive into the 1999 book was a comment to my blog post on the book "Team 7-Eleven" from Dave Trendler of Velo Press, which published the book. He thanked me for bringing attention to the book, but wanted to challenge my pointing out the book wasn't consistent in its spelling of "L'Alpe d'Huez." He cited a recent letter-to-the-editor in "Velo" magazine about that very same issue, not realizing I was the one who wrote that letter-to-the-editor.
I wrote him back saying I'm highly attuned to the spelling of "L'Alpe d'Huez." It has almost become a crusade for me. I've read dozens of books on bicycle racing and all too many of them can't decide on which version of the three possible spellings they wish to use. My preference, as it is with the French, is to accord this iconic climb the honorific capital "L." Others prefer spelling it with a lower case "L" or no "L" at all. I have no quibble with which choice a book or publication chooses. But when it obliviously hops from one spelling to another, sometimes on the same page or same paragraph, it is an indication of sloppy editing and a grave insult to the dignity of this most revered climb. The worst sin a writer can commit is misspelling someone's name or even worse a hallowed shrine. L'Alpe d'Huez isn't alone in being so dishonored. It happens to Greg LeMond (as Lemond) and Christian Vande Velde (as Vandevelde) from time to time as well.
This VeloPress 1999 Tour book offered a classic example of not knowing how it wanted to refer to L'Alpe d'Huez. I pointed out to Trendler that among the staff of "VeloNews" (now "Velo") John Wilcockson is one writer who invariably spells it with the capital "L." Wilcockson grew up in England as a fan of the Tour and has followed it as a reporter for over forty years. He is a genuine authority. I was not surprised at all to see that he stuck with the capital "L" in this book, except for two occasion. The first was when he quoted Tyler Hamilton, showing great journalistic integrity, not altering the quote to reflect his preference for the spelling even though he uses the capital "L" spelling in the preceding sentence. The second instance though was simply a slip up by whoever was editing his copy. But my "L'Alpe d'Huez" spelling alarm went berzerk when it saw Andreu's copy. His daily stage diary, right along side Wilcockson's stage reports, spells it "Alpe d'Huez." Same book with two authors allowed to spell it two different ways. One is left to think "who is right?" and why couldn't this issue be settled before this book went to print.
I have a French friend who is much much more fluent in English than I am in French, so we converse in English. If I happen to stumble and refer to the climb as "Alpe d'Huez" when I am conversing with him, he looks at me with a befuddled look, his ear not quite attuned to realize what I am saying. When I quickly correct myself with "L'Alpe d'Huez" his face lights up with immediate recognition.
Multiple spellings of L'Alpe d'Huez does not happen in European publications. They decide on one version and stick with it. It is only us Americans, who haven't had the argot of bicycle racing ingrained in us since birth, who make a hodge-podge of it, sometimes even dropping the "e" from "Alpe." The various spellings are all close enough that they don't seem to register with American copy editors. But for someone with an attuned eye to such a thing, it is as painful to spot as it would be for an American to read a French book on baseball that alternately referred to the great Yankee slugger as Babe Ruth and Baby Ruth.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
"Urban Flow, Bike Messengers and the City"
Bike messengers have been the subject of a few books and movies and dozens of newspaper and magazine articles, and now with "Urban Flow, Bicycle Messengers and the City," a PhD dissertation that has been published as a 240-page book.
Jeffrey Kidder was languishing in graduate school at the University of Georgia, not sure if he was really doing what he wanted to be doing, when he read "The Immortal Class, Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power," the highly acclaimed book by Chicago messenger Travis Culley. He was so infected by Culley's enthusiasm for the job, he quit school and went to New York to take up the profession. Before he left a professor suggested he make a master thesis of the experience. He wasn't sure if he would or not, though he plunged into the job taking "copious field notes" and regarded himself as a "researcher." This was in 2002 and he was 25 years old.
He thoroughly lived the life, spending a year on the job before returning to school to work on his thesis. Four years later he continued his research for ten months in Seattle. Then he did a final stint of messengering in San Diego while earning a doctorate at the University of California, San Diego. He is presently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Northern Illinois University.
His research also included reading whatever he could find on the subject, even a "Chicago Tribune" Sunday magazine article "Pedestrians May Swear at Bicycle Messengers, But Companies Swear By Them" from 1991 that featured me. He limits himself to just six quotes from "The Immortal Class," though only four are listed in the index. The book also is a year off on its publication date, giving it as 2002, rather than 2001. Otherwise there was little to find fault with in this quite readable and insightful portrayal of the world of bike messengers. Kidder may not have the literary flair of Culley, but he is a genuine writer having worked as a journalist in Boston before trying graduate school.
He does lapse into high-falutin scholarly prose from time to time, almost requiring a decoder to understand, but it is largely a most entertaining account of what it is like to be a messenger. Even though only five per cent of messengers in New York, and not much more elsewhere, are women, for some reason that he does not explain he uses the slightly distracting "she" rather than "he" when he needs a pronoun to refer to the generic messenger.
He doesn't shy from profanity when quoting messengers, using the f-word 18 times, a little less than half of the 44 sprinkled throughout Culley's book, but significantly fewer than the 98 in the very gritty and authentic "Nerves of Steel," by Rebecca "Lambchop" Reilly, published in 2000, a book he also references a couple of times. He refers to Reilly as a "folk historian." Unlike "The Immortal Class," her book is not easy to find. Similar to Culley she got her start in Chicago. She went on to messenger in eight other cities. Her book includes a legendary incident involving me when the most hated bicycle cop in Chicago at the time, "Hollywood Jack," crashed into a pedestrian when he was chasing after me.
Kidder divides messengers into two categories--those who are doing it simply as a job (occupational) and those who do it because they love it and it defines them (lifestyle). The majority are in the latter category, as was I. I'm presently on sabbatical, but the book had me hungering to be back out there on the streets riding like a man possessed. I am one of the microscopic minority to have stuck with it more than ten years, truly loving it and making it my life. Few even last a year, many quitting soon after they start, not realizing how demanding a job it is. Kidder too was initially overwhelmed by how exhausted and hungry it left him, often konking out at the end of the day even before he could finish his dinner.
But he stuck with it and grew to love it and its culture and the messengers he came to know. He continually refers to the job as "fun" and "play" and not just play, but "Deep Play," the title of one of his chapters. The prime objective of his research, "the sociological puzzle" he wanted to solve, was "why messengers find meaning in a seemingly menial occupation." His conclusion was that messengers have "creative control" over their work, making it seem more like play than work.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect he discovers of the "job" is that messengers love their vocation so much they duplicate it on weekends competing in underground alleycat races that simulate their work day. It is unfathomable to think that people in other occupations would want to spend their weekend playing at their work. The phenomenon is a constant theme of his book. He alludes to how dangerous these races can be, as is the job, but he doesn't mention the fatality in a Chicago alleycat race on a Sunday morning a few years ago when a racer flew through a red light, curtailing them here for a few years.
The alleycat races support another of his theses that messengers appropriate the city for their own use. It is their space and they live by their own laws, defying traffic signals and other behavioral norms. They regard themselves as outlaws able to do whatever they want even doing graffiti or drinking on the job.
The delight messengers have for riding hell-bent in an urban environment and wanting to do it even when they're not being paid truly defines the lifestyle messenger. When I visited a messenger friend in New York, I was thrilled to go out and ride with him for a day, to experience what it was like to messenger in the Big Apple. When a messenger friend from London visited me in Chicago, the highlight of his visit was tagging along with me for a day on the job. The pay may not be the best, but that's not what attracts people to the job. It is their love of biking and the freedom from an office environment the job allows and the sense of community it gives them. It may not be the most respected of professions, but if I were ever to expand upon my Confessions and write a memoir of my own, I would call it "Proud to be a Messenger."
Jeffrey Kidder was languishing in graduate school at the University of Georgia, not sure if he was really doing what he wanted to be doing, when he read "The Immortal Class, Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power," the highly acclaimed book by Chicago messenger Travis Culley. He was so infected by Culley's enthusiasm for the job, he quit school and went to New York to take up the profession. Before he left a professor suggested he make a master thesis of the experience. He wasn't sure if he would or not, though he plunged into the job taking "copious field notes" and regarded himself as a "researcher." This was in 2002 and he was 25 years old.
He thoroughly lived the life, spending a year on the job before returning to school to work on his thesis. Four years later he continued his research for ten months in Seattle. Then he did a final stint of messengering in San Diego while earning a doctorate at the University of California, San Diego. He is presently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Northern Illinois University.
His research also included reading whatever he could find on the subject, even a "Chicago Tribune" Sunday magazine article "Pedestrians May Swear at Bicycle Messengers, But Companies Swear By Them" from 1991 that featured me. He limits himself to just six quotes from "The Immortal Class," though only four are listed in the index. The book also is a year off on its publication date, giving it as 2002, rather than 2001. Otherwise there was little to find fault with in this quite readable and insightful portrayal of the world of bike messengers. Kidder may not have the literary flair of Culley, but he is a genuine writer having worked as a journalist in Boston before trying graduate school.
He does lapse into high-falutin scholarly prose from time to time, almost requiring a decoder to understand, but it is largely a most entertaining account of what it is like to be a messenger. Even though only five per cent of messengers in New York, and not much more elsewhere, are women, for some reason that he does not explain he uses the slightly distracting "she" rather than "he" when he needs a pronoun to refer to the generic messenger.
He doesn't shy from profanity when quoting messengers, using the f-word 18 times, a little less than half of the 44 sprinkled throughout Culley's book, but significantly fewer than the 98 in the very gritty and authentic "Nerves of Steel," by Rebecca "Lambchop" Reilly, published in 2000, a book he also references a couple of times. He refers to Reilly as a "folk historian." Unlike "The Immortal Class," her book is not easy to find. Similar to Culley she got her start in Chicago. She went on to messenger in eight other cities. Her book includes a legendary incident involving me when the most hated bicycle cop in Chicago at the time, "Hollywood Jack," crashed into a pedestrian when he was chasing after me.
