SB Nation User Blog: SportsAcademic

Man Steals 900 Bikes in Switzerland...

SportsAcademic — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 06:30:17 -0000

Man Steals 900 Bikes in Switzerland...

Since his retirement, a 70 year-old man has done little other than steal bikes and resell them. The government finally caught him but his tally was up to 873 stolen vélos. Nice. His punishment? 2 years probation and he has to pay back taxes amounting to 45,000 euros on his illicit bike sales.

Moral of the story? 1) If you're going to steal bikes, do it in Switzerland. And 2) don't let any 70 year-olds get too close to your new Pinarello.

I saw this story in Le Monde about a new laser attachment that projects a cycling lane around the...

SportsAcademic — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:11:56 -0000

I saw this story in Le Monde about a new laser attachment that projects a cycling lane around the bike while you're riding it. Who needs paint when a laser will do the trick.

Personally, when an SUV hauling ATVs drives by me honking (after nearly clipping me) I'd rather have a laser blaster to take out their rear tire. But that's just me...

Cafe Bookshelf: Sex, Lies and Little Bikes

SportsAcademic — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 02:28:11 -0000

Crib Sheet

Title: Sexe, mensonges et petits vélos (Sex, lies and little bikes)

Author: Willy Voet

Publisher: Calmann-Lévy

Pages: 238

Order: HERE

What is it? A French novel about a young cyclist breaking into big-time cycling and big-time doping.

Strengths: Occasionally good prose; inside details on doping in professional cycling after the Festina Affair.

Weaknesses: Unsympathetic and relatively flat characters; frequently tedious details about doping (dosages, frequency, delivery, etc.).

Rating: ★★ (2 of 5)

A year after his arrest for transporting doping products across the Franco-Belgian border (the event that sparked the Festina Affair), Willy Voet published his tell-all memoir, Breaking the Chain (Massacre à la chaîne), with Calmann-Lévy. A year later, Voet again teamed up with Calmann-Lévy to publish Sex, Lies and Little Bikes. Voet claims that where Breaking the Chain "opened the lid" on doping, this novel "looks into its depths."

Sex, Lies and Little Bikes follows the evolution of a young French professional cyclist, the twenty-three year old Arnaud Frochet, from his signing with a top-shelf professional team (Prell) at the end of the 1999 season to his tragic "accident" after the 2000 off-season.

As the novel begins, we learn that Arnaud, riding for a small team with an even smaller budget, had come out of nowhere to win the Tour of Lombardy in 1999, attracting the interest of teams with thicker wallets and leading him to Prell. After a series of track races (where he exposes how the events are fixed and what kind of amphetamines some of the riders are on), Arnaud meets up with the entire Prell team at a ski resort for their off-season camp. The last night of the camp, Arnaud is invited into a room where the entire team awaits in order to "baptize" him: a syringe of pot belge is injected into his arm in small doses by every member of the team. After becoming the victim of this ritualized introduction to professional cycling he says, "I was born into a new life."

More on the flip... (contains spoilers)

In addition to enjoying the occasional pot belge together, the team also periodically enjoys the occasional woman together (hence the title). Women, even Arnaud's fiancée, are little more than objects in the novel, and the text is surprisingly uncritical of this brutish perspective.

After this opening, Arnaud begins taking EPO and growth hormones, reluctantly at first, with the help of a French doctor and a pharmacist in Switzerland. Eventually, to avoid driving over the border, he has the juice mailed to a reliable friend who passes it along to him. He also buys a centrifuge in order to test his own hematocrit level and stay ahead of the doping authorities. Part way through the season, however, one of his teammates is busted with a Riccò-esque hematocrit level and kicked off the team, only to appear later in the novel as a dealer and user. (The message: once a doper, always a doper.)

When Arnaud's fiancée discovers he is using, he offers the following explanation:

OK, I use a little EPO from time to time, so what? I'm doing what everyone else does, that's it. Don't think I came up with this on my own. To make it in professional sport you have to go this route. It's either that or be a little shit that nobody notices. And it's not EPO that wins races or prize money. It's just a supplement, an aid to hold up under the demands of the work. . . . Would we be in this sweet house if I had to ride on nothing but mint tea?

This justification is an update of the now century-old rationale that goes like this: cyclists are asked to do superhuman rides by fans and race organizers and they need "help" to make it. In the 1930s riders were called the forçats de la route (forced laborers of the road) and needed "dynamite" to overcome the imposed work and complete the race; and as Anquetil famously said, "the Tour can't be won on mineral water alone."

