LANCE RETURNS — LONG LIVE KING LANCE?
I’m absolutely frustrated with the negative jawboning going on within the sport of cycling about the imminent return to competition of the most influential rider - and one of the most high-profile athletes - in modern sports history.
The undisputable facts are that he’s exciting, he’ll bring new fans and greater press coverage to the sport, he’ll encourage corporate sponsorship of racing teams, he’ll draw out budding racers to give our sport a try, and he might even help defeat cancer while he’s at it. In my humble opinion, his return to the sport will be positive in almost every way imaginable.
Right. I said almost every way.
See, the way this appears to be playing out is like finding out that that beautiful, sexy girl entering the room….is none other than your first cousin. Nice, yeah, but a clear letdown, right?
Here’s how that metaphor plays out with cuz’n Lance. When speculation about his reemergence finally escalated to rock-solid rumors, the big question became “how” he would materialize in our lives, because his return could have come in a variety of ways, such as:
1. Lance forms an entirely new team with which to take on the world, including going head-to-head against his quasi-brother Johan and the mighty Astana team, or
2. Lance joins an existing team (e.g., Garmin Chipotle, etc.) and marshals a bunch of up-and-comers to go after the big boys (CSC, Astana, etc.) at the Tour, or
3. Lance simply joins Johan and Astana, and they sort out the whole Alberto thing.
Clearly, option #1 seemed like a big stretch, given the logistics of getting together a pro team license, a bunch of free-agent riders, some sponsors, some management staff, and some invites to the big races.
Option #2, on the other hand, would have involved, let’s see, right, a quick wink to virtually any Pro Tour team, and the oceans would part and he’d be off to the races. Sure, there might have been the odd French team that would have turned up its nose, but the line of teams that wouldn’t have flinched at getting a great shot at a Tour win under their belt - not to mention a boatload of free PR for their sponsors - would have been a long one.
Of course, the correct answer to this multiple choice quiz turned out to be option #3, which is, unfortunately, the least-exciting by far.
Why?
Because rather than offering the spectacle of Lance trying to beat the best in the world, instead he’s chosen to join them — thus ensuring we’ll never know for certain whether he could again beat the best in the sport.
Lance will seemingly never go head-to-head against Alberto Contador and Lance will never ride against the powerful Astana squad. Instead, he and Alberto seem destined for separate dance-cards when it comes to the Grand Tours, for the specific purpose that neither man ever be compelled to fight nor help each other win one.
And the powerhouse assets of Astana? They’ll seemingly be divied-up between the two heads of state, with Alberto taking a squad to the Tour, and Lance taking another squad to the Giro. What happens at the Vuelta, who knows — but I’m betting we’ll see a similar separation-of-powers arrangement.
The practical implication is that if Lance had chosen a path that put him head-to-head with Alberto, Air France could have charged me ten grand for a standby ticket in coach class to France next July and I’d have paid it with the family grocery-money if necessary.
That would be an unmissable battle of epic proportions. That would have brought out massive hordes of fans to watch the hijinks on Ventoux, and in the team time trial and the individual time trials. Instead, it looks like my kids won’t be missing any meals next summer because the two most exciting racers in the sport will be kept as far from each other as possible, by mutual agreement.
So that makes me wonder what drove Lance’s decision.
He came back because he wants to compete at the highest levels, he says, and he wants to bring his fight against cancer to a global stage. But maybe he feels the only chance he’d have for a successful career come-back is by joining a superior team that would be successful even if he weren’t riding with it; a team so strong it can pull him onto podiums even if his age or conditioning prove more of a challenge than he expects. Or maybe he is afraid of riding against young Alberto, who probably reminds Lance of himself, minus a dozen years. I don’t expect we’ll ever find out how Lance sifted through all this and came to the decision he did, but that’s where it leaves us for now.
Going back to the original point, I’m unequivocally positive about Lance’s comeback, and have a hard time listening to people who bellyache about it. There’s no bad news here, as far as I can see — but could this homerun have been even sweeter and even more exciting?
I think so.
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