Lance - I'll testify...
Chris Yeager
The World Cycling Championships, 1990, Utsunomia, Japan. It's Saturday
Morning. The pros ride tomorrow, but the pressroom is slowy filling up
for the amateur road race. Outside it's foggy and drizzling rain, or
we'd be in our boxes in the bleachers, checking it out on the monitors
there. In here, stories are swapped and coffee slurped. It's ho-hum in
12 languages, what can these amateurs show us we haven't seen already?
They're all a bunch of unknowns anyway....
An hour later, I'm at a table with some Euros and Brits, watching the
race monitor. Lots of breaks have been going off early, and they all
get chased. But there's always a stars and stripes suit in there, we
can't quite see who it is, but he's keeping right up. Who is it,
Sheafor? Mionske? We can't see his number, and we can't hear the
announcer. But he's really lasting; we might have a story here.
Fourteen laps, two and a half hours later, the drizzle has turned to a
warm muggy fog. The camera at the top of the course's big switchbacked
climb shows the leader, Switzerland's Fabian Jekker, cresting alone,
zipping up, and plunging back into the white mist. But then, as we
watch from our plywood table in the pressroom, the camera swings back
to the empty crest of the climb. Through the fog comes a solo
apparition, hands planted on the tops, elbows out, back flat as a
board. The American jersey is unzipped to the sternum. The head is up,
the eyes search the mist like radar. He's rock solid, he's stomping,
at the crest he does not slow down. There is not a writer in the room
who does not know exactly what he is looking at: the unmistakable
power and class of a champion athlete.
Now foreign journalists are coming over and asking me, the American
writer, who is this guy? I know all the US amateurs, but I don't have
a roster and I've never seen this face before. James Raia, in from
California, bails me out. "His name's Lance Armstrong, he's 18, it's
his first year in the USCF."
"C'mon James," 'Lance Armstong?'
"That's his name. I hear he's from the triathlon scene."
Armstrong caught Jekker, but soon after the Italians shut the race
down in great style, sending one of their own to a solo victory. After
the race we beat it out to the tents to get the story firsthand. Mike
Neel, one of the seriously undersung heroes of US cycling, was helping
the team pack up. Armstrong sat leaning up against a tent pole, beat
and soaked.
I told him, "awesome ride," he said thanks. I told him all the foreign
reporters wanted to know who he was.
He looked up again. "Oh, they'll know" he said, "they'll know." Read
it in Winning, November 1990.
Next time I saw him ride was Fitchburg Longsjo, maybe 2 years later.
He was still an amateur, going to Barcelona. He flatted, caught the
pack, caught the chase group, went up to the break, and won. Four
hours on the side of a mountain in a freezing, blowing rain.
Lance, I will testify to your greatness. Like LeMond, like so many,
you did not get to reach your full potential. But you rode at the
highest level, you won the World's decisively, whatever happens
nothing and no one can take that from you, or from us.
Chris Yeager
chr...@avana.net
Craig Besselievre
Great story! Hang in there, Lance!
Lyle Beidler
Thanks for the story, Chris. Beautiful.
John Forrest Tomlinson
In <53ilvu$k...@home.electricpages.com> chr...@avana.net (Chris Yeager)
writes:
(great story)
>Next time I saw him ride was Fitchburg Longsjo, maybe 2 years later.
>He was still an amateur, going to Barcelona. He flatted, caught the
>pack, caught the chase group, went up to the break, and won. Four
>hours on the side of a mountain in a freezing, blowing rain.
>
That day was _so_ impressive -- he just put it to Coors Light and
everyone else. On the main climb most people were using (I'd guess) 39
x 19, 39 x 21, and he spent a lot of the time on the small ring but on
the little cogs. It didn't seem like he was showing off or anything,
he was just so strong relative to the guys around him it didn't seem to
matter.
JT
big...@concentric.net
Chris
Great story, I've been a bicycle racing fan since 88. Lance Armstrong
is the genuine article. He has what the frence call "panache" and I
wish him the best.