Kidder divides messengers into two categories--those who are doing it simply as a job (occupational) and those who do it because they love it and it defines them (lifestyle). The majority are in the latter category, as was I. I'm presently on sabbatical, but the book had me hungering to be back out there on the streets riding like a man possessed. I am one of the microscopic minority to have stuck with it more than ten years, truly loving it and making it my life. Few even last a year, many quitting soon after they start, not realizing how demanding a job it is. Kidder too was initially overwhelmed by how exhausted and hungry it left him, often konking out at the end of the day even before he could finish his dinner.
But he stuck with it and grew to love it and its culture and the messengers he came to know. He continually refers to the job as "fun" and "play" and not just play, but "Deep Play," the title of one of his chapters. The prime objective of his research, "the sociological puzzle" he wanted to solve, was "why messengers find meaning in a seemingly menial occupation." His conclusion was that messengers have "creative control" over their work, making it seem more like play than work.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect he discovers of the "job" is that messengers love their vocation so much they duplicate it on weekends competing in underground alleycat races that simulate their work day. It is unfathomable to think that people in other occupations would want to spend their weekend playing at their work. The phenomenon is a constant theme of his book. He alludes to how dangerous these races can be, as is the job, but he doesn't mention the fatality in a Chicago alleycat race on a Sunday morning a few years ago when a racer flew through a red light, curtailing them here for a few years.
The alleycat races support another of his theses that messengers appropriate the city for their own use. It is their space and they live by their own laws, defying traffic signals and other behavioral norms. They regard themselves as outlaws able to do whatever they want even doing graffiti or drinking on the job.
The delight messengers have for riding hell-bent in an urban environment and wanting to do it even when they're not being paid truly defines the lifestyle messenger. When I visited a messenger friend in New York, I was thrilled to go out and ride with him for a day, to experience what it was like to messenger in the Big Apple. When a messenger friend from London visited me in Chicago, the highlight of his visit was tagging along with me for a day on the job. The pay may not be the best, but that's not what attracts people to the job. It is their love of biking and the freedom from an office environment the job allows and the sense of community it gives them. It may not be the most respected of professions, but if I were ever to expand upon my Confessions and write a memoir of my own, I would call it "Proud to be a Messenger."
Friday, February 17, 2012
"Hell on Two Wheels"--A Torrent of Tears
Abundant evidence supporting the supposition that bicycle racing is the sport of tears can be found in "Hell on Two Wheels," by Amy Snyder, a recently published book about the 2009 Race Across America (RAAM), a race known as the most extreme test of endurance in the world. The winner invariably completes the 3,000 mile race in less than ten days, averaging not much more than an hour of sleep per day.
Riders are driven to tears of agony and tears of triumph in their sleep-weakened state all along the route from San Diego to Annapolis, Maryland. The first race was contested in l982 by four foolhardy souls. There were 28 solo riders in the 2009 edition, four of whom were women. There were another 150 riders competing as part of two-person, four-person and eight-person teams, though Snyder did not have the space to write about them. Of the 28 solo riders fifteen finished. Only 200 riders have completed the route, 26 women. There is no prize money. The winner receives the same medal as every finisher.
The book abounds with instances of riders and their support staff breaking into tears as they struggle and as they succeed and as they find inspiration from friends and relatives to keep going. Crying is such an integral part of the race that two of the book's photographs depict racers overcome by their emotions, thrilled at accomplishing something they put so much effort into.
Patrick Autissier, a 47-year old French rider, confessed that he cried more than he had in the previous twenty years as he faced the realization that he couldn't go on less than 600 miles into the race. His wife too is brought to tears.
Snyder reports there wasn't a dry eye among Tony O'Keefe's support crew when he tells them he is going to quit a little over half-way. He was a 48-year old Lieutenant Colonel in the Canadian armed forces and most of his crew were hardened soldiers. Months after the race he told Snyder that the experience had opened him so emotionally that he now cried at weddings.
Another military man, 44-year old Jure Robic of Slovenia, who had won the race four times previously, more than anyone, was a prolific crier from his very first race in 2003. He succeeds by pushing himself to the brink of madness and is prone to weeping uncontrollably. As the defending champion in 2005 he nearly quit the race near its completion, even though he was a day ahead of everyone else, sobbing at the roadside unable to remember what his son's face looked like.
The racers often cry from moments of uplift, taking a call from a loved one that gives them some cheer and the motivation to keep going. Christophe Strasser, a 26-year old rookie from Austria, teared up as his crew read him email messages of support after he crested the Rocky Mountains. Several days later "the tears flowed freely" as he spoke with his girl friend during the night. Marko Baloh, a 42-year old Slovenia, "cried like a baby" in the 2006 RAAM 120 miles from the finish when he realized he was going to make it after failing in his first two attempts. When he was hospitalized in the 2005 race, one of his crew members, Allen Larsen, who won the race in 2003, wept at his bed side, so saddened for him.
It is a wonder that anyone would want to subject themselves to such a torment, especially more than once. Even a slow-paced, couple-month bicycle ride across the country can be an ordeal, and is a notable accomplishment. Making it a torturous experience, subjecting the human body to such extremes, seems utterly senseless. The human body is not constructed to endure such an endeavor.
In the second edition of the race Michael Shermer's neck muscles gave out and were unable to hold his head upright. He fashioned a brace to keep going. It was no fluke, as in the following years others suffered the same malady. It was discovered that the neck is not designed to support the head at such an angle that the bicycle riding position demands for as many hours as these racers ride. It is a syndrome that has come to be known as "Shermer's Neck."
Riders now do special exercises to strengthen their necks, but it isn't always enough. Nearly all come equipped with various devices to hold their heads upright in case their neck goes. The Canadian soldier O'Keefe did not. His crew managed to construct a device so he could keep riding, but it restricted his vision. He crashed going over some railroad tracks he didn't see. He wasn't badly injured, but he feared for his safety and decided to quit.
The riders can also suffer extreme nerve damage to their hands. It can take six months or more for them to regain control of their fingers, leaving them dependent on others to dress and eat. Many suffer combat-type psychological damage as well that takes them months to recover from.
Snyder writes at length about the pain and suffering the riders endure and how they manage it. She intimately profiles quite a few of the riders, interviewing some of them in their homes overseas. She drove back and forth along the route during the race and followed the racers' blogs and used the phone to contact every crew at least once a day. She gained as good an understanding of the race and its participants as one could without actually competing in the event. She provides an amazingly well-informed account of the race and its many aspects.
A team of officials patrol the route monitoring the racers, assessing time penalties for going through red lights and other infractions. Robic was assessed a 15-minute penalty at the very start for urinating in pubic rather than going to a port-a-potty. He was given another 15-minute penalty for passing a rider in an inappropriate manner and a final 30-minute penalty for going off course and not going back to where he went astray. The penalties infuriated his crew of Slovenian soldiers so much they started tracking his nearest competitor with a camera trying to catch him violating the rules as well since he was penalty-free. There is a penalty box 50 miles from the race finish where riders must do their time. When Robic had to serve his, it caused quite a furor. Robic wasn't the only racer to accuse an opponent of cheating.
This may not be an event that many people would want to attempt, but it certainly provided abundant material for a fascinating book. And it proved more than ever that the deep emotional stake that bicycle riders invest in an undertaking is quite frequently manifested by a rush of tears coming from nowhere.
Riders are driven to tears of agony and tears of triumph in their sleep-weakened state all along the route from San Diego to Annapolis, Maryland. The first race was contested in l982 by four foolhardy souls. There were 28 solo riders in the 2009 edition, four of whom were women. There were another 150 riders competing as part of two-person, four-person and eight-person teams, though Snyder did not have the space to write about them. Of the 28 solo riders fifteen finished. Only 200 riders have completed the route, 26 women. There is no prize money. The winner receives the same medal as every finisher.
The book abounds with instances of riders and their support staff breaking into tears as they struggle and as they succeed and as they find inspiration from friends and relatives to keep going. Crying is such an integral part of the race that two of the book's photographs depict racers overcome by their emotions, thrilled at accomplishing something they put so much effort into.
Patrick Autissier, a 47-year old French rider, confessed that he cried more than he had in the previous twenty years as he faced the realization that he couldn't go on less than 600 miles into the race. His wife too is brought to tears.
Snyder reports there wasn't a dry eye among Tony O'Keefe's support crew when he tells them he is going to quit a little over half-way. He was a 48-year old Lieutenant Colonel in the Canadian armed forces and most of his crew were hardened soldiers. Months after the race he told Snyder that the experience had opened him so emotionally that he now cried at weddings.
Another military man, 44-year old Jure Robic of Slovenia, who had won the race four times previously, more than anyone, was a prolific crier from his very first race in 2003. He succeeds by pushing himself to the brink of madness and is prone to weeping uncontrollably. As the defending champion in 2005 he nearly quit the race near its completion, even though he was a day ahead of everyone else, sobbing at the roadside unable to remember what his son's face looked like.
The racers often cry from moments of uplift, taking a call from a loved one that gives them some cheer and the motivation to keep going. Christophe Strasser, a 26-year old rookie from Austria, teared up as his crew read him email messages of support after he crested the Rocky Mountains. Several days later "the tears flowed freely" as he spoke with his girl friend during the night. Marko Baloh, a 42-year old Slovenia, "cried like a baby" in the 2006 RAAM 120 miles from the finish when he realized he was going to make it after failing in his first two attempts. When he was hospitalized in the 2005 race, one of his crew members, Allen Larsen, who won the race in 2003, wept at his bed side, so saddened for him.
It is a wonder that anyone would want to subject themselves to such a torment, especially more than once. Even a slow-paced, couple-month bicycle ride across the country can be an ordeal, and is a notable accomplishment. Making it a torturous experience, subjecting the human body to such extremes, seems utterly senseless. The human body is not constructed to endure such an endeavor.