During the fictional 2000 season, Arnaud has some success, particularly in the Vuelta, but fails to achieve what he considers to be his full potential. Once the season ends, he gets out of his contract with Prell and signs with a big Italian team. But before starting the new season with them he is persuaded to try a new form of doping using artificial blood. Things go badly, however, and he ends up in a coma before waking up to find himself partially paralyzed and unable to talk. The novel ends abruptly with Arnaud receiving a brief visit from his very first professional coach who kisses his forehead before silently leaving the hospital room.

The novel is narrated in the first person and its style, at first, is strangely reminiscent of famous French author Louis-Ferdinand Céline. But a few chapters in, Voet seems to lose sight of the narrative and fixates on tedious details of doping regimens, including details on how the drugs are procured, how much is administered, how and where it is injected, how doses are paid for and procured, etc. etc. In other words, the novel is sabotaged by its author's experience as a soigneur for Festina and the story loses out in favor of a doping exposé.

It is also regrettable, I think, that the novel reaffirms the guilt of the rider and fails to sufficiently implicate sponsors and team management as part of the problem. Arnaud "assumes responsibility" for his actions and, although he calls himself a "lab rat," he acknowledges that his has been "a consenting rat." The final chapter (about Arnaud's paralysis) amounts to little more than the villain's just punishment. In Céline's famous French novel, Voyage au bout de la nuit, the author uses his counter-cultural prose to cast blame on the government and the many cowardly businessmen who profited from the men who died in World War I. Though it attempts to capture Céline's ethos, Voet's novel--instead of looking out and situating the doping problem in its full context--focuses the blame on the individual rider and make it easy for the reader to dismiss the problem as stemming from individual rather than systemic corruption. In this sense, Voet's novel does not go much beyond the newspaper headlines that vilify dopers and depict the riders as fallen heroes while persitently ignoring the external economic forces that act on them.

Voet had his chances to make this novel a more interesting, nuanced one. In the closing chapters, Arnaud learns that the winner of the 2000 Tour of Lombardy won only because he had made a deal with his break-away partner: one million francs (about $140,000) to feign a mechanical problem. Voet could have easily pointed out the hypocrisy of punishing doping while turning a blind eye to this kind of cheating. Granted there are no needles involved; but race fixing (which, according to both this novel and Breaking the Chain, is a common practice) deceives the public and changes outcomes as much or more than riders on growth hormones. Voet's narrator also notes that the team doctor and soigneur are aware of Arnaud's doping and even point him in the direction of EPO. But in the end, Voet's novel lets them off the hook and, instead of adding the kind of polemic that could have made the novel original, he chooses to focus guilt solely on the rider.

In the final analysis, this novel's protagonist proves less interesting than Voet himself, and Breaking the Chain remains the author's more compelling work. If you liked Breaking the Chain and have an academic interest in both literature and in doping and you like to read French, then read this book. Otherwise, Breaking the Chain may be as much Voet as you will want to read.

WSJ: Armstrong and defunct bank Lehman partner to invest in SRAM

SportsAcademic — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:23:32 -0000

WSJ: Armstrong and defunct bank Lehman partner to invest in SRAM

Collapsed bank Lehman Brothers hopes to benefit via their relationship with Lance Armstrong and their investment in SRAM. If the deal goes through, bankrupt Lehman would own 40% of SRAM...

End Strong

SportsAcademic — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:44:42 -0000

One of my colleagues (a communications prof. who makes films about extreme sports) argues here that Lance Armstrong is returning to racing not for charity or even for ego, but to compensate for, or mask, deep-seated inner strife. If it sounds far fetched, consider that Lance essentially says as much in his own book, It's Not About The Bike.

The full article: http://www.thesportsacademic.com/2008/09/end-strong.htm

Tell him what you think...

Jeffry Louder Wins Tour of Utah

SportsAcademic — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:24:10 -0000

Louder won an impossibly difficult stage 4 and then beat Caldwell by just enough in the TT in Tooele. His team, BMC Pro Cycling, also won the team competition. Here are the top 10, final GC from the Tour of Utah as reported on KSL.com.

