And now, we cycling nuts begin the process of letting go. If you ride a bike that costs more than $2,000, or enjoy watching the people who do, perhaps you can join me in paying a proper tribute to the man who changed everything for us.
First, I am not arguing he is the best rider ever; it would be preposterous to compare anyone's record to Merckx. My point is that he is as great as a rider can be in this era, where the spoils are divided among three distinct categories: grand tour riders, flat classics, and hilly classics. Yes, there are crossover riders, but for the most part you have the big guys like Van P, Boonen, Hincapie and Backstedt for Flanders-Ghent-Roubaix week, then the lineup changes over to the rouleur-climber types like DiLuca, Vino, Rebellin, Boogerd, Lance and Tyler for Amstel-Fleche-Liege week. Then everyone disappears and the Grand Tour teams assemble, the Italians and foreign B-teams at the Giro, and the A-squads at the Tour. Whoever is left standing contests the summer classics, Vuelta and worlds.
Gone are guys who compete throughout. As long as Cycling is constituted this way, we will never see another Merckx... who won multiple Tours and Giros, who won multiple times during the Flanders and Ardennes weeks. It is simply unthinkable for a modern rider to even attempt this, the way competition is now. So given the triumvirate alignment, I say the grand tour riders are the creme, making Lance the obvious creme de la creme. That's all.
[Incidentally, I never bought the "Lance does one race" cricitism. See above... the modern competition is doing the same thing, and resting for the Tour is an older tradition than most people think. I also think that people who criticize Lance for gaming the system always fail to acknowledge how the system is gamed against him. The competition consists primarily of Europeans who don't make the same sacrifices Lance made. Jan Ullrich (for example) can sleep at home in Switzerland immediately before and after just about any race. He can play with little Sarah all he wants after another hard day of Tour prep. The Americans and Aussies can't do that unless they relocate their loved ones to Europe, which doesn't work for everyone, especially as the kids hit school age. Lance and his ex-wife both cite the moving around as the cause of their divorce, and in recent years Lance was away from his kids for huge stretches of time. I'm a parent; to me this sounds like an unacceptable sacrifice. So much for a level playing field.]
The dark side of Lance has been explored a lot too (now that officially no stone is unturned in this guy's life), and it's a mild turnoff for me to know that he's a hard-ass guy who turns on people he views as disloyal. He acknowledges that his tough, fatherless upbringing left him angry, which manifests itself in some unpleasant ways, but that's a common ingredient in life: bad dads make for troubled youth. I don't know the guy, am willing to cut him some slack, and frankly think it may be overblown, once he settles into what he intends to be a peaceful retirement. Recent interviews make it sound like he's ready to dispense with the demons and enjoy life. I hope he does... it will put him yet another peg above Greg LeMond.
Lance is, in my mind, the perfect machine with the perfect controls. His body, determination and preparation gave him an unfair advantage in the two big disciplines, and since guys like this are a rarity, it was fun to see what they look like, for a while. Of course, they win repeatedly to the point where they are counted on to win, making them over time somewhat conservative and defensive, not to mention less fun. They also blot out the competition to the point where we start to long for challengers, unexpected problems, or some other (reasonably benign) force to come along and shake up the status quo... but Lance defeated the forces of nature too. In the end, nothing less than his retirement could restore the joy of the Tour. So he gave us that one too.
I rooted for Lance all the way through, even this year, even while lamenting his dominance... because we may never see another one like him, or at least not an American one. Because he did so much to glorify and popularize the sport I love in America, a country that is generally ignorant and downright hostile toward Cycling. He took the sport to the highest heights; he made America a cycling nation with strong international teams and individuals competing in every major discipline. His success got the sport on TV here, which in turn broke down all but the most determined forces of ignorance, at least in the states I've lived and/or rode in. He had a huge impact on the sport everywhere, and even parlayed that into heroic progress in the fight against cancer.
So one last time, I want to say thank you to Lance Armstrong. A great athlete, and all things considered, a great human.