In the second edition of the race Michael Shermer's neck muscles gave out and were unable to hold his head upright. He fashioned a brace to keep going. It was no fluke, as in the following years others suffered the same malady. It was discovered that the neck is not designed to support the head at such an angle that the bicycle riding position demands for as many hours as these racers ride. It is a syndrome that has come to be known as "Shermer's Neck."
Riders now do special exercises to strengthen their necks, but it isn't always enough. Nearly all come equipped with various devices to hold their heads upright in case their neck goes. The Canadian soldier O'Keefe did not. His crew managed to construct a device so he could keep riding, but it restricted his vision. He crashed going over some railroad tracks he didn't see. He wasn't badly injured, but he feared for his safety and decided to quit.
The riders can also suffer extreme nerve damage to their hands. It can take six months or more for them to regain control of their fingers, leaving them dependent on others to dress and eat. Many suffer combat-type psychological damage as well that takes them months to recover from.
Snyder writes at length about the pain and suffering the riders endure and how they manage it. She intimately profiles quite a few of the riders, interviewing some of them in their homes overseas. She drove back and forth along the route during the race and followed the racers' blogs and used the phone to contact every crew at least once a day. She gained as good an understanding of the race and its participants as one could without actually competing in the event. She provides an amazingly well-informed account of the race and its many aspects.
A team of officials patrol the route monitoring the racers, assessing time penalties for going through red lights and other infractions. Robic was assessed a 15-minute penalty at the very start for urinating in pubic rather than going to a port-a-potty. He was given another 15-minute penalty for passing a rider in an inappropriate manner and a final 30-minute penalty for going off course and not going back to where he went astray. The penalties infuriated his crew of Slovenian soldiers so much they started tracking his nearest competitor with a camera trying to catch him violating the rules as well since he was penalty-free. There is a penalty box 50 miles from the race finish where riders must do their time. When Robic had to serve his, it caused quite a furor. Robic wasn't the only racer to accuse an opponent of cheating.
This may not be an event that many people would want to attempt, but it certainly provided abundant material for a fascinating book. And it proved more than ever that the deep emotional stake that bicycle riders invest in an undertaking is quite frequently manifested by a rush of tears coming from nowhere.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Bicycle Racing, The Sport of Tears
Laurent Fignon begins his memoirs, "We Were Young and Carefree," recounting his devastating eight-second loss to Greg LeMond in the 1989 Tour de France, when LeMond accomplished the unthinkable, overcoming a fifty-second deficit on the last stage, a fifteen-mile time trial from Versailles to Paris. Fignon, finishing just after LeMond, collapsed to the pavement at the finish line in total disbelief. He was in shock. After he gathered himself together and headed to the doping control he encountered his teammate Thierry Maire.
"Without thinking," Fignon writes, "He threw himself at me and burst into tears. In those welcoming arms I wailed like a child. Long, long sobs. It had never happened in public before."
One of the singular aspects of bicycle racing is the deep emotional investment, unlike any other sport, of the riders to win a race, often an investment of months and years of concerted effort and great deprivation. Succeeding or failing to win a race a rider has put so much effort into can lead to a spontaneous burst of tears--either tears of jubilation or tears of utter despair. It is a sport of "want-to," of how single-mindedly one can focus and devote oneself to getting something they really, really want, and how hard one can willingly push oneself, or "hurt oneself," as Fignon regularly phrases it.
A rider can cultivate an extraordinary depth of motivation by dwelling on the storied history of a race, wishing to join its pantheon of conquerors, finding inspiration in their heroic exploits that time has elevated to legend. The length of a race, the time spent in combat, further heightens one's desire to succeed, to conquer, to justify all the time and effort, all the pain and suffering one has committed to winning. Every moment on the bike increases one's hunger. A race can be six or seven hours long, two or three times as long as most sporting competitions. And a stage race like the Tour de France, going on for three weeks, with all that extra effort and focused attention, truly maxes the thrill of victory or agony of defeat, resulting in volcanic eruptions of emotion.
At times it can be a delayed reaction. Christian Vande Velde, at his recent appearance at the Chicago Garmin store, said that after his Garmin team won the team time trial at last year's Tour de France, when he retreated to the team bus, the full impact of what they had accomplished finally hit him and he was overcome with tears, something he wasn't embarrassed to acknowledge. He knows it is a reflection of how much it meant to him. Tears are something racers are proud to earn, knowing from experience, whether their own or witnessing it in a teammate or fellow competitor, that it is the ultimate emotion.
Laurent Jalabert, a prominent French rider a decade ago who in ten Tours de France won five stages, twice on Bastille Day, and twice won the points jersey and twice the king of the mountain jersey, but never the yellow jersey felt unfulfilled when it came to The Tour. He said, "In the Tour, I never shed tears of joy." Winning the race was his ultimate goal. Though his other successes in The Tour would have thrilled many another rider, he had a higher aspiration. Only that would give him that great joy of tears.
Some riders prefer to keep their tears private, regarding a public display as a chink in their toughness. Jacques Anquetil, the first five-time winner of The Tour, was a man who tried to express a minimum of emotion. His wife revealed though that he gushed tears in the privacy of their car after his monumental achievement of winning the Bordeaux-Paris race a day after winning the nine-day Dauphine-Libere race, an accomplishment that "L'Equipe" called the greatest sporting feat of the 20th century.
Fignon too tried to go about his business with a stoic detachment, admitting his outburst after that 1989 loss was the only time he cried in public in his career. If he were truly embarrassed by the tears, he might have blamed them on his teammate crying first, but he didn't need to do that. Tears are so intrinsic to bicycle racing, they are hard to avoid. Fignon knew, though, he had a special toughness to resist them, as he said he never cried when he was spanked as a kid. He knew nothing about bicycle racing at the time, but looking back, his resistance to spanking revealed he "knew how to hurt," an essential quality for a cyclist. He was not entirely resistant to tears though. He admits that after he was offered his first professional contract by Cyrille Guimard, the preeminent team director at the time, he was so thrilled that he "may have had furtive little tears in my eyes." Tears are an indication one really cares about something, and he truly cared about his cycling.
Twice he mentions other cyclists who shed tears at climactic moments--Pascal Simon, when he had to abandon the 1983 Tour after having clung to the yellow jersey for several stages with a broken shoulder, and also Jean-Francois Bernard after winning the Mont Ventoux stage in the l987 Tour. Fignon went on to win that 1983 Tour, his first of two. And like Bernard he too had tears on Ventoux in 1987, but of a different type. He suffered greatly on the climb, and had to begrudgingly acknowledge he would not be a contender to win The Race. After he climbed into the team bus "well a way from prying eyes, I wept for a long time."
The uber-emotional Mark Cavendish isn't bashful at all about acknowledging his tears, almost flaunting them. His autobiography, "Boy Racer," abounds with mentions of tears of many strains--after winning sprints, over a coach's criticism, over not medaling at the Beijing Olympics, when he proposes to his girl friend and then when he breaks up with her, when he learns his parents are divorcing, for being disqualified in a Tour de France sprint, when he is dropped by the peloton on the first stage of his first Tour de France in 2007, in the hospital at the bedside of a friend in a coma.
Davis Phinney, another emotionally-charged sprinter a couple decades Cavendish's senior, who twice won stages of The Tour de France, also regularly mentions giving vent to tears in his autobiography "The Happiness of Pursuit," even once referring to "squirting some tears," when he had bad luck as a 17-year old in the junior nationals. His book is as much about his battle with Parkinson's Disease as it is about racing. He also writes considerably about his father's fight with cancer, not letting it prevent him from going to France many times to ride the legendary climbs of The Tour de France. The touring company he went with liked him so much that it erected a plaque in his honor at the summit of the Col de Fer. The book culminates with Davis and his daughter Kelsey bicycling to the summit of the Col de Fer to watch his son Taylor, now a prominent young rider, pass in a race. Seeing the memorial and seeing his son he "wept tears of joy and sorrow."
The book also recounts his courtship of Connie Carpenter, a l984 Olympic gold medal winner, who achieved prominence before he did. Phinney repeatedly says she was "out of my league." He drove her to tears once when she visited him in France early in his career, and he was too exhausted to give her enough attention. But that story had a happy ending, as do most of those in the book, one way or another. Davis mentions tears of a type not often described in cycling books--tears over a movie, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," a French movie about a distinguished French magazine editor who becomes paralyzed after a car accident and can only communicate with the wink of one eye. Davis could very much relate to him in his battles to fully function.
My recent rampage through cycling biographies also included the memoirs of Bernard Hinault--"Memories of the Peloton" written in 1988. I didn't expect much crying from this hard man and there wasn't. His motto was, "As long as I live and breath, I attack." Attack is his constant refrain, appearing on just about every other page of his book. Such a man makes others cry. One of those he made cry, though tears of joy, was France's national team director when Hinault won the World Championship in 1980 in France. Though Hinault called that day the "greatest day of my life, by far," he acknowledged no tears of joy in his celebration. Calling that his greatest victory is quite a statement, as he won the Tour de France five times, the Giro d'Italia three times and the Vuelta d'Espagne twice. Only Eddie Merckx, with eleven, won more Grand Tours. But it was a victory he had targeted for years. It had been 19 years since the last French winner, Jean Stablinksi, one of his early mentors.
He does admit to crying once on his bike, during his final Tour de France, that legendary 1986 Tour that is considered perhaps the greatest Tour of all time, when he waged psychological war fare with his teammate Greg LeMond, trying to make him a worthy winner, he maintains. He was brought to tears as he climbed the Col de Vars lagging behind LeMond, relinquishing the yellow jersey, that he claims he was only keeping warm for LeMond. It wasn't losing the jersey that had him weeping, but rather a pain in his knee and the comment of a photographer who told his motorbike driver to slow down and stick with Hinault as he looked as if he was going to abandon. "I might have given up but for that photographer's words," he says. But he recovered and the next day he attacked once again and then led LeMond up L'Alpe d'Huez to their triumphant shoulder-to-shoulder finish.
