Why the U.S. At Large Doesn't "Get" The Tour de France and Lance's Achievements

In My Humble Opinion
1

This is an editorial on MSNBC about whether Lance Armstrong is Superman. The writer’s thesis is that he may be, but that the U.S. sports fan at large doesn’t appreciate it because of the overhanging cycling-drug use controversy.

I think it goes deeper than that - I think it has to do with a lack of understanding of the difficulty of cycling, contrasted with the seeming ease with which Armstrong has racked up 4 consecutive victories. Think about it - your average person doesn’t appreciate the Lakers’ three-peat, simply because they made it look so flippin’ easy - sure, there was an effort to get mileage out of “Shaq is the most dominant player of his era” but as a real story with real drama, there was zilch coming out of the Lakers-Nets matchup.

Same thing here. Superficially, your average person sees “He won in the past, he’s in the best condition and has a great team” and during the competition, they see “he’s ideally positioned, and he’s taken the lead when he was expected to”.

Where is the drama in any of this? Note - this is no slam on Armstrong - his achievement over the past 4 years is undeniably huge. However, given the lack of apparent drama which is what vaults sports achievement into the stuff of legend, we are left with victories that are worth reporting, but resonate only with those who get the subtlety of the sport itself.

Thoughts?

2

For me, I see the issue as on of knowledge of the sport in general, and of the Tour in specific. Controversies abound in other sports, but the knowledgable fan makes their own judgement about the controversy, and still appreciates the superior athelete. Seeming ease of the wins aside, I think knowledge is the driving factor.

Before the last two Tours, all I knew about bike racing I learned from watching the movie “Cutters” (dating myself terribly!)

Last Tour, I paid somewhat more attention, but the coverage was for mainstream US audience - “Look who crossed the finish line first! (in Paris)” Whoop-de-do, pretty cool that a guy who had fought off cancer won, but no depth. No depth = no understanding of what was involved = less respect for the feat.

THIS year, we watched the OLN (outdoor life network) coverage. Plus I got the streaming reports from the website for each stage. Read some articles, scanned some technical reports on the bikes. Paid attention.

I invested some time, learned enough to ask somewhat less stupid questions (‘what qualifies you for the green jersey?’ and ‘how do they determine which team is the winning team, vs who is the stage leader or the overall leader?’), became interested enough to pay attention and find out some of the answers, and began to grasp the depth of strategy required, the multiple skills required, the complexity of team dynamics, the complexity of the history and culture of the Tour itself… THEN, I began to really appreciate what Lance was doing. You have to really ‘get into’ it to understand it enough to appreciate it. For that, you need decent coverage. For decent coverage, you have to have a perception of a marketable audience, to have a marketable audience you have to have people who understand the sport enough to care, to have enough people care they have to understand … and around we go. There has to be a shift somewhere before the general US audience will appreciate the feat.

I suspect that people who know basketball are still impressed with superior teams. They’ll notice moments that the average viewer doesn’t see and wouldn’t consider remarkable. Increase the knowledge base, and I suspect that Americans would also appreciate the enormity of winning 4 Tours. Heck, of winning ONE.
On the personal experience side:

I got into the sport ‘by accident’ (our cable company added OLN to our package, we noticed the Tour coverage, it seemed more interesting than regular TV, we watched…).

Things that impress me about Lance -

  1. his understanding of the culture of the Tour, like busting his butt to win the second time trial, on the grounds that the wearer of the yellow jersey at the end should have proven he could win in all the varieties of challenge the Tour offers - it would be an insult to the yellow jersey ITSELF to win just by taking the mountains by a wide enough margin and never winning on time or on sprints or in any other way being superior.

  2. His (or his team’s) strategy skills - psyching out the competition, having his team blow out Beloki’s or ONCE’s reserves on climbs before taking off, the constant shuffling of position, calculations of who is a threat and who is not, the willingness to honorably stay out of competitions for stages where the winners do not affect the final outcome of the race… Subtle, gracious, sharp, sometimes even devious, but never poor sportsmanship. The long-term strategy is pretty mind-twisting. Doing that (even with the help of the team manager) while doing 90-100 rpm with your legs, often up grades of 7% or more, while not running into the 100+ other bikes half-an-arms-length away… YIKES.

