Lance, Alberto, and the Clenbuterol Derivatives Market

Much news in professional cycling, none of which will ever effect me and my bicycles or anybody that I know.

Good news for Lance, and probably good news for Agent Novitsky in terms of avoiding embarassment. Lance is Too Big To Fail. There are too many people wearing those stupid yellow rubber bands around their arms, too many people who have somehow identified Lance with the cancer death of their loved ones for them to take him down. Someday, when Lance thinks the time is right (with the Kondratiev wave, always data-driven) he'll be governor of Texas. Think that's crazy? One word: Arnold.

Bad news for Alberto Contador, who has been stripped of his victories in the 2010 Tour de France and the 2011 Giro d’Italia, and will be prevented from participating in the 2012 Tour de France. The victory in the 2010 Tour de France goes to second-place Andy Schleck of Luxembourg. Some see that as karma for ChainGate.

Personally, I think Lance is dirty but unindictable - too much time and money passed - and I think Alberto is clean but can't disprove the negative. A zero-tolerance policy doesn't make sense with new testing equipment that can sense microscopic traces.

Bad news for Al Gore, who exclaimed, "I didn't know a winner could be unseated two years later! Damn it. Tipper, honey! Oh, double damn it."

Good news for every second place finisher in a race, who can console themselves with the new implicit title. Used to be that Second Place meant First Loser. Now it means: Second Place (Winner In Waiting). Sample media interview:

Bob Roll: Bradley Wiggins, how does it feel to take Second in the Tour day France?
B.Wiggins: A little disappointing for now, but it's OK, and who knows what the next two years may bring? Boy he was strong in those mountains.

Possibly good news for Newt Gingrich, who seems likely to take second place in the Republican primary. He'll be standing by, with Callista if she stays healthy. Nothing else to do.

Bad news for the gambling houses that set odds and pay off wagers on the Tours. For instance, the people who bet on Andy Schleck in 2010 are winners now, right? The people who bet on Alberto and were paid are losers now, right? Oy.

Good news for finance types who see an aftermarket for insurance products that hedge the risk implicit in paying off wagers on one athlete when it can take two years to determine who really won.

Inevitably, those derivative aftermarket products will be packaged and traded just like other exotic, technical financial instruments. It'll take about eight years for the bubble to peak. When you see Pat McQuaid, president of the International Cycling Union, dumping his paper and getting out of the market, it's time to head for the exits.

But they are selling some newspapers, which is what the Tour de France is all about anyway.

Pittsburgh's GNC Gets a Whiff of Weakness from LiveStrong and Lance Armstrong

Any resemblance to Jerry Lewis back in the day is in your head, even if they're both big in France.

There's an old story about a Middle Eastern family, and I've been unable to establish its provenance. It goes like this:

The patriarch of a small family was becoming old and frail. His children were worried about him, so they started preparing a special chicken for him to eat. They fed the chicken grain and corn and helped it become fat, so that their father might eat the chicken and the chicken soup and regain his strength.

The local ruffians saw the family's efforts. When the chicken was at its plumpest, just before it was to be butchered, the scoundrels stole the chicken and ate it themselves.

The patriarch's children were angry, and the sons wanted to confront the blackguards and demand payment. But the weak old man said No, just leave it alone, it'll be OK.

The oldest son wouldn't listen, and he confronted the man he knew was the thief. The thief and his cohort beat the son and left him in a heap on the family's doorstep.

The situation persisted for two days, and the ruffians took to taunting and jeering at the family members when they walked on the streets.

On the third day, the gang seized the daughter and raped her.

The old man said, leave them alone, nothing good will come of this. His two sons wouldn't listen and sought revenge. Emboldened by their progressive successes, the gang set upon the two sons and killed them.

One lesson is: competitors and predators can discern weakness and will exploit the perception to their advantage.