Besides all these biographies there have also been several histories amongst my recent submersion in the world of books on bicycle racing. They too recount instances of racers being brought to tears. Marguerite Lazell's "Illustrated History of the Tour de France," one of a veritable peloton of books written about The Tour in 2003 to commemorate its 100th anniversary, claims Hinault climbed off his bike in tears at the finish of the 9th stage of the 1979 Tour at the Roubaix velodrome, when he finished three minutes and 45 seconds behind Joop Zoetemelk and lost the yellow jersey. He regained it a few stages later, going on to win the second of his five Tours. This incident of tears though was one of a number of questionable assertions she makes.
One of the most egregious was claiming that when the yellow jersey was introduced to The Tour in 1919 midway through its 13th edition it was meant to spur on the racers, as they were lagging. It was the first Tour after a four year hiatus due to World War One and the racers weren't so fit. To think the yellow jersey was immediately a coveted object that would inspire the riders to super-human efforts is ridiculous. Race director Henri Desgrange forced the jersey on the leading rider Eugene Christophe so spectators could more easily identify who was in the lead.
The jersey was at first an object of embarrassment. Christophe said that spectators shouted at him that he looked like a canary and would chirp at him. Subsequent wearers thought it made it too easy for other riders to keep track of them. There is even debate whether 1919 was the first year of the yellow jersey. Three-time winner Philippe Thys claims he was made to wear a yellow jersey in 1913, though no papers from the time can confirm this. There is much to the fascinating story of the yellow jersey that Lazell overlooked.
She does get right another of the oft-recounted episodes in the history of The Tour--the legendary stage in the 1934 Tour when rookie Rene Vietto, who was looking like a new climbing sensation, had to give up his wheel to his team leader Antonin Magne in the mountains and sat on a ledge weeping, waiting for a replacement wheel, watching his chances evaporate. The photo of the forlorn Vietto is one of the Top Ten images in the history of The Tour. Her book includes two other photos of crying cyclists, both of the high-strung French rider Richard Virenque. The first shows tears of shame after he had to abandon the 1998 Tour when his Festina team was caught with a car load of doping products. The second captures Virenque glowing with tears of exaltation after winning the Mont Ventoux stage in 2002.
Both "Pedalare! Pedalare!" a history of Italian cycling by John Foot and Lazell tell the story of two-time Tour winner Italian Ottavio Bottecchia abandoning the 1926 Tour in tears. Foote describes tears of a different sort from a long-time popular Italian broadcaster who would "burst into tears with very little prompting" during his broadcast of the Giro d'Italia. When Eddie Merckx was ejected from the Giro in 1969 with a huge lead for failing a drug test, a charge he heatedly disputed, the next day's newspaper featured a huge front page photo of a sobbing Merckx. Two years later when Gianna Motta tested positive for drugs, he too was photographed in tears in his hotel room. The greatest Italian crier though was Marco Pantani. After he was ejected for having an excessive hematocrit level from the 1999 Giro with only a couple of stages to go holding a comfortable lead, he went home and cried for days, according to his girl friend.
Since Foote's book was largely focused on Italian racers, it ignored the 1988 Giro that Davis Phinney's 7-Eleven teammate Andy Hampsten won. The climatic stage in the snow over the Gavia pass that won the race for Hampsten was so brutal it was known as "The Day That Grown Men Cried." Among those brought to tears of pain were former Giro champions Roberto Visentini and Giusepppe Saronni. Phinney gives a very detailed description of that stage, one that was more a matter of survival than racing.
I can fully relate to tales of tears on the bicycle, as I, as a touring cyclist have had personal experience with them. The effort and full commitment a touring cyclist puts into achieving a goal can effect him in a similar, though milder, manner as it does the racing cyclist. I was shocked that when I began to tell people about that glorious moment when I arrived in Alaska after bicycling over 3,000 miles from Chicago, the last 1.000 on a dirt road, that I would choke on tears and couldn't continue. I had no idea that my efforts had had such an effect on me. I felt triumphant when I reached Alaska and the end of the unpaved stretch of the road, but there were no tears or great celebration at that point. I still had 300 miles to Fairbanks and the end of the road, though the worst was over, and I knew I had essentially achieved my goal. I laid my bike down on the ground, half on the dirt and half on the pavement, for a photo.
I made that ride in 198l, over thirty years ago, but it still has a lingering effect on me. If I'm not careful, I can be overcome by emotion and can't continue when I'm tellinganother about reaching Alaska. No other of my many trips has had such an effect on me, not even my 7,000 mile ride the length of South America battling head winds and banditos and long stretches without food and water, or my ride across Australia including the 750 mile stretch of no towns across the Nullarbor, or my ride across India where I was descended upon by dozens of people whenever I stopped and was blasted by horns by every passing vehicle almost to the point of deafness for thousands of miles, knowing my limits of tolerance were being tested.
The challenges of the Alaskan Highway had me continually on edge--rough roads, clouds of dust, swarms of mosquitoes and flies, prowling bears, long stretches without food and water and motorists continually telling me that they thought they were brave to be driving the road and couldn't imagine attempting it on a bike. Books were written for motorists on how to survive the road. I couldn't have imagined how deeply satisfying completing that ride would be. That welling of emotion always lets me know. They are a badge of honor unlike any other.
"Without thinking," Fignon writes, "He threw himself at me and burst into tears. In those welcoming arms I wailed like a child. Long, long sobs. It had never happened in public before."
One of the singular aspects of bicycle racing is the deep emotional investment, unlike any other sport, of the riders to win a race, often an investment of months and years of concerted effort and great deprivation. Succeeding or failing to win a race a rider has put so much effort into can lead to a spontaneous burst of tears--either tears of jubilation or tears of utter despair. It is a sport of "want-to," of how single-mindedly one can focus and devote oneself to getting something they really, really want, and how hard one can willingly push oneself, or "hurt oneself," as Fignon regularly phrases it.
A rider can cultivate an extraordinary depth of motivation by dwelling on the storied history of a race, wishing to join its pantheon of conquerors, finding inspiration in their heroic exploits that time has elevated to legend. The length of a race, the time spent in combat, further heightens one's desire to succeed, to conquer, to justify all the time and effort, all the pain and suffering one has committed to winning. Every moment on the bike increases one's hunger. A race can be six or seven hours long, two or three times as long as most sporting competitions. And a stage race like the Tour de France, going on for three weeks, with all that extra effort and focused attention, truly maxes the thrill of victory or agony of defeat, resulting in volcanic eruptions of emotion.
At times it can be a delayed reaction. Christian Vande Velde, at his recent appearance at the Chicago Garmin store, said that after his Garmin team won the team time trial at last year's Tour de France, when he retreated to the team bus, the full impact of what they had accomplished finally hit him and he was overcome with tears, something he wasn't embarrassed to acknowledge. He knows it is a reflection of how much it meant to him. Tears are something racers are proud to earn, knowing from experience, whether their own or witnessing it in a teammate or fellow competitor, that it is the ultimate emotion.
Laurent Jalabert, a prominent French rider a decade ago who in ten Tours de France won five stages, twice on Bastille Day, and twice won the points jersey and twice the king of the mountain jersey, but never the yellow jersey felt unfulfilled when it came to The Tour. He said, "In the Tour, I never shed tears of joy." Winning the race was his ultimate goal. Though his other successes in The Tour would have thrilled many another rider, he had a higher aspiration. Only that would give him that great joy of tears.
Some riders prefer to keep their tears private, regarding a public display as a chink in their toughness. Jacques Anquetil, the first five-time winner of The Tour, was a man who tried to express a minimum of emotion. His wife revealed though that he gushed tears in the privacy of their car after his monumental achievement of winning the Bordeaux-Paris race a day after winning the nine-day Dauphine-Libere race, an accomplishment that "L'Equipe" called the greatest sporting feat of the 20th century.
Fignon too tried to go about his business with a stoic detachment, admitting his outburst after that 1989 loss was the only time he cried in public in his career. If he were truly embarrassed by the tears, he might have blamed them on his teammate crying first, but he didn't need to do that. Tears are so intrinsic to bicycle racing, they are hard to avoid. Fignon knew, though, he had a special toughness to resist them, as he said he never cried when he was spanked as a kid. He knew nothing about bicycle racing at the time, but looking back, his resistance to spanking revealed he "knew how to hurt," an essential quality for a cyclist. He was not entirely resistant to tears though. He admits that after he was offered his first professional contract by Cyrille Guimard, the preeminent team director at the time, he was so thrilled that he "may have had furtive little tears in my eyes." Tears are an indication one really cares about something, and he truly cared about his cycling.
Twice he mentions other cyclists who shed tears at climactic moments--Pascal Simon, when he had to abandon the 1983 Tour after having clung to the yellow jersey for several stages with a broken shoulder, and also Jean-Francois Bernard after winning the Mont Ventoux stage in the l987 Tour. Fignon went on to win that 1983 Tour, his first of two. And like Bernard he too had tears on Ventoux in 1987, but of a different type. He suffered greatly on the climb, and had to begrudgingly acknowledge he would not be a contender to win The Race. After he climbed into the team bus "well a way from prying eyes, I wept for a long time."
The uber-emotional Mark Cavendish isn't bashful at all about acknowledging his tears, almost flaunting them. His autobiography, "Boy Racer," abounds with mentions of tears of many strains--after winning sprints, over a coach's criticism, over not medaling at the Beijing Olympics, when he proposes to his girl friend and then when he breaks up with her, when he learns his parents are divorcing, for being disqualified in a Tour de France sprint, when he is dropped by the peloton on the first stage of his first Tour de France in 2007, in the hospital at the bedside of a friend in a coma.
Davis Phinney, another emotionally-charged sprinter a couple decades Cavendish's senior, who twice won stages of The Tour de France, also regularly mentions giving vent to tears in his autobiography "The Happiness of Pursuit," even once referring to "squirting some tears," when he had bad luck as a 17-year old in the junior nationals. His book is as much about his battle with Parkinson's Disease as it is about racing. He also writes considerably about his father's fight with cancer, not letting it prevent him from going to France many times to ride the legendary climbs of The Tour de France. The touring company he went with liked him so much that it erected a plaque in his honor at the summit of the Col de Fer. The book culminates with Davis and his daughter Kelsey bicycling to the summit of the Col de Fer to watch his son Taylor, now a prominent young rider, pass in a race. Seeing the memorial and seeing his son he "wept tears of joy and sorrow."