Not to mention class, style, humility, and being just a regular guy-and-husband-and-daddy. Any guy who has ‘Daddy Yo-Yo’ painted on his bike is okay by me. (That being what his son said when he first saw him in the yellow jersey…) Not being a jerk, AND being a first-class athelete puts him at the top of my ‘favorite sports role models for my son’ category. :slight_smile:

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Why is it necessary to you that the US public, or any segment thereof, “get” either Lance Armstrong or the Tour de France? Why are you compelled to assert that American sports fans, who already spend (or waste, depending on your point of view) considerable time with baseball, tackle football, basketball, golf, tennis, and car racing exend themselves to bother with a bike race? Surely there is considerable drama in the cricket matches in India and sumo wrestling in Japan, but the American public doesn’t get worked up about those games either, so why should they have to “get” the Tour de France or Lance Armstrong?

Certainly Armstrong’s accomplishments are impressive, but, what do I get out of it? Armstrong is a cancer survivor and has managed to earn millions of dollars doing what he loves. Isn’t that enough for him? What more does he want from me? More to the point, what has he done for me?

Speaking only for myself, it is not that I don’t “get” bike racing (or “association football” for that matter); it is that I have enough sports to follow that already satisfy me that I don’t need to bother with a French bike race, even if an American cancer survivor happens to have won it 4 years in a row. “Good for him”, I say, and let me see those baseball box scores. I’m quite happy with Cleveland Indians 1B Jim Thome as my current sports icon, thank you very much. If you don’t like my favoring Thome over Armstrong, what’s it to you? If you like Armstrong, that’s great. Knock yourself out. But take your bike racing and leave me alone.

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There’s a big difference between “getting” and “caring”.

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LOL, Revtim, that’s a great point. :smiley:

Yep, most Americans have other sports they already care about - though I respectfully submit that most people who don’t ‘care’ also won’t bother to ‘get’ bike racing, either. Goes both ways. Not that there is any kind of urgency that anyone either get or care about any sport in particular, IMHO.

Patrick, Was there an implied ‘Americans are stupid not to care’ in the OP? I think I missed some history here… I don’t care about football, either, but I get it fine. Some people are into Sumo, too. :shrug: I doubt that Armstrong cares whether anyone is watching - perhaps WordMan does, but I don’t hear Lance complaining about the coverage or the lack of American fans. Mostly, his reaction to fans is pretty sane, if you ask me - enthusiastic fans, GREAT, bad fans or indifferent fans or nonexistant fans? He won’t be thinking about them years from now when he’s sitting on the beach with his wife and kids drinking a beer. He’s doing his job, and whether anyone else cares or not is beside the point. I like that in an athlete, in any sport. Heck, in any public professional - writers, actors, etc. Just do the job, and let people decide what they think of it for themselves.

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AND HE LEARNED IT ALL FROM INDURAIN!!!

As impressed as I am with Lance (no one can downplay his achievements), I still don’t think he compares to Indurain. Indurain had SO much more competition to work against in his victories (Lemond, Bugno, Chiapucci, Pantani, Zulle, Rominger, Riis, etc. and even early Armstrong). Armstrong’s only had one legitimate rival: Jan Ullrich, who’s talented but not dedicated. To me, Indurain is like Muhammed Ali while Lance is like Lennox Lewis. Of course, don’t know much about cycling before Bernard Hinault so I can’t comment on Merckx et al.

Sorry for the hijack.

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There, there, I’m sure Indurian makes a good role model, too. I just am too new to the sport to have much detail about his history (other than that he’s widely admired). If I start to care a REAL lot, I might look it up. :wink: Or, more to the point, if my son(s) start to care - IANASporto, myself. I am just the mother of one (almost 5-year old generally obsessed with golf, fencing, and baseball - hey, whatever, I just gestate them, I don’t explain their hobbies!)

8

Are you by any chance actually referring to “Breaking Away”, where the racing team of the main characters are the “Cutters”?
Great movie.

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There will be what I dub “Tour de New York” this Sunday, featuring the top cyclists in the world. America will get up close and personal with Lance, Ullrich and the rest.