Pure Cycling: Cadel Evans - winner, champion, legend?

Ben Roberts

In the past ten years Australia has largely ignored what a champion cyclist Cadel Evans is. Focussed solely on the dream of thumping our collective chest at the first Australian to win the Tour de France, the blinkers have filtered all other prizes that Evans has collected, and truly the way he has conducted himself.

Cycling remains an incredibly misunderstood sport in a nation that refuses to let go of its expectations that its own competitors should fare no worse than victory. What most fail to grasp is that twice finishing second, four top ten finishes overall, six days in yellow overall, and stage victory is far more than most have won from the Tour. To dismiss Evans' record at this race is the same as saying Gary Ablett senior was not a champion footballer because he never won an AFL premiership; it's plainly not true.

Also in Evans' record is his wearing of the leaders jersey in both other Grand Tours, the overall points classification in the 2010 Giro d'Italia, his 2009 World Championship, his collection of overall stage race wins (including 2011's Tirreno-Adriatico), and a few one-day classics. I haven't even gone back to his efforts in mountain biking before he joined the professional cycling tour; truly a champion in the history of Australian cycling and probably beyond.

Cycling fans in this country have no problem accepting two other champions of the modern era in Robbie McEwen and Stuart O'Grady. Owing to different skill sets, their success has been without the burden of a country with eyes only for yellow. Yet Evans has done as much, and one (not I) may argue more, across more disciplines. Further people argue that O'Grady and McEwen are more likeable figures than Evans. In my eyes such a view is just snobbery. Evans is an individual, and isn't afraid of that, and like all should be accepted. He has had a few moments where he hasn't endeared himself, but he isn't alone. McEwen and Graeme Brown have the ability to carry on like children toward each other in even the most minor race.

Evans has broken free of the shackles that haunted him in 2009 up until the end of the Tour that year. So focussed was he that he saw utter dedication to winning the Tour as being the same as removing all flair and enjoyment from riding in favour of conservatism. His fight in the 2009 Vuelta and his World Championship attack was evidence of his talent and a returning love for the sport. Throughout 2010 and now in 2011 he has continued to compete and win with flair, his demeanour is calmer and his exertion on the bike more natural than ever. Most of all he isn't afraid to risk losing if it gives him a chance of winning.

Retired tomorrow Evans should be remembered a champion of the sport and a legend of Australian cycling; he continues however in pursuit of more victories. May he win that elusive Tour that more might take notice of his great career, though without it he is still great.

Pure Cycling: The Lance Armstrong Effect

By Balanced Sports columnist, Ben Roberts.

I must admit to mixed feelings upon the second retirement Lance Armstrong. Maybe it is the nature of a second retirement that I am neither happy nor sad, nor feel any great pull of nostalgia. However it has just struck home for me, having returned from a quick spin on my bicycle after finishing work for the day, that the main reason why I developed an affinity with the sport is the effect that was Armstrong.

I, with a large number of other westerners, rode the wave of attention poured onto Armstrong as he began his run of seven wins in the Tour de France, astonished with his success and his return from testicular cancer. We also loved that he was a rebel, a straight talking man's man in a sport dominated by continental Europe. Yes, there had previously been Greg LeMond, but he was more an ad hoc curiosity than an icon. Lance was LANCE.

Armstrong’s autobiography, It's not about the bike, still continues to sell strongly 11 years since its release. Most of us who have a copy will have lost count of the times we have read his story, following a struggling childhood, through the rigour of cancer and onto the podium of the Champs-Élysées. Maybe this is where the trouble is in loving Armstrong now – you can only become the champion once. While you are becoming the champion, you can be rebellious, but you wear the risk that it will all fall through. Once you are the champion its harder to rebel as it's only against yourself.

The Tour de France became secondary to the phenomenon that was not just Armstrong's immense cycling talent, but the one-way PR machine that followed. Not only would Lance speak with a confident and brash manner, so would team mates, sponsors, fans, and Johan Bruyneel, the Team Director. Everything became stage managed and controlled so much that the media and other riders built up strong resentment towards him and Bruyneel. Throughout it all Lance remained Lance, no mellowing with time.

Every month more circumstantial evidence is released that points the finger at Armstrong for use of performance enhancing drugs. Former team mates, masseurs, and doctors have bleated loudly that he used drugs. The more the circumstantial evidence builds the more we doubt him. But despite this as he has always pointed to his negative test results. He remains innocent until proven guilty as it should be.

He didn't just win, he would romp it in. Outside of 2003s victory that was by a mere 61 seconds, his wins were by relative miles over his challengers. Every year for seven years the cycling world would watch Armstrong dominate the race from any position. He had a team around him that seemingly frightened the field into falling into line – these were Lance's races; don't even bother. All things being equal you cannot question his right to be called one of the greatest cyclists, but in the world of cycling in many opinions (including my own), he is not the greatest.

