The Foaming Rant: Foul play
- By Patrick O'Grady
- Published May. 19, 2007
“Everybody cheats. I just didn’t know.”
— Dennis Christopher as Dave Stoller in “Breaking Away”
Remember the scene in “Breaking Away” when the evil Team Cinzano rider stuffs a pump into goofy Italophile Dave Stoller’s spokes and shows him what big-time bike racing is really all about?
That’s what happened Thursday in the Floyd Landis arbitration hearing.
Unless I miss my guess, a whole bunch of bright-eyed contributors to the Floyd Fairness Fund suddenly found themselves sprawled in a muddy ditch alongside this race to the bottom, stunned by the revelation that the 2006 Tour de France winner’s business manager phoned up three-time champ Greg LeMond — the night before he was to testify at Landis’s arbitration hearing — to make a sinister, if oblique reference to a past incidence of sexual abuse that until Thursday had not been made public.
If I’d kicked in so much as a wooden nickel to Landis’s war chest, I’d want it back. With interest. Disinfected.
LeMond’s public charge against the soon-to-be-sacked Will Geoghegan gave us a quick peek behind the curtain of Landis’s traveling revival show, and what we saw back there wasn’t nearly as pretty as his oh-so-carefully chosen yellow ties.
It’s one thing to attribute a spectacular collapse and equally spectacular rebound to a series of bourbons with beer backs — or cortisone shots, thyroid medication, dehydration, natural metabolism, space aliens, divine intervention or an inexplicable rift in the space-time continuum. It’s another thing altogether to blame “a beer or two” for what Geoghegan copped to doing Wednesday night — impulsively and on his own, naturally.
Now, I have a powerful thirst myself. But I can’t imagine how many pints of tonsil polish I’d have to gargle before ringing up a retired Tour champ to mutter darkly about weenies. No wonder Eddy Merckx is giving this one a miss. A Belgian in the mood to talk about dicks can always bring up Frank Vandenbroucke and save himself the transatlantic airfare.
How the hell did bicycle racing mutate from the inspiration for the sweetly silly “Breaking Away” to a rancid imitation of “The Aristocrats?” Professional cycling has become one extended dirty joke, with crime after crime, outrage upon outrage, obscenity piled atop obscenity; only the art is missing.
“The Aristocrats” depicts comedians jamming on an inside joke rarely told to audiences, a friendly backstage competition that emphasizes the teller’s ability to push the envelope on the fly. But the clowns taking their pratfalls on cycling’s biggest stage think improvisation means coming up with a quick explanation for a positive dope test. When that falls flat, hire lawyers. Hey, is this an audience or an oil painting? I know you’re out there, I can hear you weeping.
And Geoghegan’s obscene phone call is child’s play compared to what’s going on across the pond, where the old pump-in-the-spokes gag isn’t merely a plot device for a family film, unless you’re talking about “The Godfather.” It seems the briefly repentant Ivan Basso and Michele Scarponi have both developed selective amnesia in their chats with the Italian Olympic committee’s dope cops, apparently fearing the sort of retalation Muzzin tried to lay on David in “American Flyers.”
“The results from the first phase (of the inquiry) are a little less brilliant than we were hoping for,” said CONI anti-doping prosecutor Ettore Torri. “As we all know, during bike races, the easiest thing is to end up in a ditch. They (Basso and Scarponi) have expressed their fears on that matter.”
Fear. I don’t recall seeing much of that from LeMond over the years. Boyish exhilaration in victory, glum resignation in defeat, but fear? A guy who races down the Col de Marie-Blanque at 100 kph doesn’t get scared easily.
What always seemed to light LeMond’s inner fire was foul play — Bernard Hinault reneging on his promise to support his American rival in the 1986 Tour, Claudio Chiappucci’s attack following LeMond’s puncture in stage 17 of the ’90 Tour.
What took place on the phone Wednesday night was just more of the same, albeit at a much lower level. And anyone who ever watched LeMond race could have guessed how he would react. As John Wilcockson noted following LeMond’s comeback victory in 1990: “LeMond is a fighter, and he would never lie down and die.”
Landis may yet win exoneration on the charges against him. But even so, after Thursday, it should be pretty clear who the real champ is.
Was this a championship performance or just another dirty joke? Send your reviews to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown and state or nation. — Editor
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Patrick O'Grady
Patrick O’Grady joined VeloNews as its cartoonist in 1989 and a succession of editors has failed to dislodge him. He was a newspaperman from 1977 to 1991, but it felt too much like work, plus he never got any free bike parts. So he quit for the carefree life of a free-lance rumormonger, and now you have to deal with him, as do we. Sorry ’bout that. O’Grady lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with his wife, Shannon, and their cats, Turkish and Miss Mia Sopaipilla. He has more bikes than chins, but only just barely.