Martin Dugard | Training Ground

I'm In The Car

            After waffling for a couple days on whether or not I wanted to brave the crowds and cover the Tour de California, I reminded myself that I’d made a commitment to Inside Sport-Australia to write a story. So I sucked it up yesterday and aimed the Suburban down to Rancho Bernardo to spend a few minutes with Team Fly V Australia.

            Now, I like to write about things from a distance, flitting around the edges and getting the lay of the land before wading in to ask direct questions or make pointed observations. But within two minutes of meeting team owner Brett Roland, I was accepting an invitation to spend the stage in their team car. So much for distance. It was going to be me, Brett and Team Director Henk Vogels in their Subaru for a solid five hours. My first thought was that I couldn’t drink anymore coffee for the morning, because five hours without a stop is a long time to wait for a nature break. And the second was a nagging little fear that it would all be very claustrophobic.

            I needn’t have worried. Brett gallantly offered up the shotgun seat, Henk quietly began offering pointers on the subtleties of cycling, and we were off.

            I’d always wondered about riding in the team car, having never done so before. I found that it’s one of the most exciting ways to cover a race that you can imagine. Not only are you in the caravan of cars, able to lean your head out the window and talk to the riders, but the race radio’s steady crackling update of the breaks and abandons and time gaps makes for a fascinating running commentary. From the list of teams and racer numbers taped on the dashboard, I could tell, for instance, when Frank Schleck went on a break, when he fell back, and when he broke away again.

            The one number we listened for constanly was 151 – that of Ben Day, Team V Australia’s sole remaining rider. The rest of the team had been forced to abandon due to sickness, broken bones, or injury. Henk was constantly feeding Ben advice through the radio, demanding that he ride with this break or that in the absence of teammates. At the very least, it was hoped that Team V Australia might be able to support fellow Aussie Michael Rogers.

            But that wasn’t to be. An early puncture caused Ben to fall behind (he was paced back to the peloton by teammate Curtis Gunn, who had started the stage with severe tendonitis, and then dropped out halfway up the first climb).  All that was left of the day was to help Ben ride respectably, and for Henk to drive the downhills at breakneck speed.

            I just paused to read back through all of that. It’s got a ragged, stream of conscious quality that doesn’t do justice to the day. I’m still processing my thoughts from those five hours. My hope is that I can convey in all honesty how much fun I had. Right now it reads more like a notebook entry, but I’ll fix that by the time I cobble it into a story. Suffice to say that I started the day not knowing anything about Team V Australia, and by the time we were thirty minutes into the race I had forgotten about Levi Leipheimer and his battle to maintain his lead on the final day. All I hoped was that Ben Day might get a stage win, salvaging a gritty, rough tour for Team V. They are an upstart squad, funded recently by Virgin’s new airline service from Australia to the U.S. Australia doesn’t have a national Pro Tour squad, despite the number of Aussies in the peloton. So it’s Fly V’s hope to make that leap. For now they are an underdog upstart, not quite at the Pro Tour level, but ever so happy to be competing against the big boys at the Tour of California.

            So back to the car. I liked the race radio. I liked pulling beside Ben so Henk could offer a few words of advice and offer a bottle. I liked how the entire caravan pulled over at remote spots in the woods to answer nature’s call, making me realize that I could have had that extra cup of coffee my body had craved. And I liked the insights. When one rider from Team Jelly Belly dropped back with a puncture, Henk whispered that, if it was him, his brakes would suddenly become a problem. I didn’t know what he was talking about until a few minutes later, when the rider was hanging onto his team car at 40 miles an hour as someone leaned out to “fix his brakes.” A race official pulled up behind them on a motorcycle, and after twenty seconds tapped his horn to signal that the assistance needed to end. Whereupon the rider split away, and was paced back to the peloton by a number of team cars. It seems that the unspoken rule is that if a rider has fallen back with a mechanical issues, the caravan will help him get back up to the peloton. If he’s just fallen back because of exhaustion, he’s on his own.

            Finally, it was done. Ben finished with a grupetto that tempo’ed the final dozen miles and finished a few minutes behind the lead group. There will be other days and other races for Team V Australia, but for now just nursing one rider through the Tour of California was enough.

