Lance vs. Alberto

sandbag

Speculative article, enjoying read (well i thought so).

So now that the battle on the bikes has ended, the war of words seems to be fully underway. To whit, Alberto Contador remarks to the spanish press that there was palpable tension between himself and Lance Armstrong during the Tour.

And we’re all shocked, of course.

To whit, in return, LA “Twitters” a response. Now, before we discuss the response, can we all agree that arguing via Twitter seems, well, not exactly manly? I mean, Lance, you’re a worldwide celebrity with dozens of microphones in your face at all times, awaiting nothing more than your views on matters you know nothing about. Please, for god’s sake, resist the urge to “tweet.”

Anyhoo….

Lance flames AC about not being a team player. Lance admonishes the youngster to keep in mind, “there’s no I in team.” Apparently those remarks pertained to the fact that AC won the Tour without sufficient regard to aid he got from teammates and without young AC calibrating his tactics to both win the Tour and allow his teammates to sweep the podium, presumably sharing the spotlight with Lance and Andreas Kloden. We would add, nor did Alberto do anything to break the fall of Levi Leipheimer — thus Alberto’s got some bloodstains on his hands for that act of callous indifference.

Apparently Alberto, in Lance’s view, further transgressed from good form when he took opportunities to leave his Astana teammates behind on a couple of particular mountain stages when the Astana team mates felt they were already pedaling plenty fast, thank you very much. Presumably Lance would have wanted AC to balance AC’s own ambitions enough to realize AC might want to stick with his mates and possibly even help carry them to the top for one big Astana love-fest. All for one, man. Semper fi.

Instead, AC quite selfishly took actions that resulted in putting himself safely and comfortably atop the Tour podium with only one, not two, Astana teammates sharing the moment.

Okay, so Lance’s point isn’t exactly wrong. Alberto did seem kind of focused on winning the Tour, and his track record of winning the past 4 major tours he’s entered shows this is becoming a bit of a habit.

By contrast, we look longingly back to the years of Lance’s 7 Tour wins. Veritable Woodstock’s, they were, with Lance literally pulling Postal/Discovery teammates through stage after stage to ensure they got heaps of stage wins and podium girls and lots of time atop the podium, actual statistics notwithstanding. So unselfish does he remember himself being, Lance recalls how he and Bruyneel purposely picked teammates for Lance who they determined were MOST IN NEED of sitting on as Lance pulled for mile after mile.

Yeah, that’s the Lance that Lance remembers.

Of course, it might not have seemed that way if you watched it on TV. But that’s all about it being raced in France, and you know the French didn’t give Lance any assistance when it came to public relations. And the Brits were not exactly allies, either.

Go back and watch those Tour videos and not only will you see that they’ve been slyly edited to make it look like Lance has, year after year, surrounded himself with selfless drones who gutted themselves to lead him day after day through of the race — but you’ll hear those no-good Francophile English guys Liggett and what’s his name pretty much slandering Lance with trash-talk about how the team was “built around Lance,” and how nobody else was supposed to have a chance to do anything but help Lance win.

Blasphemy. Or worse.

Even the podium videos are heavily Photoshopped to remove any of Lance’s teammates and put in their place guys like Ullrich and Basso and so on. We all know that didn’t happen.

No, Lance was always the “US” in “US Postal, the “WE” in “Discovawy.” And that’s one of the things we loved most about him.

The thing that’s really wrong with Alberto Contador.

Comparing these two guys, there’s just no end to the differences, is there?

Like the way Lance came into cycling and quickly became a world-class time-trialer, but then became a world-class climber also. Alberto, on the other hand, started as a climber and then turned into a kick-ass time-trialer. Weird, I know. And Alberto, he wins a few Grand Tours and next thing he wants is to bring along a few hand-picked homeys like Benjamin Noval who are dedicated servants and also happen to speak the same language Alberto does. Unbelievable — I hear you. Oh, and on top of all that, he thinks that winning a few GTs means he should be THE team captain. Like there should only be one on each team.

Lance, avowed bleadding-heart democrat and one-for-all musketeer we know him to be, says, “hey, Alberto, why so greedy? Let’s have EVERYBODY be team captain this year!”

We wept at the generosity.

Fortunately, a last-minute compromise was struck when Lance figured out that if eight or nine guys are going to race, nobody would know who the various Team Captains were unless each one had someone had pulling for them — so Lance offered that he, Leipheimer, Kloden, and Alberto should serve as official Astana domestiques for the poor wretches on the squad who hadn’t had so many chances to win Grand Tours as they have. Folks, Hollywood couldn’t write a story as big as our man Lance. [Unless they do, and then it'll either be Jake Gillenhooy or Matt Damon playing the role of St. Armstrong.]