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Opportunistic engagement of perceived weakness is a universal activity. Recently President Obama committed the United States to war against Libya's Khaddafi / Gaddafi. As the days pass all the people who advocated for intervention are now backpedaling from it, as yet another group of theoretical idealists learns what my friend Bob once explained: no plan survives contact with the enemy.

The street smells weakness; although the effort relies on American men and machines, Obama can't support another war and so Obama is using NATO as a beard, and the Administration claims that we are supporting a French/British/Italian effort. Gaddafi knows that American resolve weakens as time passes, and so Gaddafi has been emboldened to proclaim his likely victory, and Gaddafi boasts that he will be in power longer than Obama will. Also perceiving weakness, Louis Farrakhan has declared that the President is a "murderer". It's the same story; people sense weakness in competitors and use it to their advantage.

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But Libya is not the point of this post. Rather, as July draws near, all events must be considered in terms of the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong. Lance's hold over the American side of the business and the spectacle of the Tour has increased with his retirement.

Although he is no longer riding, Lance is still making money and he has much to lose. He is a part-owner of the team riding for RadioShack. His foundation takes in millions annually and provides a powerful position. LiveStrong-Lance's penetration of the American aspirational-health-cancer-athletic market is astounding (and who isn't in that population); there's a reason that even Nike kisses up to them. To a competitor, the value of the Livestrong brand is significant and ripe for redistribution.



Are there indications that predators sense weakness or distraction in LIVEstrong-Armstrong? Consider, if you would, these recent advertisements by Pittsburgh-based GNC.



Forget Novitsky. When marketing types think you are weak and easy pickings for a knock-off campaign that leverages your market penetration for their own benefit, you're really in trouble. GNC is eating Lance Armstrong's chicken.

Floyd, Lance, WSJ: the Bike Race Ruckus

The Hardy Boys, of course, have already dealt with shady mysteries and blackguards in bicycle racing:

"Lots of kids are planning to enter the Bike Jamboree. Bully Zack Jackson and his buddy Brett call the Hardys wimps. But is someone playing dirty to win the grand prize--a supercool twenty-speed mountain bike?

Frank and Joe are determined to be good sports, but it's no go. First Brett finds gum on his brake pad. Then somebody messes with Joe's bike seat. Who's behind the nasty tricks? Frank and Joe gear up to find out--before the big bike race ends in a big disaster!"

The annual setpiece unveils it's 2010 edition today, as the Tour De France begins with backstories of sprinters vs. climbers, biochemical strategies vs. testing, purists vs. scoundrels, teams vs organizers, and the opening day's drama: in this corner, the discounted, dismounted, and multi-storied Floyd Landis and the Wall Street Journal; in the other corner, Lance Armstrong the All American Boy and the Tour de France.

The raison d'être for the Tour De France is to sell newspapers during the month of the lowest newspaper circulation. That's why the winner's jersey is yellow - the newspaper sponsoring the TdF was printed on yellow paper, so the winner's jersey in yellow served to remind people of L'Auto, the newspaper originally paying for the spectacle.

Stupid tour trivia that serves as a distraction from the core truth: the french-speaking peleton refers to the yellow jersey as the maillot jaune. British riders refer to the person wearing the yellow jersey as Mellow Johnny. Lance, Levi, and Chris Horner participate in the Tour of the Gila in a three-man team called "The Mellow Johnnies". On the tour, Lance Armstrong registers at hotels under the name "Johnny Mellow".

Today's Wall Street Journal contains two stories that either offer to expose the truth, or play the French game and attempt to convey bicycling drama into readership, depending on your place in the sanguine-cynical spectrum.

In Blood Brothers Floyd Landis gives an exclusive tour through what he and others say is a culture of systematic doping in the sport.

In "The Case of the Missing Bikes", Floyd Landis charges that the Trek-sponsored team sold off the team's bicycles to generate cash for their doping program. Too bad that Frank Hardy is out of town, this could be an interesting investigation.

