El Diablo Rojo

It's been quite a while since the French dominated the world of professional cycling and over 20 years since a Frenchman won the TdF. This morning I was reading through my CycleSport America and Johnathan Vaughters had an interesting comment. He was talking about why he only brings his TIAA-CREF team to France to race. It's because they have the strictest doping controls. He claims that 10 years ago he'd never have brought a young rider to Europe because of the culture of doping. But he goes on to say that France is relatively safe from that culture. Could it be that the lack of doping if France is why, especially since the Festina Affair, that the quality of Frenchmen in the peloton has dropped so dramatically?

TeflonJohn

They're French...they'd probably go faster if they were traveling in the opposite direction of everyone else.

Grasschopper

Man and I was going to be in full support of this thread until you made a real legit point.

DrPete 

Maybe you're right, but I also think that the French have pioneered the "He won, he's not French, therefore he must have doped" view of the world.

DrPete

El Diablo Rojo

Really? I never heard that during Indurains reign, or when Ulrich won or anyone else aside from Riis and then it wasn't 'he's not French' rather it was because his hematocrit was so freak'n high.

Regardless this has nothing to do with my original query.

DrPete 

No, it doesn't--I do fall into the camp, though, that thinks perhaps L'Equipe's reporting when it came to all things LA was less than impartial...

Anyway, your original point is a valid one and makes a lot of sense. Perhaps it's an issue of control and the resultant shock and outrage that would undoubtedly come flying at a French rider who got caught, but maybe there really IS a cultural difference there too. After all, GNC is a booming business around here in the USA--athletes are taught at the very lowest levels that better performance comes in a bottle, and it's all a slippery slope from there.

DrPete

Snicklefritz

CycleSport America from Sept. '05 also had a short article on why they french haven't done well in the tour. Even Hinault himself and something to say about that - his main point was that the french riders weren't working as hard as everyone else when they were coming up the ranks. Amateur riders getting paid - he said the only time he ever saw any money was when he won a race. Hinault also commented that a lot of the foreign riders are hungrier and want it more so they work harder...i can look up the article to get the exact quote if anyone is interested.

El Diablo Rojo

I remember that article, Bernard is probably partially correct in his assessment, however Belgium riders are paid as junior as are Italian and Spanish riders and it hasn't made them 'lazy'. I brought up Vaughters comments as they are pretty relevant considering the whole Spanish Doping controversy. I'm one who believes that doping is more common in the peloton than most of us would believe. If the French are at a disadvantage in the doping wars then this could be another reason for their decline, especially since the Festina Affair.

celticfrost

I overheard Jacques Domestique say, "Nah, I dun neeed to ween to stinkin' bike rrace --- I keen just fall back on our liberal social welfare sisteem for some moneey.". Perhaps winning at all costs just isn't engrained into French society all that much. And to be honest, I often wish the US wasn't like that to such an extreme. Has a frenchman or French team dominated at any sport (think other euro sports too, like soccer, golf, etc) as of late? Perhaps a few French tennis players? I'm not sure.

Maybe they didn't make such a ruckus when Indurain won because (at that point) it had only been about 10 years since a Frenchman won and at least he was european. Perhaps 20 years is a bit too bitter a pill to swallow, especially when the last 7 years have been administered by a Texan.

The US would probably do the same thing if they repeatedly lost the World Baseball Classic. For those who care, the US team didn't even get past the 2nd round (of 4).

El Diablo Rojo

The liberal welfare system is just as liberal in Belgium and Holland. Besides Hinault and many other very good French riders were part of that "liberal welfare system'.

I'm not just talking about the Tour I'm talking about bike racing in general. The French were once major players in the peleton but not anymore.

I believe the French won the world cup a few years back. They have produced some very good F1 drivers as well.

Snicklefritz

I agree with what one of the other posts said, that if french riders were caught doping...

I didn't realize that Vaughters was mainly taking TIAA-CREF guys to france. for some reason I thought they were getting around a bit more than that. I haven't studied the doping stuff in that much detail, but I think you're right, there are probably a lot more people doing it compared with those getting caught.

What's the biggest difficulty now? I was under the impression that micro-dosing of EPO is easier to detect now. So is it the monologous blood doping that's the problem? With that I thought you ccould just look at someone's own blood sample and see how many new cells there are compared with old ones and get some idea from that...or are these guys self-doping all the time so their "baseline" hematocrit looks higher and so when they test high at some later point it doesn't look suspicious?

Snicklefritz

I think the French have produced some good cyclists in other branches of the sport like downhill. Dominique Chasson (sp?) was one of the best ever at that branch of the sport. i think there may be a few others but I don't ermember their names

jkoman

Sometimes a persons or groups " Air of Superiority" comes from ego and attitude and sometimes because they are right. I would trust the opinion of Vaughters as someone exposed to much of this crap more than most others who just spout off. There is rarely ever just one simple answer...it has been long suggested that the French led the doping fight and the Spanish brought up the rear. Maybe that has some validity.

celticfrost

OK, then unless the Belgians and Dutch are doping (which may lead back to your original post?), then I guess the French are just not strong riders --- at least not for the past 20 years.