            “He’s not going to win,” one fan had yelled to our car, in a surprisingly mean-spirited comment.

            “We already have, darling,” Henk muttered under his breath. “This is David versus Goliath. Just getting to the Tour of California was a victory.”

            He punched the accelerator and we left that fan far behind. 

Positively False

The New York Times has gotten hold of a copy of Floyd Landis's new book. The Will Geoghegan denouement apparently gets touched up a bit, so that Floyd is more proactive in disposing of his former manager once he learns of the infamous call to Greg LeMond. Otherwise it seems pretty boilerplate. I think if Floyd was really committed to selling books he would tell a few more details of what he knows about Lance Armstrong and doping. One way or the other, a few more insights into the world of U.S. Postal would generate a shitstorm of publicity. Cycling's code of omerta runs deep, even for those about to lose a few years of their career. Might as well sell a few books in the meantime, if only to pay the bills.

The original plan with Floyd's book was to launch in London as the Tour gets underway. Leakng a few copies early sure helps. Launching in London, however, will not ingratiate himself with the Tour, WADA, UCI, or anyone else running the world of cycling. At this point, it appears that he doesn't care -- nor should he. He's a good man trying to clear his name. Better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission.

Onward. The Times also selected their pre-Tour favorites. No surprise that Alexandre Vinokourov is at the top of their list, as are Denis Menchov and Alejandro Valverde. The writer must have been sniffing glue if he feels like Oscar Pereiro will win, though I have to agree with my buddy Austin Murphy that Christophe Moreau is the best of the clean riders out there.

But I don't want to start jumping on his bandwagon, if only because I don't want to rally behind a rider and then watch him test positive. That sort of heartbreak is the stuff that's driving throngs away from cycling. Many won't come back. Some will, but with a different point of view. Having said that, the glory of watching a peloton climb a mountain pass overrides that doping cloud. I am williing to suspend my disbelief for 23 day in July, just to watch that spectacle.

Keep pushing... always.

Ventoux

I've never been to Mont Ventoux. Driven past it countless times. Gaped at it from a distance. But I've never actually stood on top.

I say this because: a) Christophe Moreau won the Ventoux stage of the Dauphine Libere today; and, b) I stepped out of the bank yesterday morning and had one of those transportive moments. The heat off the pavement was strong, the air smelled of honeysuckle and civilization, and I felt for the briefest of instants that I was in the south of France. Something olfactory took me there. It was a literal change of seasons, from spring to summer. The calendar says that's still a week away, but I could swear summer started yesterday morning at about 9 a.m.

So I called my buddy Austin Murphy, just to check in on his Tour plans. He's going to skip the first week of the Tour and meet up with me in Foix or Toulouse for l'Etape, before immersing in full journalistic mode. We are flirting with the idea of an initiation rite, one that would include shaving our legs the night before l'Etape. It is all a little too roadie for me, but maybe that's the sort of full commitment cycling moment I require. I'll admit that over the years, driving up and down various mountain stages, Austin and I have commented (often with a wisecrack) about the number of American cyclists from the big travel companies cliickety-clacking up the mountains, walking their bikes. I do not want to be one of them. Better to do a Paper Boy zig-zag than to walk. I figure that training, training and more training will get me up the peaks -- that and a granny gear (do they still call them that?) -- but a little shave might allow more of an incentive by looking the part.

Really, the leg shaving isn't me. And it really isn't Austin. It doesn't feel authentic. I'm not a hardcore roadie. I just want to suffer.

Am I training right now? Oh, yes. I fall in bed at night exhausted and wake up in the morning with legs that feel like dead weight. Guzzling water because I'm dehydrated but watching my food because I want to be lean.

But I'm not getting into specifics. Murph is in full competitive mode, and I don't want to let him know my fitness level.

Anyway. It feels like summer. That's good. All the travel arrangements have been taken care of, with the exception of a car. Need a car. Having trouble getting a rental.

Ah, well. What's summer without a logistical travel snafu?

Keep pushing... always.