The book also recounts his courtship of Connie Carpenter, a l984 Olympic gold medal winner, who achieved prominence before he did. Phinney repeatedly says she was "out of my league." He drove her to tears once when she visited him in France early in his career, and he was too exhausted to give her enough attention. But that story had a happy ending, as do most of those in the book, one way or another. Davis mentions tears of a type not often described in cycling books--tears over a movie, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," a French movie about a distinguished French magazine editor who becomes paralyzed after a car accident and can only communicate with the wink of one eye. Davis could very much relate to him in his battles to fully function.
My recent rampage through cycling biographies also included the memoirs of Bernard Hinault--"Memories of the Peloton" written in 1988. I didn't expect much crying from this hard man and there wasn't. His motto was, "As long as I live and breath, I attack." Attack is his constant refrain, appearing on just about every other page of his book. Such a man makes others cry. One of those he made cry, though tears of joy, was France's national team director when Hinault won the World Championship in 1980 in France. Though Hinault called that day the "greatest day of my life, by far," he acknowledged no tears of joy in his celebration. Calling that his greatest victory is quite a statement, as he won the Tour de France five times, the Giro d'Italia three times and the Vuelta d'Espagne twice. Only Eddie Merckx, with eleven, won more Grand Tours. But it was a victory he had targeted for years. It had been 19 years since the last French winner, Jean Stablinksi, one of his early mentors.
He does admit to crying once on his bike, during his final Tour de France, that legendary 1986 Tour that is considered perhaps the greatest Tour of all time, when he waged psychological war fare with his teammate Greg LeMond, trying to make him a worthy winner, he maintains. He was brought to tears as he climbed the Col de Vars lagging behind LeMond, relinquishing the yellow jersey, that he claims he was only keeping warm for LeMond. It wasn't losing the jersey that had him weeping, but rather a pain in his knee and the comment of a photographer who told his motorbike driver to slow down and stick with Hinault as he looked as if he was going to abandon. "I might have given up but for that photographer's words," he says. But he recovered and the next day he attacked once again and then led LeMond up L'Alpe d'Huez to their triumphant shoulder-to-shoulder finish.
Besides all these biographies there have also been several histories amongst my recent submersion in the world of books on bicycle racing. They too recount instances of racers being brought to tears. Marguerite Lazell's "Illustrated History of the Tour de France," one of a veritable peloton of books written about The Tour in 2003 to commemorate its 100th anniversary, claims Hinault climbed off his bike in tears at the finish of the 9th stage of the 1979 Tour at the Roubaix velodrome, when he finished three minutes and 45 seconds behind Joop Zoetemelk and lost the yellow jersey. He regained it a few stages later, going on to win the second of his five Tours. This incident of tears though was one of a number of questionable assertions she makes.
One of the most egregious was claiming that when the yellow jersey was introduced to The Tour in 1919 midway through its 13th edition it was meant to spur on the racers, as they were lagging. It was the first Tour after a four year hiatus due to World War One and the racers weren't so fit. To think the yellow jersey was immediately a coveted object that would inspire the riders to super-human efforts is ridiculous. Race director Henri Desgrange forced the jersey on the leading rider Eugene Christophe so spectators could more easily identify who was in the lead.
The jersey was at first an object of embarrassment. Christophe said that spectators shouted at him that he looked like a canary and would chirp at him. Subsequent wearers thought it made it too easy for other riders to keep track of them. There is even debate whether 1919 was the first year of the yellow jersey. Three-time winner Philippe Thys claims he was made to wear a yellow jersey in 1913, though no papers from the time can confirm this. There is much to the fascinating story of the yellow jersey that Lazell overlooked.
She does get right another of the oft-recounted episodes in the history of The Tour--the legendary stage in the 1934 Tour when rookie Rene Vietto, who was looking like a new climbing sensation, had to give up his wheel to his team leader Antonin Magne in the mountains and sat on a ledge weeping, waiting for a replacement wheel, watching his chances evaporate. The photo of the forlorn Vietto is one of the Top Ten images in the history of The Tour. Her book includes two other photos of crying cyclists, both of the high-strung French rider Richard Virenque. The first shows tears of shame after he had to abandon the 1998 Tour when his Festina team was caught with a car load of doping products. The second captures Virenque glowing with tears of exaltation after winning the Mont Ventoux stage in 2002.
Both "Pedalare! Pedalare!" a history of Italian cycling by John Foot and Lazell tell the story of two-time Tour winner Italian Ottavio Bottecchia abandoning the 1926 Tour in tears. Foote describes tears of a different sort from a long-time popular Italian broadcaster who would "burst into tears with very little prompting" during his broadcast of the Giro d'Italia. When Eddie Merckx was ejected from the Giro in 1969 with a huge lead for failing a drug test, a charge he heatedly disputed, the next day's newspaper featured a huge front page photo of a sobbing Merckx. Two years later when Gianna Motta tested positive for drugs, he too was photographed in tears in his hotel room. The greatest Italian crier though was Marco Pantani. After he was ejected for having an excessive hematocrit level from the 1999 Giro with only a couple of stages to go holding a comfortable lead, he went home and cried for days, according to his girl friend.
Since Foote's book was largely focused on Italian racers, it ignored the 1988 Giro that Davis Phinney's 7-Eleven teammate Andy Hampsten won. The climatic stage in the snow over the Gavia pass that won the race for Hampsten was so brutal it was known as "The Day That Grown Men Cried." Among those brought to tears of pain were former Giro champions Roberto Visentini and Giusepppe Saronni. Phinney gives a very detailed description of that stage, one that was more a matter of survival than racing.
I can fully relate to tales of tears on the bicycle, as I, as a touring cyclist have had personal experience with them. The effort and full commitment a touring cyclist puts into achieving a goal can effect him in a similar, though milder, manner as it does the racing cyclist. I was shocked that when I began to tell people about that glorious moment when I arrived in Alaska after bicycling over 3,000 miles from Chicago, the last 1.000 on a dirt road, that I would choke on tears and couldn't continue. I had no idea that my efforts had had such an effect on me. I felt triumphant when I reached Alaska and the end of the unpaved stretch of the road, but there were no tears or great celebration at that point. I still had 300 miles to Fairbanks and the end of the road, though the worst was over, and I knew I had essentially achieved my goal. I laid my bike down on the ground, half on the dirt and half on the pavement, for a photo.
I made that ride in 198l, over thirty years ago, but it still has a lingering effect on me. If I'm not careful, I can be overcome by emotion and can't continue when I'm tellinganother about reaching Alaska. No other of my many trips has had such an effect on me, not even my 7,000 mile ride the length of South America battling head winds and banditos and long stretches without food and water, or my ride across Australia including the 750 mile stretch of no towns across the Nullarbor, or my ride across India where I was descended upon by dozens of people whenever I stopped and was blasted by horns by every passing vehicle almost to the point of deafness for thousands of miles, knowing my limits of tolerance were being tested.
The challenges of the Alaskan Highway had me continually on edge--rough roads, clouds of dust, swarms of mosquitoes and flies, prowling bears, long stretches without food and water and motorists continually telling me that they thought they were brave to be driving the road and couldn't imagine attempting it on a bike. Books were written for motorists on how to survive the road. I couldn't have imagined how deeply satisfying completing that ride would be. That welling of emotion always lets me know. They are a badge of honor unlike any other.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Roger Ebert and the Bicycle
Roger Ebert mentions riding his bicycle growing up in Urbana, Illinois so often early in his memoirs "Life Itself" I had hopes bicycling might be a recurring theme throughout the book. In the book's very first paragraph he cries over a friend's red tricycle that he wants for his own. On the next page he observes his father putting bicycle clips on his work pants and bicycling off to work.
When he's old enough to start riding a bicycle, he'd ride his bike to school, "even in winter." On summer vacations he regarded his bicycle as his "freedom" allowing him to range all over. Among his destinations was the Dog n Suds, where he'd go for the Dog in a Basket with coleslaw, fries and root beer, something he regarded as a "spectacular feast." He'd also bike to an A & W Root Beer stand on his way out to Crystal Lake. When he was older he'd ride his bike around the university campus "studying the students."
He also mentions giving rides on his handlebars to his friend Donald, the lone "colored boy" in his Catholic grade school. It didn't seem out of place to him at the time that a nun said Donald was "just as precious as the rest of you in the eyes of God."
His commentary on the bicycle set the tone for these memoirs, a lot of random observations, not all of which were particularly relevant or well-developed, but that give some insight into the times he's writing about and what left an impression on him. Another typical example was his comment about a high school English teacher who was a bachelor. "It was conceivable he was gay," Ebert remembers, but offers no other reason to think so. Unfortunately, that great seminal moment in everyone's life of learning to ride a bicycle hadn't left enough of a memory to make the book.
He lost whatever bicycling consciousness he might have had growing up by the time he became a movie critic. The only bicycle in cinema reference he makes is to a movie he saw when he was a student at the University of Illinois, "The Immoral Mr. Teas" in 1961. It was the first Russ Meyer movie he saw, not knowing who Russ Meyer was, as Russ Meyer had yet to become a brand. It was Meyer's first commercially successful film and the first of the nudie-cuties, a genre that evolved from the nudist camp films, the first films to sneak blatant nudity past the censors. Mr.Teas is an early-day bicycle messenger delivering false teeth. He encounters various voluptuous women who he imagines completely nude. Ebert says this barely hour long film ran for nearly two years, ten times a day, in a small theater near the campus and was a right of passage for students.
Rather than making it an outing with his frat brothers, he went on his own "hoping to slip in unwitnessed." One might have thought he would have been accompanied by a gang of his frat brothers, especially considering they would serenade sororities with the song "Phi Delta Theta Girl" that included the lyric, "If you were the kind that sold, you'd be worth your weight in gold." His frat experience is another minor confession that he wasn't comfortable with even at the time, eventually moving back home.
