“I love the smell of chamois in the morning. It smells like … victory,” is the mantra of the uneducated cycling fan who thinks Lance Armstrong is the alpha and omega of the sport.
The tifosi can get its cycling news from a wide variety of informed sources, but the average Joe relies upon the mainstream media, which, being lazy, prefer to rely upon a proven, familiar narrative — say, about a cancer survivor who is a seven-time winner of the Tour de France, the only race they know. Some sports reporters have the phrase programmed into a formatting key lest it become lost in their cavernous, vacant brainpans. They draw it like a pistol and blaze away wildly at the wrong targets, then go back to nipping at the office bottle and wishing it was football season.
The New York Times usually serves up better fare, but today the ordinarily reliable Juliet Macur sinks to the level of her less skillful colleagues, devoting exactly 203 words of a 727-word report to describing today’s Giro stage and the remainder to explaining Armstrong’s subpar performance to date and speculating about when he might “pounce.”
C’mon. The dude is 37, riding a grand tour with a few extra kilos, some hardware decorating his collarbone and a distinct shortage of racing mileage. If he weren’t Lance Armstrong he wouldn’t have made the team, but he is, and hats off to him for having the honor to ride the kilometers and take the beating. But if he has a pounce in him I have yet to see the merest breath of a wisp of a hint of it.
So let Big Tex ride his three-week training race and dream about a subsequent renaissance in Frogland, and give some props to the riders who are actually present and accounted for at this event. Let’s read about Levi Leipheimer, Thomas Lövkvist, Danilo Di Luca, Michael Rogers — all the poor sods who don’t have a convenient tagline programmed into some hack’s crumb-encrusted keyboard.
Someone has to ask the ugly chicks to dance, f’chrissakes, especially if they’re the ones busting all the moves.
Mad Blog Media 
DEEP THOUGHTS WITH JENS
“All of the years training my body has given me the edge because, often, it is who can bear the most pain; it’s not rocket science,” Voigt said. “We just take longer to warm up, like an old diesel engine.”
For Armstrong, the warm-up might be over. Four stages of his first Grand Tour since retiring in 2005 have passed. Voigt said he saw cracks in Armstrong late in Tuesday’s stage: “I don’t think he was looking too convincing.”
A bigger test will come Wednesday. The fifth stage has a climb at the end that quickly rises from 1,086 feet to 6,050 feet.
“It doesn’t matter how old you are or how famous you are,” Voigt said. “It is still going to hurt a lot, for everyone, even me, even Lance.”
I recall watching the wheels come off under Greg Lemond in the early nineties. Let’s hope that Big Tex knows enough to hang up the cleats before the real slide begins.
She does mention Michael Rogers in the story, in a rather unfortunate way. “Michael Rogers of Austria is in third, 36 seconds back.” I keep hoping someday, the mainstream will at least care enough to get the easy bits right.
Khal,
I think you answered your own observation….the downward spiral began in Cali in February when LA kissed pavement.
I read today on the web that he has resigned himself to supporting Levi in his bid to wear the maglia rosa. So I think LA has seen the future and it is supporting another – younger – rider. I wish I am wrong for the work he is trying to do for his charities, and it may come back to bite me in the arse, but he is done as a top level pro.
If LA is smart, he would hand the torch of American mainstream media attention to another rider – like Levi, Horner or even Van de Velde? – but I sadly don’t see him giving up the spotlight so ‘easily.’
I think someone, somewhere said something about “old dogs” and “new tricks”, I just wonder if this is it?
Its probably a little early to know for sure if Lance is out of the top tier for good or just delayed due to the collarbone. At 37 and doing other things, its got to be hard to remain in contention and even harder to get back on peak after goofing off for a few years. But yeah, I looked at his crashing as indicating that he was mentally as well as physically rusty.
As to being 37 and over the hill due to age alone? Joop Zoetemelk? But even old Joop was fading by 37, his world championship win in ’85 notwithstanding.
But I put him at super-domestique, and hope he helps Levi get on the podium this year.