Italia

Danilo Diluca won the Giro d'Italia yesterday, which was all well and good. But the real Italian story of the day was Tony Soprano. We've got one week left in the show, and things are definitely coming to a head. Little Steven -- er, Silvio -- gets whacked, Tony's in hiding, sleeping with an automatic weapon at his side, and the bad guys are closing in.

You have to wonder how it's going to end. Almost all the major characters have been wrapped up in a neat little package, their stories tailing off so that Tony's plight can take center stage. On the one hand, there are those who say that Tony must die, because if he lives it somehow vindicates a life of crime (and makes possible a Sopranos feature film), If he dies, it means that Phil Leotardo and his loathsome crew now reign supreme, which would be deeply unsatisfying. You don't watch a show for seven years and root for an unhappy finish. A satisfying finish, perhaps, but not a gratuitous death scene just to satisfy the moralists.

Onward. Despite all I have said in the past, I'm actually being nice to the equestrian people. I stop when I see them coming and step off the trail so I don't spook their horses. However, yesterday I was chugging through a lazy two-hour run up in the hills. It was one of those long hot runs where all you do is get thirsty and make mental lists. Nothing serious. As I came through a patch of scrub and poison oak, the trail turned serpentine. The ground out here in California has been baked to a hard crust by the lack of rain and a warm spring, so I had to watch my footing on a steep downhill. As I came around one corner, I heard horses approaching and stopped. Well, the horses saw me after I saw them, and the lead pony spooked, throwing his rider. She was a large woman and landed hard, and I know this morning that she has bruises in odd places and maybe a broken wrist. However, she had the presence of mind not to let go their reins, and a self-deprecating sense of humor that allowed her to stand up and deflect my apologies.

Her friends weren't so kind, shooting me daggers as they mounted back up and continued with the ride, as if I were a rattler. I have to think that this isn't the last time I'll have a run in like that, what with the increasing number of horse people in my neck of the woods. Runners and mountain bikers use the trails all year round and in the most awful conditions, the horse people just show up when the weather is nice, and yet I always get the feeling we're the unwelcome guests at the party. Ah, well. We'll all find a way to get along.

I don't think the same can be said for Tony Soprano...

Keep pushing... always.

Congrats to Peter

Spending Memorial Day in San Diego, where the weather is balmy and the sun is shining. My wife are here to celebrate our anniversary, so I won't tarry long (she's already endured me watching the Duke-Johns Hopkins lax finale this morning). Just want to say congratulations to Peter Luttenberger, the new 1996 Tour de France champion.

Going down the list, the previous champion, Bjarne Riis, admitted to doping during that Tour. Second-place finisher Jan Ullrich had also been accused of doping. Ditto, third-place finisher Richard Virenque. Fourth-place finisher Laurent Dufaux of Switzerland rode for the infamous Festina team, and after that doping scandal there's no way that the Tour is going to give a Festina rider the maillot jaune.

So congrats to fifth-place finisher Peter Luttenberger -- wherever he may be -- the man who ended the race seven minutes down on Riis.

Keep pushing... always.

Flying

Got a letter from Dr. Brent Kay this morning, telling me that he's taking over as Floyd Landis's business manager and that Will Geoghan is entering rehab to deal with his "problems." Floyd was cc'ed, and the form letter went out to everyone who has had business dealing with Landis over the past year. Dr. Kay is a very fine individual, and a dedicated cyclist, but he's hardly the guy to be running Landis's business affairs. Maybe this is just a temporary sea change, but the reason Landis had that problem with Will is that he appointed a friend, not a professional, to handle a highly professional aspect of his life. I recognize that right now Floyd is in a hunkered down, insular frame of mind, but this is a time for serious damage control. Needs to get top-flight help in their to make things happen.

Ah, I could be wrong. Kay could turn out to be a business genius.

Anyway, I thought Floyd's testimony on Saturday was pitch perfect. I am also enjoying the fact that, far off in Europe, Oscar Pereiro is threatening to quit cycling if required to give his DNA in the Operacion Puerto scandal.

Of course he is. He thinks he's just days away from being handed the maillot jaune, and doesn't want to do anything to end that possibility. Well, as Ivan Basso has learned, being a DNA holdout can only go on so long. And the Tour de France folks aren't going to hand their crown to a rider who may be implicated in cycling's great scandal. This is put up or shut up time for Pereiro. Interesting that it coincides with the Landis trial.