We asked our trusty research department to go back and find some suspect statistics, which is their specialty, which we could sprinkle into the article to provide a facade of authoritativeness, which is an impressive word. Now, if you’re a certified Lance-lover you might want to skip the rest of this rant, because we all know statistics lie. For example, in over twenty thousand miles that Lance has ridden in his various Tours de France over the years, the statistics say that he only “pulled” for twenty miles. If that were the case, that would mean he sat in the pack or behind the hired help something like 99.99% of the time. And when Lance was winning in France, the record books say that only one time did one of his teammates actually win a single stage — and NEVER did he have a teammate on the podium anywhere near it.

That’s not his fault. Nobody realizes what pathetic riders he sought out. Even Hincapie was quoted as saying, “I was supposed to win races?” Poor chap.

What the statistics don’t mention, is how many times he hurried to the service of his team by taking a ride on the private jet of his good friend and chief hanger-on, Robin Williams. And did the rest of the team join him on the comedian’s Gulfstream? Of course not. Imagine how cramped they would have been squeezing in like that when perfectly acceptable coach seats were available on commercial airlines.

How many guys would be so thoughtful?

Clearly, Lance leads by example. And after each stage, he allowed the team to arrange a helicopter to transport him back to the hotel just so he could get his massage out of the way first — ensuring the team masseuse would be completely free for the bus pulled in with the rest of the boys. Whatever their names were, Lance would say fondly. Servant leadership, I believe it’s called.

And all he wants is for Alberto to pick up some of these traits, for the good of the whole team. Hopefully Alberto will get his head right and realize the gift that Lance is offering via his oh so instructive tweets.

So Lance is off to form a new club, seemingly named “LiveStrong/Radio Shack p/b AARP” and is actively recruiting anybody except the best rider in the world. Preference will be given to applicants who show an affinity for Early Bird specials, suspenders and iced tea, Metamucil, and the movie Cocoon.

Contador, by contrast, has been cast aside to the waiting arms of EVERY OTHER PROFESSIONAL TEAM in the world. Somehow, we think he’ll come out alright.

What A Difference A Year Makes

The 2010 TdF route was announced last week and, ou est la! It largely involves a long, hard bike ride around France. Yes it has different features and towns and mountain passes, and yes it lacks a Team Time Trial and Mont Ventoux and so on, but if you step away from all the plusses and minuses, what’s clear is that winning next year’s Tour won’t be about the route. Nor will it be about the bicycles or the other gear, because all the teams who get invited have the finest gadgets on the market. So the question that remains, is whether it will be about who brings the best team, or who brings the best rider.

Let’s step back and look at Lance’s 7 consecutive wins. Arguably he came each year with a great support team, and in a few years he had the absolutely indisputably best squad to serve his goals. And that’s what they were there for. The strategy was simple: It was all for one, not one for all. The fact that in seven years on only one occasion did a teammate of Lance’s win a single stage, shows clear evidence of that. Anyway, it worked, and there’s nothing wrong or insidious about such a strategy. Anyone who belly-aches about it has to be suffering from overwhelming pangs of jealousy.

But then a funny thing happened.

Just as Lance left the sport to chase around marathons and female celebrities, young Alberto Contador made his own spectacular debut by winning any and every major Tour he bothered to show up for. He won the TdF and Giro the first time he’d entered either of them. Then he won the Vuelta Espana to complete the hat trick. His name and palmares starting climbing the record books faster than he rides uphill.

But then an even funnier thing happened.

Apparently Lance figured out there was no way he would catch the fastest people in the marathons, or maybe he got tired of so easily conquering starlettes, but for reasons we may never fully appreciate he decided he wanted to race bicycles again. And, will ironies never cease, he plops himself down as the new head or co-head or presumed-head or honorary head or whatever, of the very squad that would otherwise be lead by Alberto Contador

Now, we’ve written with unique laser-focused insight (from above) about the interesting chemistry that played out as a result of conjoining these two very strong but polar opposite athletes and mixing them thoroughly with a batch of other very strong athletes, AKA the Astana Squad of 2009. What the public saw was latent energy. It was like watching a nuclear reactor. You don’t see much more than clouds of white steam poring out the roof, but it scares you anyway. What went on within the team, was probably not so unlike the inside of said reactor, with uranium rods (AKA, Lance) throwing off atoms so powerful they’re capable of producing temperatures found on the surface of the sun, and lead rods (AKA, Contador) absorbing such energy, more or less, but undoubtedly getting fried in the doing.