In Armstrong Addresses Latest Landis Allegations (nice headline, btw) Armstrong explains that Landis' charges are like "a carton of sour milk: once you take the first sip, you don't have to drink the rest to know it has all gone bad". (excellent rhetoric) The Wall Street Journal will get a lot of hits on their website.

Lance has moved his efforts beyond Old Media; he's moving the Brand of Lance into Web 2.0. This week he announced on Twitter that 2010 will be his last tour. Sure, he's said that before and then reversed. Floyd has said things before and reversed, too.

The barrage of controversy and selling newspapers (and eyeballs) begins anew. It will provide some excellent, superhuman, and unnatural bicycling; it will show what men and money can do on bicycles; it will fuel bicycle innovation (notably, electric shifting) and bring people into bike shops across the country; and it will, for a few days, distract from our war dead and the oil spill.

It will certainly prevent any discussion of Pittsburgh's newest trend in sharing the road: paint-balling cyclists in Highland Park.

It would be interesting if Frank Hardy appears in the off-season to audit the role of gray-market Treks that Lance rode once. It may provide a non-obvious dénouement in the way that tax evasion once did for Al Capone.

France's Jeannie Longo offers Lance some hope

From France, we have news that Jeannie Longo, 51-year old veteran cyclist, has won the national title in the individual time trial at the French national cycling championship.

From VeloNews:

Jeannie Longo won her 57th national title at the French national championships on Thursday, decisively winning the women’s time trial event for a third successive year.

The 51-year-old Longo covered the 24.7-km course in Chantonnay a full 1:19 faster than two-time national champion Edwige Pitel, 43. Former national road champion Christel Ferrier-Bruneau, 30, finished third at 1:45.

The win represents Longo’s 57th French national title since she won her first in 1979... Longo’s presence in the women’s cycling peloton, whose average age is usually half her own, has on occasion prompted the odd grumble. However the Frenchwoman known for her no-nonsense attitude has always defended her right to compete, no matter what her age.

That belief was vindicated Thursday, when, asked why her rivals could not match up, she suggested they “hadn’t done enough specific training. I’m sorry to say it, but they need to go back to the drawing board on a few things.”

“You can’t discount my 30 years of experience,” added Longo, who actually won her first national championship jersey 31 years ago.

I like the notion of the peleton grumbling at the lady's age.

As Americans, of course, we view all cycling events through the lens of: What does this mean for Lance? Perhaps this is the year for age and treachery triumphing over youth and skill.

Pictured Alberto Contador (current heir apparent) and Lance Armstrong (who was something, once); Contador wears the yellow jersey.

Tour De France Closeout : drugs and diversity

Another Tour de France concludes. I think they sold a lot of newspapers and put a lot of logos in front of the audience, which is what the Tour De France is all about.

In August and September you'll see drug scandals in the same papers that own the Tour De France, as they try to extend the circulation bump across the trailing months.

Lance took third. That's a great outcome. His mission was to avoid scandal and make the introduction of Team RadioShack in the 2010 Tour De France more credible. He's certainly done both. He's going to be the Mario Lemieux of cycling, the champ that becomes the owner, owner/player, owner.

Two-Point-Five things to mention:

Point 1. Alberto Contador is winner of the Tour De France. (they said that about Floyd Landis, too). Here's what Greg Lemond, American three-time winner of the Tour De France, wrote in Le Monde:

"Alberto Contador established a speed record: he went up the 8.5 km climb in 20:55. How to explain such a performance?" wrote LeMond. "He would have required a VO2 max [maximal oxygen consumption] of 99.5 ml / min / kg to produce the effort. To my knowledge, this is a figure that has never been achieved by any athlete in any sport.

"It is like a Mercedes sedan winning a on a Formula 1 circuit. There is something wrong. It would be interesting to know what's under the hood."

Point 2. Here's an excellent picture from a team and a sponsor that "gets it". Notice Fumy Beppu. (His folks aren't Norwegian.) Notice Fumy Beppu's wheelie. Look at his rear wheel - not even on the ground. Catch the two Americans taking pictures for Mom with the Arch de Triomphe in the background. Logos all around, including the car. Skil gets this.