Ebert could hardly have imagined when he was watching with bulged eyes "Mr Teas" that he would become a good friend of Russ Meyer and write a screenplay for him--"Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." He devotes a chapter of his book to him, concluding with his funeral. During the preacher's droning eulogy, Ebert's wife Chaz whispers to him, "If you don't go up there and say something Russ will come out of his coffin and strangle you." So he does.
This was one of several chapters on prominent people in film he respected or had a close relationship with. Others who warranted a chapter were Martin Scorcese, Woody Allen, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Robert Altman, Ingmar Bergman and Werner Herzog. Herzog is a true favorite of his, a man's whose work he "instinctively identifies with." He says Herzog is the rare film-maker who brought meaning to his life. He laments that all too much of his life "has been devoted to films of worthlessness." He recounts a conversation he had with Herzog at the Telluride Film Festival. Elsewhere, Ebert has called Telluride his favorite film festival, a festival he never missed until he became ill. His enthusiastic endorsement was what inspired me to attend for the first time twenty years ago. Like many who go once, I've never missed another and even joined its staff.
I hoped there would be an entire chapter on Telluride affirming it as the ultimate film-going experience that it is. I was so eager to read what he had to say about Telluride, when I got my hands on his book, I immediately went to the index and looked up Telluride. There was just this one brief mention and with the misinformation that Herzog attends the festival every year. He is a frequent guest, but on occasion he's off filming something and can't attend. The index failed to list one other Telluride reference. In his chapter on his alcoholism he reveals he'd attend AA meetings when he was in Telluride.
I can affirm though that Ebert did not exaggerate when he wrote that he has a great affection for dogs and can hardly resist giving a dog a pet when he sees one. I once crossed paths with Ebert at the Sundance Film Festival. We were walking towards each other down a side street when he came upon a dog in the back of a pick up truck. I was surprised he wasn't in a rush to get to his next screening, as I was, and paused to give the dog a hello and a pet.
He said he had two dogs when he was growing up, Blackie and Ming. He complained that he was restricted as to what he could name his dogs as he'd been told in his Catholic religion class that one couldn't give a dog a saint's name, "such as Max," as dogs didn't have souls. This made a big enough impression on him that he mentions it twice within 25 pages. Its not the only time he repeats himself.
Not as much of the book is about Gene Siskel as one might suspect. He waits until the 41st chapter, three-fourths of the way into the book, before giving him more than a passing reference. But then he pays him full respect. One of his final chapters is on Studs Turkel, who he calls the "greatest man I knew well." He also gives accolades to Chicago columnists Mike Royko and Jon Anderson. I was particularly interested in his comments on Anderson, as he once attended a slide show I gave about bicycling across India and wrote a column about it. Ebert visited London at least once a year and even wrote a book about walking tours there. He tells of going to a strip club in London with Anderson. Anderson was married to a Rockefeller and had the money to indulge in any whim he desired. At one point he called out, "Waiter! Blow jobs for everybody."
Of all the people he interviewed, none was more extraordinary than Dolly Parton, someone Russ Meyer most certainly appreciated. "As we spoke," Ebert recounted, "I was filled with a strange ethereal grace. This was not spiritual, nor was it sexual. It was healing or comforting." He said Siskel had had the identical experience when he interviewed her, and it was something they would refer to from time to time in wonder.
Ebert manages to insert a Mayor Daley anecdote into his memoirs as well. He tells of he and Chaz having dinner with the Mayor and his wife and Robert Altman. Altman was a bit late and arrived with a strong scent of marijuana. Ebert says, "Daley raised his eyebrows at me and smiled." And that is all we learn of their meal together. There may not be as much in depth commentary on cinema or bicycling, or self-reflection, as some would have hoped for, but these memoirs still have much to offer.
When he's old enough to start riding a bicycle, he'd ride his bike to school, "even in winter." On summer vacations he regarded his bicycle as his "freedom" allowing him to range all over. Among his destinations was the Dog n Suds, where he'd go for the Dog in a Basket with coleslaw, fries and root beer, something he regarded as a "spectacular feast." He'd also bike to an A & W Root Beer stand on his way out to Crystal Lake. When he was older he'd ride his bike around the university campus "studying the students."
He also mentions giving rides on his handlebars to his friend Donald, the lone "colored boy" in his Catholic grade school. It didn't seem out of place to him at the time that a nun said Donald was "just as precious as the rest of you in the eyes of God."
His commentary on the bicycle set the tone for these memoirs, a lot of random observations, not all of which were particularly relevant or well-developed, but that give some insight into the times he's writing about and what left an impression on him. Another typical example was his comment about a high school English teacher who was a bachelor. "It was conceivable he was gay," Ebert remembers, but offers no other reason to think so. Unfortunately, that great seminal moment in everyone's life of learning to ride a bicycle hadn't left enough of a memory to make the book.
He lost whatever bicycling consciousness he might have had growing up by the time he became a movie critic. The only bicycle in cinema reference he makes is to a movie he saw when he was a student at the University of Illinois, "The Immoral Mr. Teas" in 1961. It was the first Russ Meyer movie he saw, not knowing who Russ Meyer was, as Russ Meyer had yet to become a brand. It was Meyer's first commercially successful film and the first of the nudie-cuties, a genre that evolved from the nudist camp films, the first films to sneak blatant nudity past the censors. Mr.Teas is an early-day bicycle messenger delivering false teeth. He encounters various voluptuous women who he imagines completely nude. Ebert says this barely hour long film ran for nearly two years, ten times a day, in a small theater near the campus and was a right of passage for students.
Rather than making it an outing with his frat brothers, he went on his own "hoping to slip in unwitnessed." One might have thought he would have been accompanied by a gang of his frat brothers, especially considering they would serenade sororities with the song "Phi Delta Theta Girl" that included the lyric, "If you were the kind that sold, you'd be worth your weight in gold." His frat experience is another minor confession that he wasn't comfortable with even at the time, eventually moving back home.
Ebert could hardly have imagined when he was watching with bulged eyes "Mr Teas" that he would become a good friend of Russ Meyer and write a screenplay for him--"Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." He devotes a chapter of his book to him, concluding with his funeral. During the preacher's droning eulogy, Ebert's wife Chaz whispers to him, "If you don't go up there and say something Russ will come out of his coffin and strangle you." So he does.
This was one of several chapters on prominent people in film he respected or had a close relationship with. Others who warranted a chapter were Martin Scorcese, Woody Allen, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Robert Altman, Ingmar Bergman and Werner Herzog. Herzog is a true favorite of his, a man's whose work he "instinctively identifies with." He says Herzog is the rare film-maker who brought meaning to his life. He laments that all too much of his life "has been devoted to films of worthlessness." He recounts a conversation he had with Herzog at the Telluride Film Festival. Elsewhere, Ebert has called Telluride his favorite film festival, a festival he never missed until he became ill. His enthusiastic endorsement was what inspired me to attend for the first time twenty years ago. Like many who go once, I've never missed another and even joined its staff.
I hoped there would be an entire chapter on Telluride affirming it as the ultimate film-going experience that it is. I was so eager to read what he had to say about Telluride, when I got my hands on his book, I immediately went to the index and looked up Telluride. There was just this one brief mention and with the misinformation that Herzog attends the festival every year. He is a frequent guest, but on occasion he's off filming something and can't attend. The index failed to list one other Telluride reference. In his chapter on his alcoholism he reveals he'd attend AA meetings when he was in Telluride.
I can affirm though that Ebert did not exaggerate when he wrote that he has a great affection for dogs and can hardly resist giving a dog a pet when he sees one. I once crossed paths with Ebert at the Sundance Film Festival. We were walking towards each other down a side street when he came upon a dog in the back of a pick up truck. I was surprised he wasn't in a rush to get to his next screening, as I was, and paused to give the dog a hello and a pet.
He said he had two dogs when he was growing up, Blackie and Ming. He complained that he was restricted as to what he could name his dogs as he'd been told in his Catholic religion class that one couldn't give a dog a saint's name, "such as Max," as dogs didn't have souls. This made a big enough impression on him that he mentions it twice within 25 pages. Its not the only time he repeats himself.
Not as much of the book is about Gene Siskel as one might suspect. He waits until the 41st chapter, three-fourths of the way into the book, before giving him more than a passing reference. But then he pays him full respect. One of his final chapters is on Studs Turkel, who he calls the "greatest man I knew well." He also gives accolades to Chicago columnists Mike Royko and Jon Anderson. I was particularly interested in his comments on Anderson, as he once attended a slide show I gave about bicycling across India and wrote a column about it. Ebert visited London at least once a year and even wrote a book about walking tours there. He tells of going to a strip club in London with Anderson. Anderson was married to a Rockefeller and had the money to indulge in any whim he desired. At one point he called out, "Waiter! Blow jobs for everybody."
Of all the people he interviewed, none was more extraordinary than Dolly Parton, someone Russ Meyer most certainly appreciated. "As we spoke," Ebert recounted, "I was filled with a strange ethereal grace. This was not spiritual, nor was it sexual. It was healing or comforting." He said Siskel had had the identical experience when he interviewed her, and it was something they would refer to from time to time in wonder.
Ebert manages to insert a Mayor Daley anecdote into his memoirs as well. He tells of he and Chaz having dinner with the Mayor and his wife and Robert Altman. Altman was a bit late and arrived with a strong scent of marijuana. Ebert says, "Daley raised his eyebrows at me and smiled." And that is all we learn of their meal together. There may not be as much in depth commentary on cinema or bicycling, or self-reflection, as some would have hoped for, but these memoirs still have much to offer.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
A Gold Mine of Cycling Books
Thanks to my friend Elizabeth, a most valuable double-barreled cyclist/librarian, I just made the thrilling discovery of a gold mine of cycling books virtually out my back door. She introduced me to the invaluable website http://worldcat.org, an archive of the holdings of libraries all over the world. Enter the title of a book and in a moment it reveals where it may be found and the distance from one's location, whether a few miles away or half way round the world.