Forgetting all the fission taking place inside hotels and onboard the team bus, their interactions on the race course were even more interesting. Lance quickly showed that he remains amazing fast on the bike, and even faster at sending out caustic Tweets about the shortcomings of his teammate. Not once did he do so about other riders on the Astana squad, or riders on other squads. In fact, he spoke to the press during the race about how people inside the peloton seemed to be playing more nicely with him than they did prior to his hiatus from the sport. Oh yes, he was a veritable love machine toward 189 of the 190 starting riders, himself included.

But of course there was no love in store for Alberto Contador.

Now, many, or lets just say every, rider that has faced Lance’s focused scorn over the past decade, has found a way to promptly implode. He gives them “The Look,” and they dutifully start riding for second place. It’s been that simple. And that’s because Lance is a master at sports psychology and playing mind-games that would make a waterboarding CIA interrogator claim “not fair!”

But somehow Lance couldn’t figure out how to crack the shell of this so-called mama’s boy named Contador. When harsh words and harsher looks failed, Lance divided the Astana squad into two parts: those that would faithfully support Lance’s efforts to win, and those that wanted to find work outside the sport of cycling. So young Alberto found himself sitting alone, while Lance and his gang of hangers-on heaped scorn and derision toward him.

Most of us would have wilted under this barrage. Most of us would have begged to bow at the knee of Lance and be allowed to serve his majesty. Most of us would have gotten in line, zipped our lips, and done as told. What Alberto Contador said in response, he said with this legs.

Lance rode dazzlingly, and earned his way back onto the podium, which we wouldn’t have bet on. It was just too big of an ask after too long of a sabbatical. But he did it and we salute him. Nevertheless, no matter how hard he rode, Alberto Contador rode harder. Contador won in the mountains and he won in the individual time trials — both parts of the race that Lance dominated in his heyday. As tellingly, Contador beat Lance without the support of the Astana squad, which cowered behind Lance. Lance Tweeted about Contador such silly things as, “there’s no I in team,” to which we scoff because that’s all there ever was at Postal/Discovery, and he scoffed about apparent tactical blunders by his teammate — but Contador proved that he could sustain himself against Lance’s legs, Lance’s mouth, and Lance’s Astana-clad goons.

Now We Look Forward to The 2010 Tour

Even before the 2009 race was concluded, Lance started licking his wounds and plotting the next battle. His first move was to announce that he and his goons would start a new squad and virtually everybody at Astana would be invited in. However, suffice it to say that Spanish will not be spoken on the team bus, and anyone who can read Espanol would have noted on the invitation that they weren’t invited.

On the face of it, that leaves Alberto almost singlehandedly riding in 2010 against Lance and Astana. As we described above, there would be nothing particularly new about that arrangement. And while Alberto’s situation at Astana, a team that is only vaguely defined at this time, is less than ideal, it is almost certain he’ll arrive in France in July with a much friendlier and more supportive squad than he had around him in 2009.

As such, Alberto uniquely brings the mental toughness to win the Tour again, notwithstanding all the rocks and bombs Sir Lance may cast his way. It should be an extraordinary event and a wonderful battle to watch, and we’re already looking forward to July 2010.

hopper1

Did you have to copy/paste a whole article here?
You couldn't have just elected to include a link....... FFS!

Edit it, man, it's wasting space.

sandbag

I could have but I thought i was doing a favour, you can read without leaving BR. Or were you thinking of the whole 10 gigabyte of server space(exaggerated) the article takes up? It's a drop in the ocean. It's a quality post for once. HaHa.

It hardly wasting space. A forum can store 10 million posts and they are in compressed format and archived when maintenance is run. Servers rent out unlimited space nowadays.

hopper1

No, I had to scroll all the way down, passed it to post my objection!

sandbag

If you want to be proper, then tell BR to make rule for users to properly title there posts specifically to what they are asking, talking about.

Eg.

Title thead: "What is wrong?"

Nobody knows what is wrong because the thread starter wasn't accurate enough with there thread description. So lots of users, much more than necessary, click on the thread needlessly, as well as wasting there time. This puts a strain on the forum, server, slowing it down for all of us.

If you like to read every single thread regardless, then no problem. Helpful one's do. I don't think everybody does though.

Rant over.

andyp

So you've taken someone else's content and posted it as your own and not even credited the original author? Nice.

sandbag

andyp wrote:

So you've taken someone else's content and posted it as your own and not even credited the original author? Nice.

Posted it as my own? I have not at all and I do not have the author. Fine i put it in quotes just harder to read.

Stick your head out and it get's bashed always.

hopper1

Well... wind your neck in, then!

And, WTF is all this rant about, FFS!

sandbag wrote:

If you want to be proper, then tell BR to make rule for users to properly title there posts specifically to what they are asking, talking about.