Alright. Time to go. Flying to New Orleans this morning.

Keep pushing... always.

Greg or Eddy?

Who would you rather have testifying in your behalf -- Greg LeMond or Eddy Merckx? As the Floyd Landis show trial got underway yesterday, it was revealed that LeMond will testify against him, and that five-time champ Merckx will vouch for Landis.

I'd rather have Merckx, too. LeMond is showing himself, once again, to be a man whose only concern is protecting his already tarnished reputation.

But back to Floyd. His Mom showed up in court wearing full Mennonite garb and his Dad wore a backwards "ishares" cap, just like Floyd did on the podium, on a far more innocent and celebratory day ten months ago. A Cornell University scientist, J. Thomas Brenna, testified that he found the French lab to be the epitome of scientific efficiency, but under cross-examination revealed that USADA had recently given him a $1.3-million grant.

And so it began. True, there will be days and days of arcane scientific data as the hearing continues, and the wow factor will be spread out over that time rather than providing a continuous stream of eye-popping revelations for or against Landis, but it's shaping up to be a milestone event. Just by virtue of letting the public in on these sham hearings, we are finally seeing what athletes are up against. USADA should not be a rubber stamp agency, conducting witch hunts to prosecute all athletes equally. They should be a fair and impartial body that hears all sides of the argument before making a decision. That's what's so offensive in all this. USADA has been antagonistic from the start, and hardly open to hearing evidence that Landis could very well have been set up the LNDD lab and French officials.

Amid growing evidence that USADA has cherry-picked urine sample test results, ignoring those in favor of Landis and parading the damning results for all the world to see, my favorite quote of the day came Landis lawyer Maurice Suh noted that LNDD reports positive results at three times the rate of any other WADA accredited lab. "Are there three times as many dopers in France?" Then he added: "Maybe those athletes didn't have the opportunity, as Mr. Landis has, to prove their innocence."

I just have this gut feeling that Landis is going to prove his innocence. I also have this gut feeling that it won't matter. I hope I'm wrong, but I just don't see the panel finding in Landis's favor. In the meantime, I have a feeling there will be some groundbreaking (and ball-busting) testimony by his people, showing USADA to be the bureaucratic waste of money that it truly is. He's not going down without a fight.

Keep pushing, Floyd... always.

Lance and Drugs

Now we're getting somewhere.

Floyd Landis yesterday accused my email pen pal Travis T. Tygart of USADA of a plea bargain offer in his doping case: one month's suspension in exchange for hard evidence that Lance Armstrong was doping.

Now, there have been questions about Lance for years, but that's not the point. USADA needs a big fish. None is bigger than Lance. Despite his retirement, they're going to keep going after him.

Sucks to be Lance. Everyone's got skeletons in their closet, but to have guys like Tygart constantly rummaging through your past to advance their career must suck. Think about it: they're always going to be looking for something. This isn't Barry Bonds, where the world knows he's doing something. This is St. Lance. The potential downside to his life and career would make Mark McGwire's slide an asterisk in the doping wars.

So why's Floyd doing this? Public opinion. On the verge of his hearing he's trying to cast doubt on the ethics and motivations of USADA. This is Floyd's way of reminding everybody that it's not about the drugs, it's about trying to bust the biggest name possible, for the biggest possible news splash. This is the Guantanamo Effect transferred to cycling -- and your tax dollars at work.

Free Floyd.

Keep pushing... always.

Bill Stapleton

Pity Bill Stapleton. Tailwind Sports is in the process of seeking a new sponsor to replace Discovery Channel, which is fleeing the cycling world (partially because of the sport's association with doping is bad for their brand, but mostly because they want nothing to do with cycling now that Lance Armstrong is no longer competing). Stapleton must show potential sponsors that his team is competitive, and capable of winning the only bike race that matters to Americans, the Tour de France.

He must also show that he is shocked -- shocked! -- by even the slightest intimation that any of his cyclists have ever used performance enhancing drugs. This, in a sport rocked by the Festina scandal pre-Armstrong's Seven, and currently in the throes of Operacion Puerto and the Landis Sham.

