mattm

"slaying the badger" is on espn tonight, good stuff. (title "30 in 30")

Ygduf

30 for 30. y'all better watch it and maybe espn will cover cycling aside from the injections.

save10

i dont have cable...doh!

hack

bah...set dvr to record, but I selected the wrong 30 for 30. looks to be on later this week though.

Creatre

I watched it. It was good until the last 10 minutes. Which was basically Lemond complaining about doping and how it stole more win's away from him.

mattm

that wouldn't annoy you??

gsteinb

huh

globecanvas

I just invited you to a superfun fondo-type ride that a teammate hosts (including a bbq at his house afterward with a great view of the Gunks). There's a contingent that comes from western Mass for the ride so there's a good natured NY vs Mass rivalry.

I'll be doing the ride even though I'll finish a half hour behind the leaders (on the timed climbs, everybody waits up at the top of the climbs so it's a friendly ride the whole way).

It's an open invitation for anyone else too: The Gunks 10,000--Fondo---Round 2--- | Strava Club

Creatre

It just made it seem like he was blaming doping for him sucking the rest of his career. The dude was never the same after being shot, and especially losing the TT in the 91 tour. It wasn't all doping. Other people from his generation were still able to finish flat stages of the Tour. Maybe it was the lead poisoning or whatever from being shot. Maybe it was mental fatigue. Who knows. But the last 10 minutes of the show last night made him seem like a sore loser and Lance was a horrible person for causing doping in the peloton. Which is not what the show should have be on.

echappist

you may want to get your facts right. He won a rainbow jersey AND two TdF AFTER he got shot

gsteinb

He won two tours after being shot.

echappist

hazzuh! i sniped Gsteinb in something

Creatre

He still wasn't the same dominate racer he was before. Like I said, it was more than that, and even Lemond doesn't know what caused the fall off. He says there was some sort of lead poisoning that seemed to get worse the harder he trained. But the point is there was something other than doping going on that caused him to fall from the top of the sport, very rapidly. Andy Hampsten and others that are regarded clean had success during years Lemond wasn't even able to finish flat stages of the TdF. There was no reason to put 10 minutes of dope shaming into an otherwise decent documentary on the 86 Tour.

gsteinb

Disagree.

Ygduf

I re-did the bike storage in my garage again. Now I need a chain and eye bolt so @save10 doesn't come rob me.

rankin116

address?

grolby

Lemond says that he was putting out the same or better numbers in training prior to the '91 TdF as he had the year before, yet got clobbered by guys he had been beating before. That's far from conclusive proof that the only relevant change was the introduction of EPO to the top of the GC at the Tour de France, but it's certainly suggestive that there was more than poor form involved in falling from first to seventh. As for your last sentence, are you kidding? From what I understand much of this documentary is essentially a video documentary of Lemond, and the rise of doping hastening the end of his career is absolutely part of his story.

Creatre

The documentary was on the 1986 tour. And the Hinault/Lemond battle. And then they kinda threw that in the last 10 minutes which was unneccessary to the story. It's like writing a paper on college on WWI and then the last paragraph being on WWII. I'm pretty sure I would have gotten significant points off for tangents from the thesis. Unless of course the main point of the documentary was Lemond was unfortunate to have not doped and was robbed of his last 2 tours. In which case the first 50 minutes were unfocused.

I mean really none of us really know I'm just going off what I've read. I just personally felt like it wasn't necessary to his story. EPO wasn't released/approved until 1993. Although it was in trials before that, and some cyclists experimented, it seems it didn't pick up in popularity for cycling until after 1993. I think Hampsten's story is a bit more believable, he had a couple more years after Lemond that were good in grand tour's, and then he was unable to compete. Which matches with the timeline a bit better. He just never had the natural ability that Lemond had. Otherwise, you have Hampsten winning on Alpe Du Huez and getting 4th in 1992 and you have Lemond getting dropped and abandoned the Tour that year. So was Hampsten doping?

I don't want to keep blowing up the thread on this. Just my $.02 on an otherwise good film.

grolby

The precise "start point" of the EPO era is questionable, because there really isn't one. Likewise, you really can't pinpoint just doping or just physical decline as the reason for Lemond's career decline, but there's no doubt that the former played a role. EPO seemed to have its watershed year in 1994, but there's no question in my mind that it was in play on some level by 1991. You don't get Indurain winning the Tour without it, and you definitely don't get Bugno and Chiappucci on the Tour podium without it. None of these guys were legitimate contenders without it. That doesn't mean that it was everywhere and that you couldn't still have guys putting in good performances. But if you look at the time gaps from 1992, Hampsten was 4th, sure, but he was almost 13 minutes behind Indurain, and still a good three minutes behind Bugno. It's not really accurate to say that Hampsten was close to the same level as these guys, and especially not the top two. He really wasn't even close.

So with the case that EPO mattered before the mid-90's aside, Lemond sure seems to think that doping is an important part of his story. And history since that time seems to show us that he was right about that. Why should we pretend that this part of the story didn't happen? If you only ever discuss the 1986 Tour and never put it in any context with the rest of Lemond's career, which seems foolish to me, sure, it might be extraneous. But the context is important - Lemond won two more Tours, and very abruptly vanished from the top of the results sheet. Part of that disappearance is likely related to the rise of doping, particularly at the Tour de France, which could plausibly be the major target for doping riders in the earliest days of the EPO era.

mattm

oh man, this really puts my bike closet to shame!

Ygduf

just found this show called "Boundless" about these dudes that go and do ultra-events. Running, biking, whatev. Awesome. Love it!

mattm

What channel?

Ygduf

Don't you work for a TV thing?? Esquire channel, I guess. I dunno, search it!

ridethecliche

fudgy has been so snarky lately...

Ygduf

@mattm has been laying around the house for weeks now. Lazy!

not snarky, I know him IRL and unlike many sensitive Sallies in here he will read that post and is unlikely to write a letter to the editor over it.