SoreFeet

The original riders of the tour are the finest ever and never got paid enough. They were truly the greatest riders who ever lived. No tour cars to change flats or bikes, no gears, just legs and balls. Red wine, cigarettes...ah those were the days when men were men. Now we have doping/carbon fiber sissies. Why can't the tour be like the good old days...?

divergence

In my day, ballplayers were for ****.

merlinextraligh

One of the very first tours, all the competitors were kicked out for cheating; fans sabatouged disfavored competitors; and various drugs thought to be performance enhancers have been used virtually from day 1.
Human nature hasn't changed. They just didn't have wire to wire coverage by helicopters and satelites, and pervasive drug testing to reveal the sorted underside back then.

superslomo

Somebody got tossed out of an early tour for taking the train during a stage. Hell, even if you think Landis is going to get stripped of his tour title permanently, he did at least ride the race.

Stallionforce

On the other hand, the drugs they had back then did not have the salutary effect of the modern drug regimes. They certainly didn't have pot belge! Morphine, cocaine, amphetamines...all have serious down-sides compared to EPO and HGH fellas. Also, stages could be upwards of 300 or 400 kilometers. Wheels were flip-flop with two gears, one for flats and one for climbs. If you watch old footage you will see them grinding up those hills in a dirge-like cadence. Not easy on the body. No one could help them. There was one rider disqualified after he broke a fork; he did find a smith to re-forge it but the smith's son pumped the bellows -- not allowed. Yeah, now they have travelling masseurs and psychiatrists and other molly-coddlers to whisper them sweet-nothings as they get on their 20-gear 15 lb. space-age machines for another 5 hour pedal. Try an all-nighter over 400km with no support, and saboteurs out on the road in the darkness waiting to abduct you!

Yeah, I do think there's a happy medium. That happy medium is to take all the wonderful infrastructure we have now, and excise the dopage. Then the race will be tough again; and then the real men will win, not necessarily the franken-doper.

GuitarWizard

Well....if you wanna talk about REAL men.....Tour de France competitors back in the early years of the race have nothing on cave men....

wethepeople

pffft, cavemen.

Pirates could kick the crap out of cavemen.

mezza

Pirates?? Pffft!!

Ninjas, old school ninjas is where its at.

GuitarWizard

Ohhhhh yeah....I forgot about Ninjas.....

Blackberry

Druids, baby. They hauled all those Stonehenge rocks hundreds of miles just to build a calendar.When was the last time a pirate or a ninja did that???

davefarb

If you want to talk about REAL men and sports, you would not be discussing pansies on bikes pretending to be more than what they are. Sunken-chested freaks with large hams...

Keith99

Real men?

Years ago I went on tour with my college Rugby team. We played several matches and also watched a few. One was Swansea vrs. Welsh Police. The 8man for the Police split his head open. He retired from the field long enough for them to patch him up, which meant enough tape on his head to make at least that part of him look more like a mummy than a man. He then returned.

Those are real men.

Nothing like that in cycling!

NOT!

'Put me back on my bike' has that beat my a mile.

Kadowaki

Interesting premise about the "good old days" that they were always more innocent, honest, etc.

A recent biography about Vince Lombardi (I'll have to dig it up, famous author, recently wrote a bio or two on early American presidents) told the story from the premise that the good old days were no different than today. Technology has changed but human nature has not. Cheating, lying and stealing are no more prevalent today than in any other time in history (with possible islands of exceptions) nor is endurance, effort or altruism.

zonatandem

They used to slow down their competitors by throwing handsful of tacks on the road . . . no drugs needed!

davefarb

My neighbor loves to tell me drunken tales of his exploits as a "soupporter" of the Manchester United Football Club during the heyday of British soccer hooliganism during the early to mid 1980s. The dude's got a damn Red Devil tattoo on his neck and is fond of telling me how he savagely kicked a rival team's fan in the head when his "firm" (as he called his group of thugs) "took over Turin" during an away game. Perhaps if cycling fans were this hardcore, the sport would not be dope-infested?

Theakston

He's probably full of it. Especially as Man United did not play Juventus (of Turin) during the 80's.

Hambone

Ah rugby...

I described the cracking sound I heard when I was hit in a maul during my rugby days to my coach who was also a professor at the med school. He said I dislocated and or broke a few ribs.

"Oh..." I said as I walked off the pitch.

"Where ya' goin?" He asked.

"Uhhh, to the hospital...?"

"There is nothing they can do for you either way. Wait for the half." He said. (In rugby you are only allowed one substitution per half so if I had left and somebody else was hurt we would have had to play a man down.) Seeing the look on my face, he told me, "Don't worry, we are two minutes from the ER and there are a dozen people here who can fix you if your lung is punctured."

And with that I got back in.

I told my dad the story afterwards and he suggested I never tell my mom.

Keith99

Your coach clearly did not know the laws. Rugby never limited the number of substitutions per half. Limits have always been on a per game basis and the limit still applied to substitutions made at half time. At teh current time substitutions are limited to either 6 or 7 with exceptions for blood and also keeping qualified front row players on the pitch.

Hambone

I kind of remembr that the Metro New York Union at least didn't limit the substitutions at the half so that more guys got to play. (This was 20 years ago and, well I was drinking a lot back then...)

I was a tight-head prop but far from qualified.

Keith99

The 2 per game period would have been in effect 20 years ago. Of course New York never has been much for following laws.

I'm really a hooker, usually play tight head, except on islands where for some reason I end up playing loose head. (Islands like Catalina, England, Wales, New Zealand and Australia). But on the U.S. mainland I usually end up at tight head. (Played 14 positions so far, some day I'll play srcumhalf).

Hambone

I never got out of the scrum. Well, we played some co-ed games... Crazy times! I think there are still some Army guys with knowing smiles about the Women's Rugby Football Club at SUNY Stony Brook.

Stony Brook's motto was, "We won't win every game, but we've never lost a party."

G60

not as wimpy as your average basketball player.

there's something wrong with a sport that allows time off for a sore toe.

mezza

Bob Jones, an Australian Ninja hauled hauled rocks bigger than stonehenge just to have a game of marbles with God!......... Okay, I made that up.

But Druids had helpers with ropes... Ninja's go it alone and don't ever stop. Unless there's ice cream, they stop for ice cream... Apparently.

Matt888

Lets face it, Any game that allows a "player" to stop the game for any reason is rubbish.
That should be soley up the the referee and no one else.
What is time out anyway? Isn't that for little kids that are naughty.
Sin bins, blood bins, send offs, these are things that stop games not some nob with his hands in the air in a T shape whineing about the fact they are about to loose or worse still, they can't hack the pace.
Look at motor sport, do they stop a race because someone has just died in a crash? No. They deploy a saftey car , clean up the track and get on with it. Could you imagine if they stopped stages of the Tour because of crashes. Considering how cyclists are renound for cheating you'd have guy's hurling themselves into barriers and what not because their team mate is out of position for the sprint.

Swampy1970

Ah... is that a fact? So that team they played in 1984 at the Communale Stadium (Turin) and then at Old Trafford (Manchester) was just a figment of everyones imagination then?

Yeah... I've been a Man United fan since 1976.

"The Firm" were Milwall.... The term 'firm' described a small group of hooligans though - but God forbid someon misunderstand you talking about your firm and "The Firm" as a damn good kicking would likely ensue. LOL Man United fans always went by the name The Red Army.