The worst possible case scenario for a man in Stapleton's position would be that his team's top rider would be ineligible to ride in the Tour de France for associations with doping. Second to worst, would be that his top rider would be declared ineligible for the Tour of Italy, forcing the team to rely on a talented but somewhat shaky backup -- sort of like a baseball team benching their top hitter to replace him with the guy who once hit .300 but now only connects part of the time.

That second scenario is currently going down. Discovery benched Ivan Basso, their talented but tainted hope for the future. Italian authorities have reopened an investigation into his participation in Operacion Puerto, thanks to the bags of blood found bearing Jan Ullrich's DNA (where there's smoke, there's fire, etc). So Basso can't race for the forseeable future, starting with the upcoming Ardennes classics. This means that Discovery's team leader stands as Levi Leipheimer, a goodhearted grump with the habit of shutting down in very big races. The days of the Disco Boys and the Big Blue Train have never looked further distant.

Adding gasoline to the fire, Team CSC's Bjarne Riis is making cautious statements about having no regrets about firing Basso on the eve of the 2006 Tour due to those Puerto investigations. Riis and the Discovery Team have never been friendly, and so this is yet another bit of gamesmanship on his part, perhaps letting investigators assume that he knows more about Basso's drug use than we've been led to believe.

Me, I don't know where all this is going, but I do know one thing: this isn't going to be tied up into a neat little package by the first Saturday in July. Unless they find him with a syringe in one arm, Disco will work to get Basso fully reinstated. Beyond that, however, the 2007 Tour de France will be one extremely exciting race. Perhaps not from a cycling point of view, but from a tabloid-style drama angle. Poetntially not so good for Bill Stapleton, but very good for my July.

Can't wait.

Final thing: that "poor like Tyler" comment can't be found anywhere else but here, because it came from a source of mine very close to the Landis investigation who alleges that the words were spoken directly to him. Note how carefully I'm inserting the word "alleges." Hate to have the full fury of USADA's legal muscle knocking on my door, too.

Keep pushing... always.

The Wrath of Jan

Oh, to be Jan Ullrich right now. He already lives in Switzerland, so maybe all this vituperative press he's getting in Germany is well off his radar, but I doubt it. Jan is a sensitive soul and he's the German version of Lance Armstrong -- meaning that an entire nation based their image of competitive cycling around his dogged and boyish persona. I think it's fair to say that he should go into hiding before some loon publicly pummels him for dashing Germany's expectations. I'm thinking sunglasses, baseball cap, Tibetan hideaway. Maybe he and Ian Thorpe can go halves on the place.

And even that won't be enough. People will find Jan Ullrich, and they will make his life miserable until someone else tests positive -- and someone will. Unfortunately, though it's time to go after the really big fish like Major League baseball (and let's, just for a moment, pretend that the National Football League be placed under the same scrutiny), it will be an endurance sports athlete. Tut tut.

Yesterday's disclosure that his DNA turned up in bags of Operacion Puerto blood (one imagines a sanguine Johnny Appleseed or Hansel, sowing droplets of hemoglobin like so many bread crumbs for the inspectors to follow) has put a definitive end to his cycling career. And his reputation. And now guarantees him a level of infamy right up there with Mel "Sugar Tits" Gibson and Ben Johnson. His only recourse is to go straight into some sort of doper rehab, appear on Germany's version of Oprah once that's done, and hang his head while begging forgiveness. A few sensitivity classes, a book deal, and and his redemption will be complete.

But that's all far in the future.

This is the smoking gun that WADA has been looking for all along. This gives them a mandate, at least in their minds, to really kick some doper ass. As a result, they've now got ProTour teams lining up to give DNA samples to they can routinely demonstrate their innocence. Think about it: to be a professional cyclist in this day and age means a presumption of guilt. To race at the most elite level, a cyclist must forfeit their civil liberties and submit to a sample of their genetic code. This invasion of privacy makes Social Security number disclosure seem rather small time.

Orwellian. That's the word that comes to mind.

Keep pushing... always.