A few good F1 drivers? That's all for a country w/ about as many people as Germany?

I think it's more than just the French just being clean* ##.




* as far as we know
## clean does not imply they don't smell bad

Edit: and it was Jacques Domestique who used the term "liberal welfare system", not me!

Jose R

In a general sense, yes, in the context of road racing.

But, the French have always been good in track cycling; having produced world champions on and off for the past 10-15 years. Both men and women. Look at the results of this year's WC in Bordeaux.

And they won the 1998 World Cup beating Brazil.

merlinextraligh

I think the theory potentially explains part of the French slump. However, playing out the logical conclusions, shouldn't Spanish teams be cleaning up?

daytonian

By deduction should't Italian riders be doing really well given lax doping laws - oh wait - they are. My bad.
Didn't little Tommy Voekler do well for awhile in 04 TDF? Nevermind, just remembered he ended like 4 hrs off GC.

smoke

i think it's a combination of things, a lot of them being touched upon here. not just one specific reason. i've read more than once that the french have the toughest doping controls. i think that's a good thing. maybe everyone should adopt those standards. and i agree with diablo; i think doping is the norm, not the exception, in bike racing now

classic1

The French endurance development programs are poor, the French team directors aren't really that good and the teams are very parochial and disorganised. Their training generally is not up to current modern standards and French riders are overpaid when you consider their results, it goes on and on.

Another issue is that riders in France win a second rate race no one has heard of and they are a hero. Floyd Landis wins Paris-Nice or Bradley McGee wins the prologue of the Giro and no one notices in their home country. The drugs issue is furphy. Foriegn riders on French teams are subject to the same tests and controls as the French riders and still get good international results. What gives?

Note that O'Grady has (diplomatically) touched on some of these issues in interviews of late.

By Cecil

Hmm, the French haven't won the Tour in over 20 years, but when did French cycling supposedly clean up its act? Oh yeah, 1998 - 8 years ago. What were they doing for the other 12? Oh yeah, doping and still losing. I also have a problem with people who claim to hate doping and claim everyone else is doing it - why does this make this make them more likely to be innocent? No one seems to get a pass for saying they are not doping, but if you add that you are not doping and everyone else is doping - hey you must be okay then!

furiousferret

The French more or less imported thier talent from Africa when they took the WC in '98.

I think its really a few factors, I dont think they have a very solid program for thier youth and its seems that other sports have taken thier talented athletes away. The French culture really isn't based on athletics like some other countries, so they really have to nurture thier talent.

Compare them to the US. I'm not an expert on thier upbringing, but the US cycling talent pool is pathetically small. Alot of people cycle, but very few start at a young age (18 or younger). Lemond, Hampsten, Hincapie and Armstrong all seemed to be very well groomed after they reached to top of the US talent pool.

botto 

Jean-Marie Le Pen couldn't have put it better himself

alanbikehouston

The biographies of most of the great riders of the 1950 to 1985 era have a common thread. Many of the best cyclist came from poor families in low income regions of France and Belgium. Areas where most men worked on farms where the equipment consisted of the man and a mule. Or areas where men worked in dirty steel factories, or in coal mines.

Cycling in those regions was a means for a young man to escape a very hard life, at least for a few years. And, the cyclists who became a "star" escaped that hard life forever.

Today, France has become a very comfortable country. A 35 hour work-week (which includes about 15 hours of smoking, drinking coffee, drinking a bottle of wine at lunch) is considered brutal. Many men in their twenties prefer to avoid even that much work, and live with their parents and get the generous unemployment benefits France provides. A soft generation in a very soft nation.

For its size, the southern region of Belgium continues to produce a lot of pro cyclists. And, life in Belgium is considerably easier than it was fifty years ago. But, in that region, there are races available to teen-age cyclists every week-end between March and September.

Cycling is such a strong sport in that region that economic considerations may not apply. Cycling is so popular in Belgium that even middle-class kids, and the sons of well-to-do families get involved. In France, cycling was a job, and most young French guys have little interest in a job, especially a job that involves effort and pain.

And, America is not much different. In Texas, the number of teen-agers who are working 24/7 to become a pro cyclist is pretty close to zero. The rewards in the USA for a teen cyclist are meager (there are about 5000 college scholarships available in Texas for college football players - zero for cycling). And, the amount of effort to get to the top level is immense.

As a result, if you look at the "Top Hundred" road cyclists in the world (based on their performance in the 2006 Tour de France), the number of French riders greatly outnumbers the number of American riders. And, the USA has five males for every male that France has...per capita, France is still turning out far more top pro cyclists than the USA.

kubla khan

very well put.

Snicklefritz

Speaking of how the youth are brought along in different countries, go to paceline.com and read about Eki's start!!!!! They had promising kids in special training schools starting at an incredibly young age!!

Look at certain african countries as well. There is one (don't know if it is Kenya for sure) where they give really young kids, elementary school age, some kind of field test for running. The ones that do the best get to go to special training camps. The ones that do well there get to go into development programs.

It's a different culture.