Eg.

Title thead: "What is wrong?"

Nobody knows what is wrong because the thread starter wasn't accurate enough with there thread description. So lots of users, much more than necessary, click on the thread needlessly, as well as wasting there time. This puts a strain on the forum, server, slowing it down for all of us.

If you like to read every single thread regardless, then no problem. Helpful one's do. I don't think everybody does though.

Rant over.

Is that aimed at me by any chance?

martinlarson@msn.com

Now that you have bowed before your God, AC. Look back at what Lance has accomplished. I do not like AC period. He is not a team player. Yes, Lance had a team around him all seven times. No other biker has raised the sport to the level it is when he is riding. Ac will never gather the worlds attention as Lance has done and is still doing.
AC is a very good rider but you would have to be nutz to be on his team.

Garry H

martinlarson@msn.com wrote:

Now that you have bowed before your God, AC. Look back at what Lance has accomplished. I do not like AC period. He is not a team player. Yes, Lance had a team around him all seven times. No other biker has raised the sport to the level it is when he is riding. Ac will never gather the worlds attention as Lance has done and is still doing.
AC is a very good rider but you would have to be nutz to be on his team.

Pokerface

You could have summarized what the article was all about and provided a link to the original. That way people could decide whether it was reading in full or not.

As it stands - most people just see a giant wall of words and skip it.


That's probably why it was a waste to just cut and paste the whole article.

Garry H

Pokerface wrote:

You could have summarized what the article was all about and provided a link to the original. That way people could decide whether it was reading in full or not.

As it stands - most people just see a giant wall of words and skip it.


That's probably why it was a waste to just cut and paste the whole article.

What wall of words?

sandbag

hopper1 wrote:

No, I had to scroll all the way down, passed it to post my objection!

sandbag

hopper1 wrote:

Well... wind your neck in, then!

And, WTF is all this rant about, FFS!

sandbag wrote:

If you want to be proper, then tell BR to make rule for users to properly title there posts specifically to what they are asking, talking about.

Eg.

Title thead: "What is wrong?"

Nobody knows what is wrong because the thread starter wasn't accurate enough with there thread description. So lots of users, much more than necessary, click on the thread needlessly, as well as wasting there time. This puts a strain on the forum, server, slowing it down for all of us.

If you like to read every single thread regardless, then no problem. Helpful one's do. I don't think everybody does though.

Rant over.

Is that aimed at me by any chance?

No offense given. I am just pointing out that the space of the post is not a issue at all. If it was, BR would have alot of rules in place already. There is already a limit in place of how much you can post. I didn't breach this limit. What is more demanding, is incorrectly titled threads that slow down the forum for all. Lance and Alberto are the issue .

If you worried about space, i know of 50gig p** take banter space that can be reclaimed .

If it's too long apologies.

sandbag

Pokerface wrote:

You could have summarized what the article was all about and provided a link to the original. That way people could decide whether it was reading in full or not.

As it stands - most people just see a giant wall of words and skip it.


That's probably why it was a waste to just cut and paste the whole article.

Ok guilty. I will take heed.

sandbag

martinlarson@msn.com wrote:

Now that you have bowed before your God, AC. Look back at what Lance has accomplished. I do not like AC period. He is not a team player. Yes, Lance had a team around him all seven times. No other biker has raised the sport to the level it is when he is riding. Ac will never gather the worlds attention as Lance has done and is still doing.
AC is a very good rider but you would have to be nutz to be on his team.

He probably been intimidated by Lance coming into the team taking over and so had to decide to do his own thing, as he has his own special ability. This makes him look a bad team player.

Garry H

He was by far the best overall candidate in the team (and in the race), probably felt that his obligation to Astana was to win the Tour. Can you imagine how Hinault would have reacted had he been in the same scenario as Contador...

chriskempton

martinlarson@msn.com wrote:

Now that you have bowed before your God, AC. Look back at what Lance has accomplished. I do not like AC period. He is not a team player. Yes, Lance had a team around him all seven times. No other biker has raised the sport to the level it is when he is riding. Ac will never gather the worlds attention as Lance has done and is still doing.
AC is a very good rider but you would have to be nutz to be on his team.

Why do you say that Martin? US Postal under LA was, as described above, a relentless line out at the front of every remotely mountainous TdF stage. Potential tour contenders eg Roberto Heras were reduced to total subservience to Lance's aspirations. That was a team you'd have to be "nutz" to be on.

It's true what you say about LA's global profile, but as a team mate, he's a nightmare.

In what way is AC not a team player? I thought he did a remarkable job of keeping his mouth shut for the sake of the team under unbelievable provocation last year.