Point 2.5 The Skil corporation. Family owned. Who's the heir to the Skil corporation, this company that obviously understands some things? Why, none other than Jenny Sanford, who used her money to put trophy hubby Mark Sanford in the South Carolina governor's office. Just saying.

Tour de France, The Dreyfus Affair, and Anti-Semitism

What's the raison d'être for the Tour de France? Recently: Lance Armstrong

The recent reason for the TdF is Lance Armstrong, American athlete and strategist. He emerged from cancer and chemotherapy as the most efficient cyclist in the world. (Sounds like a cartoon hero.) His role as a team strategist (and the TdF is a team sport) is as significant as his skill on the bike. He brings an American strategy and pragmatic perspective (a single, burning focus on the goal, to the exclusion of all distractions) to a sport previously led by a competition among corporate entities and the peloton mafia. Now the tour is all about Lance (aka The One-Nut Wonder), and if Lance doesn't win this year it'll likely be his teammate.


Lance has brought Web 2.0 to the stodgy TdF, twittering incessantly to his fan base throughout the last year. He is one of the faces that the Euro-zone thinks of when they think, "American". To an extent, the TdF has become a Lance Armstrong buddy movie, with daily takes on YouTube:

Lance Armstrong, Robin Williams

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What is the reason for the Tour de France?
Long term: Selling Yellow Newspapers

The first daily sports newspaper in France at the end of the 19th century was Le Vélo (the bike), which was printed on green paper. It sold 80,000 copies a day. France was split over the Dreyfus affair. Le Vélo stood for Dreyfus's innocence while some of its biggest advertisers, notably Albert de Dion, owner of the De Dion-Bouton car works, believed him guilty. Angry scenes followed between the advertisers and the editor, Pierre Giffard, and the advertisers started and funded a rival paper, L'Auto (the car).


The Tour de France was invented to promote the struggling new rival, L'Auto. The TdF was to outdo the Paris-Brest et retour organised by Giffard's green Le Vélo. The idea for a round-France race came from L'Auto's chief cycling journalist, Géo Lefèvre, who discusses it with editor Henri Desgrange (a well known cyclist) in November 1902. Henri Desgrange was an established cyclist himself, having broken the one-hour record with 35 kilometres at Neuilly in 1893.

L'Auto announced the race in 1903; the plan was a five-week race from 31 May to 5 July. The original scheme proved too daunting and only 15 riders entered. Desgrange cut the length to 19 days, scheduled the race in July, and offered a daily allowance. He attracted 60 entrants, both professionals and amateurs.

The demanding nature of the race (the stages averaged 400 km and could run through the night), captured the public's imagination. L'Auto's circulation rose from 25,000 to 65,000; by 1908 it was a quarter of a million, and during the 1923 Tour 500,000. The record claimed by Desgrange was 854,000 during the 1933 Tour.

The first yellow jersey was worn by the Frenchman Eugène Christophe in the stage from Grenoble to Geneva on July 18, 1919. The colour was chosen to reflect the yellow newsprint of the organising newspaper, L'Auto. This was a brilliant stroke of marketing: even when other newspapers covered L'Auto's bicycle race, they referred to the yellow jersey (the Maillot jaune) which the readership associated with L'Auto's yellow newspaper.

Race director Desgrange wrote: "This morning I gave the valiant Christophe a superb yellow jersey. You already know that our director decided that the man leading the race [de tête du classement général] should wear a jersey in the colours of L'Auto. The battle to wear this jersey is going to be passionate."

• A bon mot: The French call the yellow jersey the Maillot jaune, the British riders call it the Mellow Johnny, and when Lance Armstrong checks into hotels during the TdF he uses the name Jonathan Mellow. (link).
  
