Sports Illustrated‘s Rick Reilly tells us about Lance’s victory:
It was pudding, this sixth Tour de France win for Lance Armstrong. Easy as a Sunday ride with your arthritic aunt. He could’ve won it while doing his taxes.
Except when spectators were spitting on him.
Except when they were flipping him off with both hands, cussing him, mooning him, throwing their beer and water at him, slandering his girlfriend, screaming at him, “Dopé!” (Doper) and “Trucier!” (Cheater).
In stage 16, over the most famous mountain in cycling, Alpe d’Huez, the French, Germans and Basques did all that and more, flapping flags in his face, donning grotesque animal masks and daring him to run them over, scrawling four-foot-high insults in chalk on the pavement he had to cover.
“It made me sick,” said Armstrong’s girl, rocker Sheryl Crow, who rode in the chase car directly behind him that day. “I wanted to jump out and spank some of these people. It was just hateful. Here is the greatest athlete of our generation competing in the hardest sporting event in the world, and they act like that?”
They do — more than ever.
*****But swallowing the Tour de France whole is not why Armstrong will be back for seven, if not eight. He will be back because he beat 14 tumors and 4-in-10 odds of surviving, and now he flies up Alps and gives people hope. He’ll be back because he’s the poster boy for living. He’ll be back because the gift is not his bracelets, the gift is him.
So if you think it’s a damn shame that one of the five greatest athletes in American history performs eye-bulging feats in front of almost none of his countrymen, then go to Alpe d’Huez next summer. Go and line that mountain with 10 times the countrymen Armstrong has ever seen there.
Then we’ll see how much spitting goes on.
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They don’t ride up L’Alpe d’Huez every year and probably won’t next year.
Read about the legend of L’Alpe d’Huez here 90th Tour de France
There were between 750,000 and 1,000,000 people on Alpe d’Huez this year. Reilly chose to write about a handful of them. I think he probably reads the drudgereport.
Let’s say the Daytona 500 is a bike race. One million NASCAR fans line the race route after a night and day of camping out (drinking). Does Jeff Gordon make it out alive? Let alone a Frenchman who is on his way to a sixth consecutive victory? Come on.
As a Pro Cycling fan for twenty years, it is so frustrating to listen to the comentary of sprots “experts” who know nothing of the sport. “What’s the big deal about riding a bike…” Try it on an 11% grade at altitude after 120 kilometers that day and two weeks of intense competition prior. Asbolutely the toughest sport in the world!
Furthermore, there were Americans, Russians, Italians, Dutch, Belgians, etc.
Jason is right, the whole thing is blown out of proportion. It’s not like American fans never throw debris on the the field, track, or court, spit on, and curse and taunt players.
Morons!
Regardless of whether the ugliness aimed at Lance Armstrong was the work of few or many, it is sad.
The French would probably be mortified to learn that their (extreme minority) behavior was being justified by comparing them to American sports fans. Quelle horreur!
I fear that we’re all going to see much, much more of the same at the Olympics this month as the world takes out its frustrations on our athletes.
But I hope not.
It wasn’t the French fans that demonstrated this childish behaviour.
What really disappoints me since the end of this year’s Tour is that there are so many sports ‘journalists’ who still won’t admit that Armstrong is a great athlete.
I saw one such debate on Jim Rome’s show in which Rome asked someone (sorry, I have forgotten his name) if now that Armstrong has won his sixth straight tour would that ‘journalist’ now admit that Armstrong is one of the greatest athletes today.
The closest he would begrudgingly admit is that Armstrong is the greatest endurance athlete today.
I’ve heard several other such commentaries on other sports shows.
Some people figure that if you don’t throw a ball you’re not an athlete. That’s pretty narrow-minded.
I imagine for our prehistoric ancestors endurance was probably the one quality that best insured survival. Throwing a rock or spear is great, but if you don’t have it in you to go out and do it over and over, or even to drag the prey back to your family, then what?
Tarahumara Indians are known to run down dear and kill them with knives. The Tarahumara routinely live into their second century.