1 Jeffry Louder 141 Salt Lake City, UT USA BMC Pro Cycling Team 13:10:57

2 Blake Caldwell 162 Boulder, CO Garmin/Chipotle presented by H3O 13:11:06 00:00:09

3 Glen Chadwick 153 Denville , NJ Team Type 1 13:11:44 00:00:46

4 Burke Swindlehurst 11 Salt Lake City, UT USA Bissell Pro Cycling Team 13:12:10 00:01:13

5 Brent Bookwalter 142 Santa Rosa, CA USA BMC Pro Cycling Team 13:12:19 00:01:21

6 Chris Baldwin 91 Boulder, CO USA Toyota-United 13:12:29 00:01:31

7 Oscar Sevilla Rivera 44 Ossa de Montiel, SC Spain Rock Racing 13:13:01 00:02:03

8 Peter Stetina* 167 Boulder, CO USA Garmin/Chipotle presented by H3O 13:13:32 00:02:35

9 Darren Lill 145 Santa Rosa, CA BMC Pro Cycling Team 13:14:05 00:03:07

10 Phil Zajicek 6 Boulder, CO USA Team Health Net presented by Maxxis 13:14:28 00:03:31

Peloton, Tour of Utah

SportsAcademic — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 19:45:54 -0000

Peloton, Tour of Utah

Tour of Utah, Saturday, taken at Sundance.

A few more photos here.

Should doping be legalized? Discussion in "Le Monde"

SportsAcademic — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:06:54 -0000

French daily "Le Monde" has asked its readers if doping should simply be legalized.

Here are truncated translations of a few representative entries:

"Yes . . . Why criminalize a problem in the name of asinine purity and some sporting ideal dictated by people like Prudhomme who are self proclaimed censors instead of opening up a debate where medical questions could be debated and controlled instead of leaving it up to shady charlatans who administer dangerous drugs in the shadows."

"Doping could bring about serious harm to the riders, not to mention it wouldn't help the popularity of the sport."

"Yes. If everyone is on the juice, no one is."

"Yes. These activities (soccer, cycling, tennis) are there to help sponsors and organizers get rich just like in the days of gladiators when slaves were thrown to the lions to strengthen the power of the political class. In any case, the 'people' don't care if athletes are juiced, they want a spectacle and if there is blood, so much the better. So why so many scruples? The people want games, give them games and pull in as much cash as possible along the way."

"No. That would essentially force everyone, even those who currently don't dope, to take something thereby putting all the riders' health at risk."

The full discussion (and a cute cartoon depicting two competing soy beans[?]) can be found here: http://vidberg.blog.lemonde.fr/2008/07/20/faut-il-legaliser-le-dopage

Thanks to my colleague Scott for pointing this site out to me.

You know you've watched too much of the Tour when...

SportsAcademic — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:22:47 -0000

You know you've been watching too much of the Tour de France when...

...you raise your hand and look behind you when you want food passed to you at the dinner table.

...you draft behind other shopping carts at the grocery store.

...you shave your legs and walk around the neighborhood in spandex.

...you begin referring to your family doctor as a "soigneur."

...you pass cars going up a hill and look back at the other drivers to see if they're "in the red."

...you raise your hands in triumph when you beat your wife to the TV remote.

...after being the first one in the family to reach your house from the garage you instinctively urinate in a small vial.

...you begin wearing a polka dot shirt.

...you start wearing polka dot pants to go with your polka dot shirt.

...your kids unexpectedly walk in your room and you desperately try to flush your Tylenol down the toilet while screaming, "It's not mine! Some Italian just brought it in here!"

...you pull to the side of the road and urinate without leaving the car. Then, when your kids ask what you're doing, you tell them you're just taking care of a little "besoin naturel." You ignore your kids when they ask why the grass on the side where you stopped has died and is giving off smoke.

...during dinner, when you finish a drink, you nonchalantly throw your glass into the next room.

...you scream "Six points! Kaching!" every time you drive under a green light.

The Sports Academic

Yellow Lab Coats... or How To Save The Tour

SportsAcademic — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:39:09 -0000

Dear Tour de France organizers,

I have an idea to end the doping culture in professional cycling. I believe it may save the sport.

In the wake of Floyd Landis' fall from grace in 2006, the Rasmussen, Mayo, Vinokourov debacle of 2007, and the continued EPO/CERA problems this year, please consider the following as a means to restore public trust and to assure that everyone is racing by the same set of rules.

Since many results in recent years have been achieved through the hard work of shady doctors and dubious labs, I suggest we bring them out of the shadows. When the Tour begins next year, instead of cyclists, invite the doctors themselves to take the starting line. Since they are largely responsible for who wins, get rid of those disruptive middle men on the bikes. Who needs them anyway? We want to see the real competitors go at it.

Instead of jerseys, though, our racing doctors would of course wear lab coats. And they could find sponsorships in the pharmaceutical world. Think about it! No more hypocrisy: "Dopage obligatoire!"

I have heard an unconfirmed report that next year's favorite, Dr. Ferrari, may have already signed with Team Pfizer.

Sincerely,
Un ami du Tour

P.S. for more on the history of doping in the Tour, click here (apologies for the self promotion--but it is relevant...).