• The use of the TdF to sell newspapers continues.
• Doping scandals generally break in August-September, extending the TdF's effect on daily circulation. In fact, if you look at recent scandals where drug test results where leaked to the press, you'll see that the ASO (which owns the TdF) leaked the results to - wait for it, wait for it - the newspaper that owns the ASO, ensuring newspaper sales.
• The irony of the TdF participating in yellow journalism is not lost upon us.

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What's the sub-reason for the Tour de France?
At the Root: The Dreyfus Affair and Anti-Semitism

L'Auto owes its life to a 19th century French scandal involving soldier Alfred Dreyfus, called the Dreyfus affair. With overtones of anti-semitism and post-war paranoia, Dreyfus was accused of selling secrets to France's old enemy, the Germans.

As different sides of society insisted he was guilty or innocent - he was eventually cleared but only after dishonor, discharge, and a rigged trial had banished him to an island prison camp - the split came close to civil war and still have their echoes in modern French society. Many felt that anti-Semitism led to identifying the Jewish Dreyfus as a scapegoat to protect the institution of the French Army.

Two years later, in 1896, evidence came to light identifying a French Army major named Esterhazy as the real culprit. High-ranking military officials suppressed this new evidence and Esterhazy was unanimously acquitted on the second day of his court martial. Instead of being exonerated, Alfred Dreyfus was further accused on the based on false documents fabricated by French counter-intelligence officers covering their colleague Esterhazy.

Word of the military court's framing of Alfred Dreyfus and of an attendant cover-up began to spread, largely due to a vehement public protestation in a Paris newspaper by writer Emile Zola. The case had to be re-opened and Alfred Dreyfus was brought back from Guiana in 1899 to be tried again. The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (the Dreyfusards) and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards).

France's largest sports paper, Le Vélo, mixed sports coverage with political comment. Its editor, Pierre Giffard, believed Dreyfus innocent and said so, leading to acrid disagreement with his main advertisers. Among them were the automobile-maker the Comte de Dion and the industrialist Clément.

Frustrated at Giffard's politics at Le Vélo, they planned a rival paper. The editor was a prominent racing cyclist, Henri Desgrange, who had published a book of cycling tactics and training and was working as a publicity writer for Clément. The new paper became simply L'Auto, and was printed on yellow paper because Giffard used green.

Circulation was sluggish, however, and only a crisis meeting called "to nail Giffard's beak shut", as Desgrange phrased it, came to its rescue. A 23-year-old cycling and rugby writer called Géo Lefèvre suggested a race round France, bigger than any other paper could rival and akin to six-day races on the track. The Tour De France was the salvation of Le Vélo, a newspaper born to support the charges against Captain Dreyfus.

Eventually, all the accusations against Alfred Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless. He was aquitted, retired as a Major, and returned to active duty in World War One, where he served his country honorably and left as a Lieutenant-Colonel.

Tour of California: Theft, A Debut, New Tech, Suffering

Someone stole Lance's time trial bike.

Lance Armstrong's time trial bike, which he rode to 10th place in the prologue, was stolen off a team truck along with three other bikes. The other bikes stolen belong to Janez Brajkovic, Steve Morabito and Yaroslav Popovych.

In a wonderful example of Social Media, Lance immediately Twitter'd an all-points-bulletin and offered a reward.

This bike doesn't even have a kickstand. If I ended up with it, I'd have to put racks and fenders on it.

Media presents the innocent savant, raised in the wild. Canada.

Svein Tuft makes his big-league cycling debut, promoted by the media as a Canadian youth who grew up in the mountains, spending seasons riding his bike with his dog. Tuft disdained cycling's drug culture so much that he left cycling; he was persuaded to come back because he was promised that (1) his team would be drug-free and (2) he was welcome to disappear back into the mountains in the off-season.

This is the best "noble savage" story in bicycling since the media introduced that Amish guy, what was his name, Floyd Landis. But Tuft is the story you want to believe even though you know you shouldn't - when they hired him to report to a Los Angeles training camp in 2003, he rode his bike there (from Canada). This fellow will be an interesting story, and time will tell if he's another Lance, another Floyd, or another Sidd Finch.

