Sally and Lance

Lance Armstrong's story has been told a fair bit over the seven times that he won the Tour de France. Sally Jenkins, resident of New York, but writer for the Washington Post, helped write the biography of Lance Armstrong as he recovered from cancer. She admits she's not very objective when it comes to covering Armstrong. Imagine, after all, talking to someone about a sport that was considered something of a second tier American sport, where most Americans had no idea about the rules of the sport, and it wasn't even televised.

Then, single-handedly, Armstrong brought recognition to a sport that, while many still don't follow, now has fans that await the results of the three week event. It didn't hurt matters that Armstrong won it so many times. Had he won it, say, five times even, a substantial effort unto itself, would people have cared nearly as much? Seven times meant that for at least four years (from his fourth to his last win), fans would pay attention to Armstrong. His first two wins were, in itself, not enough to resurrect interest.

Even the third win, equal to that of Greg Lemond, and enough to be quite respectable was probably not enough. At four wins, he was close to tying the record, and networks, like OLN, could envision following the event from start to end, and expect some reasonable number of folks to watch.

Once there was five, then there was "could he win six in a row?", then seven.

One person that's been missing from the discussion of this year's tour is Sally Jenkins. In general, she didn't cover the tour, given her background with Lance Armstrong, but apparently, the tour wasn't really her event. She wasn't to be heard from pining in on Floyd Landis or anything. It may say as much to her autobiography, that she was more interested in the man, than the sport he came to dominate. Perhaps the Post didn't see fit to track the event without its most prominent poster boy. For whatever reason, this year's event was without Sally.

It seems, too, that the U.S. media was less interested in the ongoings when it seemed like Ullrich or Basso, neither Americans, were the top contenders, with Floyd a prohibitive favorite.

The sport requires Americans train in Europe. Phonak took the Postal Service/Discovery Channel strategy of focusing on the Tour de France to the exclusion of other events. Landis and Zabriskie spend a great deal of time in Spain training, when they aren't in the United States. Lance spent more time in Europe than he spent in the U.S. to train for the one race that mattered to him most.

Really, the one way the U.S. might be able to gain interest is to host a tour of its own. Nothing too big, initially. Perhaps a one-week race. It's too hard to compete with a three week race each year and too much to expect bicyclists to abandon the king of road races. Indeed, Landis himself won the Tour de Georgia this year (which is in Georgia, US, not in old Soviet Union). He's also won the Tour of California and Paris, Nice. This has been his most successful year, even without the Tour de France.

This race would require some national coverage, and perhaps a big prize. The goal would, at the very least, be to gain interest among Americans, to participate. True, road racing is still far more popular than its cousin, mountain bike racing, which Landis used to do, until he realized he was a much better road racer. This is similar to the inline skating race community vs. the ice speed skating which gets coverage from the Olympics.

It's interesting how some sports are so fringe that few people follow it. To be fair, even road cycling is obscure enough that most people had heard of neither Landis nor Pereiro before the Tour began. Levi Leipheimer was considered an American that might contend, but he was almost twenty minutes behind. George Hincapie, the loyal Armstrong lieutenant, was over an hour behind. Landis was worried about Menchov, but he was some 7 minutes back. Landis's buddy, David Zabrisikie, was 78th, nearly two and a half hours back. Axel Merckx, co-rider of Landis on Phonak and the son of famed Eddie Merckx, the five time Tour winner, came in 31st, a little over an hour back. That's not so surprising, as the support team often expends energy and the win for the leader.

Still, there are plenty of other sports people train hard for, with not much press.

These days, bicycling can do live monitoring of the bicyclist and get valuable information about how hard to go for it, and at what level to go for it. Allen Lim of CycleOps was helping to monitor Landis during the tour, providing him information that lead him to believe that he could mount a successful attack on Thursday that would allow him to take the lead and hold it.

What might seem like a herculean effort of will and energy is often surrounded by a great deal of planning to arrive in France in optimum conditions. While everyone fretted over Landis's hip, Landis knew his hip better than anyone, and that he could deal with the pain over the three week period. After all, he had done it the year before, and the two years before that. Everyone else was far more worried than Landis was.

Now that the Tour is over, will cycling learn any more about Landis or will he fade to second tier obscurity until the next Tour. He hopes to compete again next year, after his surgery in August. Most of the training takes place in Spring. We'll see how the recovery proceeds.