A year ago "Cycle Sport," a British magazine that is one of my favorite monthly reads, published a list of the greatest fifty cycling books of all time. I'd read half of them and knew of many of the others, but not all. England has a much richer history of books on cycling than America, so most of those I hadn't read were English publications, some of which were translations of the great French cycling books. I wanted to read them all.
Most I could have acquired through Amazon. The price of some scared me off, but also the lack of space on my already overflowing book shelves. I try to limit my book acquisitions to one or two a year. I always have plenty to read, so I was willing to patiently await these books.
When Elizabeth revealed worldcat.org to me when I was visiting her at Northwestern's Chicago campus Shaffner Library, I instantly began typing in titles from that list. I was overwhelmed with excitement to discover that many of them were miraculously nearby in various suburban and university libraries. I could have enlisted Elizabeth's services to acquire any of them on inter-library loan, something she was happy and willing to do. It wouldn't even have been a favor, because as a card-carrying alumnus of Northwestern, I am entitled to such privileges.
But I am above all a bicyclist. I am ever eager to pounce on the opportunity to ride my bike anywhere, especially for something that excites me. One winter I made it a mission to bicycle to every one of Chicago's 75 branch libraries, some twenty miles or more away. That led to my on-going quest to bicycle to the 1,679 Carnegie libraries scattered all over the U.S.
I have had the lingering desire to bike to Chicago's many suburban libraries. Seeking some of these books would give me that opportunity. Far better, anyway, to go to a book, than have it brought to me. Making the effort to search it out, to pluck it from its shelf, always enhances the enjoyment of a book. I love that moment of spotting and reaching for a title I've long yearned for. Going to a book also provides the chance of discovering other books alongside the one that I have come for that I might want to read.
In my pile of books to read were two of Samuel Abt's books on cycling that I had acquired in the past few months through paperbackswap, an on-line book trading service. Abt has written eleven books on cycling while covering the Tour de France and European cycling for the "New York Times" beginning in 1977. Some of the books are just collections of his stories, but still worth reading. Only one of his books made "Cycle Sport's" top fifty list--"LeMond, The Incredible Come Back of An American Hero." I had already read that and four other of his books, some from the holdings of the Chicago Public Library system.
Though his racing savvy does not match that of his European counterparts, I still read his books, starved as I am for books on cycling, and had a goal of reading all eleven of his books. I gave immediate thanks to Elizabeth and worldcat when I learned that two of the four books of his that I hadn't been able to get my hands on could be found in suburban libraries--one in Park Ridge and the other in Riverside. Of the other two, one was 113 miles away in Bloomington, Illinois and the other 141 miles away in Marion, Indiana, bike rides to look forward to in the future.
I was particularly pleased to have reason to bike out to Park Ridge, as its former library was a Carnegie built in 1909. It still stood, across the street from the new library, now home to an insurance company and a hair salon. And going out to Park Ridge rewarded me with another cycling book I was unaware of--"Eat, Sleep, Ride" by Englishman Paul Howard about riding the 2,800 mile continental divide race from Canada to Mexico. I did not know of this book, though I had read Howard's two other books on cycling--a biography of Jacques Anquetil that I wrote about last month and a book about riding the Tour de France route, both very good reads.
So I had a very pleasant two days at the Park Ridge library reading these two books. Then it was on to the Riverside library for another of Abt's books. The library was a magnificent, eighty-year old, stone chateau of a building, in a small town atmosphere. It was a rare library these days without magnetic strips in its books to guard against their theft. The bike rack had a sign reminding people that they ought to lock their bikes and offering locks inside if one didn't have one. One could sit in a leather chair and read while gazing through a forest of trees upon the Des Plaines River. It was a most tranquil setting, belying the surrounding metropolitan sprawl, another satisfying experience I wouldn't have had if I hadn't biked out for the book.
Though I have cycling biographies of Bernard Hinault to go after in Downer's Grove and Laurent Fignon in Elmhurst and Stephen Roche in Schaumberg and a book on the Spring Classics in Skokie and the Coppi-Bartoli duel in the 1949 Giro in Joliet and a cultural history of the Tour de France at Northwestern and at the nearby Evanston library a translation of "Giants of Cycling" by the great French cycling historian Jean-Paul Ollivier, who has written fifty books on cycling, the book I was most eager to read next was "Slaying the Badger" at the University of Chicago. It too was written by an English author I had read before, Richard Moore, whose first book was a biography of the Scottish rider Robert Millar, a former team mate of Greg LeMond who had somewhat disappeared amidst speculation that he had undergone a sex change. The book was worthy of the awards it had won.
A year ago "Cycle Sport," a British magazine that is one of my favorite monthly reads, published a list of the greatest fifty cycling books of all time. I'd read half of them and knew of many of the others, but not all. England has a much richer history of books on cycling than America, so most of those I hadn't read were English publications, some of which were translations of the great French cycling books. I wanted to read them all.
Most I could have acquired through Amazon. The price of some scared me off, but also the lack of space on my already overflowing book shelves. I try to limit my book acquisitions to one or two a year. I always have plenty to read, so I was willing to patiently await these books.
When Elizabeth revealed worldcat.org to me when I was visiting her at Northwestern's Chicago campus Shaffner Library, I instantly began typing in titles from that list. I was overwhelmed with excitement to discover that many of them were miraculously nearby in various suburban and university libraries. I could have enlisted Elizabeth's services to acquire any of them on inter-library loan, something she was happy and willing to do. It wouldn't even have been a favor, because as a card-carrying alumnus of Northwestern, I am entitled to such privileges.
But I am above all a bicyclist. I am ever eager to pounce on the opportunity to ride my bike anywhere, especially for something that excites me. One winter I made it a mission to bicycle to every one of Chicago's 75 branch libraries, some twenty miles or more away. That led to my on-going quest to bicycle to the 1,679 Carnegie libraries scattered all over the U.S.
I have had the lingering desire to bike to Chicago's many suburban libraries. Seeking some of these books would give me that opportunity. Far better, anyway, to go to a book, than have it brought to me. Making the effort to search it out, to pluck it from its shelf, always enhances the enjoyment of a book. I love that moment of spotting and reaching for a title I've long yearned for. Going to a book also provides the chance of discovering other books alongside the one that I have come for that I might want to read.
In my pile of books to read were two of Samuel Abt's books on cycling that I had acquired in the past few months through paperbackswap, an on-line book trading service. Abt has written eleven books on cycling while covering the Tour de France and European cycling for the "New York Times" beginning in 1977. Some of the books are just collections of his stories, but still worth reading. Only one of his books made "Cycle Sport's" top fifty list--"LeMond, The Incredible Come Back of An American Hero." I had already read that and four other of his books, some from the holdings of the Chicago Public Library system.
Though his racing savvy does not match that of his European counterparts, I still read his books, starved as I am for books on cycling, and had a goal of reading all eleven of his books. I gave immediate thanks to Elizabeth and worldcat when I learned that two of the four books of his that I hadn't been able to get my hands on could be found in suburban libraries--one in Park Ridge and the other in Riverside. Of the other two, one was 113 miles away in Bloomington, Illinois and the other 141 miles away in Marion, Indiana, bike rides to look forward to in the future.
I was particularly pleased to have reason to bike out to Park Ridge, as its former library was a Carnegie built in 1909. It still stood, across the street from the new library, now home to an insurance company and a hair salon. And going out to Park Ridge rewarded me with another cycling book I was unaware of--"Eat, Sleep, Ride" by Englishman Paul Howard about riding the 2,800 mile continental divide race from Canada to Mexico. I did not know of this book, though I had read Howard's two other books on cycling--a biography of Jacques Anquetil that I wrote about last month and a book about riding the Tour de France route, both very good reads.
So I had a very pleasant two days at the Park Ridge library reading these two books. Then it was on to the Riverside library for another of Abt's books. The library was a magnificent, eighty-year old, stone chateau of a building, in a small town atmosphere. It was a rare library these days without magnetic strips in its books to guard against their theft. The bike rack had a sign reminding people that they ought to lock their bikes and offering locks inside if one didn't have one. One could sit in a leather chair and read while gazing through a forest of trees upon the Des Plaines River. It was a most tranquil setting, belying the surrounding metropolitan sprawl, another satisfying experience I wouldn't have had if I hadn't biked out for the book.
Though I have cycling biographies of Bernard Hinault to go after in Downer's Grove and Laurent Fignon in Elmhurst and Stephen Roche in Schaumberg and a book on the Spring Classics in Skokie and the Coppi-Bartoli duel in the 1949 Giro in Joliet and a cultural history of the Tour de France at Northwestern and at the nearby Evanston library a translation of "Giants of Cycling" by the great French cycling historian Jean-Paul Ollivier, who has written fifty books on cycling, the book I was most eager to read next was "Slaying the Badger" at the University of Chicago. It too was written by an English author I had read before, Richard Moore, whose first book was a biography of the Scottish rider Robert Millar, a former team mate of Greg LeMond who had somewhat disappeared amidst speculation that he had undergone a sex change. The book was worthy of the awards it had won.
As anyone versed in racing lore would surmise, the "badger" of the title refers to Bernard Hinault and is about LeMond's victory in the 1986 Tour de France over Hinault. The subtitle of the book calls it "The Greatest Ever Tour de France." That designation is usually given to the 1989 Tour when LeMond beat Fignon by eight seconds, but Moore makes a strong argument for the 1986 Tour. LeMond and Hinault were teammates, but also adversaries. LeMond had sacrificed himself the year before when they were teammates, not pushing on ahead on a stage in the mountains when Hinault was struggling. Hinault was wearing the Yellow Jersey and was going for his fifth Tour win. LeMond had finished third the year before and thought his time might be now, but he was a loyal teammate and followed his director's orders to simply follow the wheel of Stephen Roch and to otherwise hold back.