New technology introduced - electric gear shifting

Shimano’s electric shifting system, known as the Dura-Ace Di2 7970, is being used by three professional teams competing in California: Columbia High Road, Garmin Slipstream and Rabobank. This is a trial to see how the new gear holds up before the three Grand Tours (Tour de France, the Giro, and the Vuelta). For time trialists, the new system allows riders to maintain their aero tuck even when shifting.

Stage One : Riders in the Storm

This is what Francisco Mancebo looked like as he won Stage One. Let me say that when a guy who gets paid to show his sponsor's logo crosses the finish line looking like that, he hasn't had any fun, and neither has anybody trying to stay with him. Imagine doing that for 107.6 miles. That's a lot of suffering and work.

Stage Two : Monday

Thomas Peterson (Garmin-Slipstream) won today's stage - I love the argyle team kit! Last year's winner and California favorite Levi Leipheimer (Astana) grabs the yellow jersey as the overall leader. Fabian Cancellara, who won Saturday's prologue, withdrew from the race at the first feed zone.

Tour of California Lance, Floyd, Levi, and George

In one week (February 14th), the Tour of California kicks off. It's a bicycle race on public roads, contested by teams of bicyclists.

Bicycle racing by itself is a funny kind of sport in the way that Wrestling or Arena Football are funny - there's athletes, scandal, hokey drama, but usually there's enough apparently virtuous contenders to make you want to believe it's plausible.

When bicycle racing happens with teams of riders, crammed into a pack (the peloton) of elbows and knees, the sport gains all the strategy and purity of Roller Derby. The costumes are pretty similar, too.

There are big names among the riders, and big-money companies sponsoring teams in hopes of burning their logos into the national consciousness. The main sponsor of the event is Amgen, a biopharmaceutical company. One of Amgen's products is EPO, which is the blood-doping agent most often seen in cycling scandals, and Amgen is sponsoring the ride, proving that somebody at Corporate has a sense of humor.

Each day, these jerseys will be awarded:

Points Leader	Most Courageous	King of the Mountains	Best Sprinter	Best Young Rider

One key bit of drama will be Team Astana. Johan Bruyneel is the Director, and the riders include Lance Armstrong, Alberto Contador, Andreas Klöden and Levi Leipheimer. Levi Leipheimer is a favorite of mine, he seems a quiet guy that works at it, the ToC is in his backyard, and he's never failed a drug test. Lance's return will provide a spectacle, especially with his former Postal teammates now on opposing teams.

Team Columbia Highroad features George Hincapie, Lance's former domestique (subordinate). Always the bridesmaid rarely the bride, George is getting long in the tooth.


Team Ouch (formerly HealthNet) features Floyd Landis' return to pro cycling. He won the inaugural 2006 ToC, and has had a new hip installed since his 2006 Tour de France win and debacle. Team Ouch is sponsored by Floyd's physician, and seems more like a vehicle for Floyd's reintroduction than a serious team.


Let us not forget that Lance made his name by winning the Thrift Drug Classic in Pittsburgh in 1992, '93, and '94. In the 1995 photo below, Andrea Peron (L) leads Lance Armstrong (R) across the crest of Mt. Washington. Ah, the things that used to be here.
(photo credit: Doug Pen)


The ToC will be on television via Versus.

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By the way, I'd like to rollout my favorite jersey, which I received as a Christmas gift and hope to get a lot of use out of in the spring: The Old Guys Who Get Fat In Winter team jersey.

2009 Tour De France Series

• The Tour de France, the Dreyfus Affair, and anti-Semitism
  
  
• Major Taylor, the Tour de France, and Racism
  
  
• Racism in Tour de France Charged by French Riders
  
  
• No Women in the Tour de France : Sexism
  
  
• Pro Women Cyclists: Heirs of Alfonsina Strada
  
  
• Designing an Integrated Tour de France
  
  
• Tour de France Closeout: Drugs and Diversity