Hinault was so grateful to LeMond that he told him, "Next year it is your turn," and promised to devote all his energies to helping LeMond win. There was much speculation before the 1986 race whether Hinault would live up to that promise, especially with the possibility of becoming the first six-time winner of The Tour. At that point only he and Jacques Anquetil and Eddie Merkx were in the elite club of five, later to be joined by Miguel Indurain and Lance Armstrong. Hinault didn't seem to be living up to his promise when he attacked on the first mountain stage and took a seemingly insurmountable five minute advantage. LeMond was devastated by this apparent betrayal.
Hinault was so grateful to LeMond that he told him, "Next year it is your turn," and promised to devote all his energies to helping LeMond win. There was much speculation before the 1986 race whether Hinault would live up to that promise, especially with the possibility of becoming the first six-time winner of The Tour. At that point only he and Jacques Anquetil and Eddie Merkx were in the elite club of five, later to be joined by Miguel Indurain and Lance Armstrong. Hinault didn't seem to be living up to his promise when he attacked on the first mountain stage and took a seemingly insurmountable five minute advantage. LeMond was devastated by this apparent betrayal.
The Race went back and forth. One of its seminal moments came later in the Alps after LeMond had secured the yellow jersey and he and Hinault rode together up L'Alpe d'Huez well ahead of everyone else. Moore argues their arm-to-arm finish at the summit is one of the greatest moments in the history of all sport.
Moore was a thirteen-year old back in England in 1986 watching The Race on television. It was the first time it had been broadcast in its entirety in England. He seems to be living a dream to be able to intimately relive the race, interviewing everyone involved and rereading the many books and newspaper and magazine articles written about it, even a feature in "Rolling Stone."
He personalizes his narrative, describing in detail his visits with LeMond and Hinault at their homes, giving the impression that he would have been happy to have written this book for the mere pleasure of it and without any compensation. He says it wasn't easy to arrange all the interviews, but the only principal he failed to interview was the team owner, Bernard Tapie, a Donald Trump, larger-than-life character, who spent time in jail for fixing soccer matches after his few years in bicycling. He still manages to give a thorough portrait of Tapie, highly recommending the documentary "Who is Bernard Tapie?"
He personalizes his narrative, describing in detail his visits with LeMond and Hinault at their homes, giving the impression that he would have been happy to have written this book for the mere pleasure of it and without any compensation. He says it wasn't easy to arrange all the interviews, but the only principal he failed to interview was the team owner, Bernard Tapie, a Donald Trump, larger-than-life character, who spent time in jail for fixing soccer matches after his few years in bicycling. He still manages to give a thorough portrait of Tapie, highly recommending the documentary "Who is Bernard Tapie?"
He offers up one fascinating anecdote after another, even boggling LeMond with his research. He interviewed LeMond with his wife Kathy and includes many of her poignant interjections, letting us truly get to know them. Andy Hampsten was one of LeMond's two English-speaking teammates on that 1986 La Vie Claire team of ten riders. Canadian Steve Bauer was the other. There were five French riders, including Hinault, and two Swiss and a Swiss director, Paul Kochli, another most fascinating individual, a great innovator who was known as "the kooky professor." Moore's visit to his compound full of computers and file cabinets is another of the many highlights in the book.
Moore has a great facility for making his subjects fully open up to him. LeMond felt so comfortable with him that he mentions in an aside that when he was standing on the podium on the Champs Elysees after his victory the thought crossed his mind wondering if the uncle who had molested him as a youth was watching. Hampsten tells him, "I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone." On a stage in the mountains Hampsten was in a small lead group with LeMond, but not Hinault. Just as the final climb began Hampsten surged ahead to lead LeMond out and to push the other riders to their limit. The others couldn't keep up. LeMond didn't chase after Hampsten, leaving that to the other riders so he wouldn't overly exert himself. When Kochli saw what was happening, he drove up along side Hampsten, as this was before the riders had radio communication with their director, and instead of reprimanding him told him to keep riding hard and to go for the stage win and yellow jersey. He said, "Your two big-headed teammates are bickering over it like its their privilege. The best thing for this team would be for you to take the Yellow Jersey tonight." Hampsten kind of laughed to himself, as he knew he didn't have the energy to sustain his effort, he was just going for a short spurt to try to shake things up, as he was totally loyal to LeMond.
Moore has a great facility for making his subjects fully open up to him. LeMond felt so comfortable with him that he mentions in an aside that when he was standing on the podium on the Champs Elysees after his victory the thought crossed his mind wondering if the uncle who had molested him as a youth was watching. Hampsten tells him, "I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone." On a stage in the mountains Hampsten was in a small lead group with LeMond, but not Hinault. Just as the final climb began Hampsten surged ahead to lead LeMond out and to push the other riders to their limit. The others couldn't keep up. LeMond didn't chase after Hampsten, leaving that to the other riders so he wouldn't overly exert himself. When Kochli saw what was happening, he drove up along side Hampsten, as this was before the riders had radio communication with their director, and instead of reprimanding him told him to keep riding hard and to go for the stage win and yellow jersey. He said, "Your two big-headed teammates are bickering over it like its their privilege. The best thing for this team would be for you to take the Yellow Jersey tonight." Hampsten kind of laughed to himself, as he knew he didn't have the energy to sustain his effort, he was just going for a short spurt to try to shake things up, as he was totally loyal to LeMond.
When Moore told LeMond the story, he was astounded. He wasn't upset, just in awe, commenting, "Wow. Think what that would have meant to Andy." Moore interviewed Hinault before LeMond. As he interviews LeMond, he shares many of Hinault's comments on his version of events, often making LeMond shake his head in disbelief. I was constantly going "wow" myself, feeling as if I was right there with Moore, loving every minute of it, knowing how thrilling it must have been for him to be able to talk to all these people who had been involved with this legendary race.
Moore also interviews Shelly Verses, a young American who was the first woman to serve as a masseuse and soigneur in the world of professional bike racing in Europe working for the 7-Eleven team at that year's Tour before being recruited to the La Vie Claire team. She too is remarkably candid. The year before at the 1985 Giro d'Italia, when she made her first appearance in Europe, all the traditionalists were totally aghast that a woman would be massaging the legs of a team's riders. "What do their wives and girl friends think and who is she sleeping with," everyone speculated.
She was subjected to all sorts of harassment. She said the great Italian rider Francesco Moser came by before a stage and asked her to work on his legs. She didn't know who he was and initially scoffed. When she realized it was Moser, she did oblige him and was mightily impressed by his legs. "They were different to my guys," she said. Hinault too checked her out at that Giro. She learned that he liked cherries, just like Ron Kiefel, one of her American riders. She always tried to have a bowl full to please Kiefel and then would offer a few to Hinault whenever she saw him. "It was our little secret," she said. "It was adorable."
But she was utterly appalled by Hinault's back-stabbing, viper-like treatment of LeMond at the '86 Tour. Moore says that she didn't initially reveal how disturbed she was by Hinault's behavior in their first interview, and felt guilty about it. She emailed him later and said she hadn't been strong enough in her disdain of Hinault's behaviour, comparing him to a virtual Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini.
Hampsten agrees that Hinault wasn't very honorable in that Tour but also says, "I don't think he could have been nicer as a teammate. He was just so frickin' nice." Another ex-teammate, the Dane Kim Anderson, who was the Leopard Trek team director of the Schleck brothers last year, said, "I would die for that man."
The book is a deep mine of juicy observations and telling detail that reveal mountains of insight into the sport of bicycle racing and its gladiators. It was a great, great read and made even greater to be reading it in a carol at one of the premier collegiate libraries in the world. It wasn't easy to gain entrance to the University of Chicago library either. I had to get an Info Pass from the Chicago Public Library stating that they could not procure the book for me before they'd allow me in.
According to worldcat.org the next nearest library with a copy of "Slaying the Badger" is at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, 204 miles away. The book is such an exhilarating read, I would gladly bicycle that far to read it. I wanted to find out who had procured the book for the University of Chicago and give him my heartiest thanks, and also to ask who was responsible for all the other great cycling books in their collection, some in French, Italian, Dutch and German. I'll be back for a history of Italian cycling and a few others. And I also greatly look forward to Moore's next book on cycling.
She was subjected to all sorts of harassment. She said the great Italian rider Francesco Moser came by before a stage and asked her to work on his legs. She didn't know who he was and initially scoffed. When she realized it was Moser, she did oblige him and was mightily impressed by his legs. "They were different to my guys," she said. Hinault too checked her out at that Giro. She learned that he liked cherries, just like Ron Kiefel, one of her American riders. She always tried to have a bowl full to please Kiefel and then would offer a few to Hinault whenever she saw him. "It was our little secret," she said. "It was adorable."
But she was utterly appalled by Hinault's back-stabbing, viper-like treatment of LeMond at the '86 Tour. Moore says that she didn't initially reveal how disturbed she was by Hinault's behavior in their first interview, and felt guilty about it. She emailed him later and said she hadn't been strong enough in her disdain of Hinault's behaviour, comparing him to a virtual Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini.
Hampsten agrees that Hinault wasn't very honorable in that Tour but also says, "I don't think he could have been nicer as a teammate. He was just so frickin' nice." Another ex-teammate, the Dane Kim Anderson, who was the Leopard Trek team director of the Schleck brothers last year, said, "I would die for that man."
The book is a deep mine of juicy observations and telling detail that reveal mountains of insight into the sport of bicycle racing and its gladiators. It was a great, great read and made even greater to be reading it in a carol at one of the premier collegiate libraries in the world. It wasn't easy to gain entrance to the University of Chicago library either. I had to get an Info Pass from the Chicago Public Library stating that they could not procure the book for me before they'd allow me in.
According to worldcat.org the next nearest library with a copy of "Slaying the Badger" is at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, 204 miles away. The book is such an exhilarating read, I would gladly bicycle that far to read it. I wanted to find out who had procured the book for the University of Chicago and give him my heartiest thanks, and also to ask who was responsible for all the other great cycling books in their collection, some in French, Italian, Dutch and German. I'll be back for a history of Italian cycling and a few others. And I also greatly look forward to Moore's next book on cycling.
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