Though there are other greats, I will restrict this analysis to those who have won the tour five times as they most likely compare more easily to Armstrong's talent. The Spaniard Miguel Indurain who claimed his five wins consecutively from 1991 through to 1995 was probably the most like Armstrong. He won like a finely tuned machine, surviving in the mountains, and killing them in the time trials. I believe Armstrong the stronger rider than Indurain. To go with the Armstrong machine he had the talent on the climbs and showed a dynamic ability to take the race on when challenged.

Jacques Anqetil had his career somewhat defined not just by his success, but his success at the expense of fellow Frenchman Raymond Poulidor. Anqetuil was chased to his tour wins by a hungry Poulidor. The unfortunate Poulidor continued to challenge well beyond Anqetil's retirement for that victory that always eluded him. Armstrong by contrast was able to dominate an era that had great riders, but not the sort that fear would drive him. Marco Pantani and Jan Ullrich both collected a tour win prior to Armstrong's first, but history leaves the late Pantani as an incredibly troubled individual and Ullrich inconsistent and flaky.

Bernard Hinault and Eddy Merckx are the main road blocks, however, against me lifting Armstrong to the title of the Greatest. Whereas they were riders who rode to win everything, Armstrong rode the tour and any race purely in preparation for the tour. Hinault added to his five tours, three Giro d'Italias and two Vuelta a Espanas. He won all three jerseys in the tour at least once, and a number of one day classics.

'The Cannibal' Merckx was even more ferocious and hungry. His five tours were added to five Giros and one Vuelta. Displaying his hunger further is that he won every jersey in the tour and in 1969 won all three. Add to this he is one of the few cyclists to have won all five monument classics, and he set the 'Hour record' on the track. Merckx and Hinault raced for everything, every time they were on a bike. Pre-cancer Armstrong did win the World Championship and a number of other races, but post-cancer Armstrong had eyes only for 'Mellow Johnny', the Maillot Jaune. Armstrong was a phenomenon, but compared to these two he is miles behind.

Cycling didn't need Armstrong to return, Armstrong wanted Armstrong to return. His stated motivations appear to have been purely about raising the cancer awareness, but his desperation in the 2009 tour said that there was more. That he finished third was incredible after four yours since his last victory. But very few champions in any sport are irreplaceable, others will always rise to prominence rendering the past a memory. Perhaps outside of Bradman only Nicklaus and Jordan will endure above all others in their sport.

Reading back through what I have written I realise what a 'wet blanket' I must appear. But this is Armstrong's second retirement, his first left behind a phenomenal performance, his second a serviceable encore. In time, mine and others hearts will warm to reminiscing about Armstrong's glorious seven consecutive tour wins, but in the mean time we move on. He definitely was the reason I came to love the sport of cycling, but as an individual he can never be bigger than the game; he isn't the reason I continue to love it.

Pure Cycling: Irrational Love

There cannot be a professional sport with such a disassembled and bureaucratic structure as cycling is. A combination of national cycling associations, private race organisers, rider guilds as well as multi-sport organisations such as the International Olympic Committee and Commonwealth Games Federation all pool their collective desires together annually and an international racing calendar is drawn up. Above, at times within, often below this chaotic and ridiculous quantity of administrators, the International Cycling Union (UCI) as the nominal governing body of the sport tries to pull all of these desires together, and also conduct a cycling tour of their own.

It is therefore no real surprise that for a lay person with a passing interest in the sport would struggle to draw a consistent line through a season's schedule or the cyclist world rankings that are drawn from results within. A cyclist has had in the past the very real possibility of riding in a lower level semi-professional race along back lanes in northern Europe one day before being thrust into a high profile event the next and be expected to perform in both.

Such dramatic pressure on cyclists has reduced in the modern era. The peloton, readily abused by a series of sadistic administrators and team directors for 100 years, began to fight back in the late 1970s. A picture of a defiant Bernard Hinault refusing to begin a stage in the 1978 Tour de France, the race that year would later be his first of five wins, shows just what a struggle the cyclists believed the poor scheduling to be. Hinault of course was later to become, if he wasn't already, the 'Patron' of the peloton, therefore all the other cyclists that day refused along with 'The Badger'.

But today the collective power of the cyclists themselves is not an uprising any more against a sadistic oppressor, they themselves have become just another group of voices in a swirling vortex of disorganisation. The current, and some would say self-appointed, Patron of the peloton these days is Fabian Cancellara. Anyone witnessing his constant hijacking of last years Tour de France could only conclude that the thinly veiled selfish desires of him, and other riders seeking patronage, are just part of the bureaucratic problem in cycling and not a response.

There are great races every year that can only be won by persons seeking to put in a performance of a champion on that particular day, week, or longer period. In fact this is how cyclists these days approach performance as against the champions of the past. Where Eddie Merckx wanted to win all three grand tours in a year plus all the 'monument' classics, these days training and entry is tailored for cyclists that they will only be able to put in a champion performance in a specific race.

Of course the ridiculous unwieldy scheduling is just one of cycling's problems. Cycling's ongoing endemic scourge of doping is probably the worst. But I love it. It is an irrational sport, calling upon an irrational thing called love. We know the problems, the abuses, yet we return year after year, race after race, ready to forgive and be sucked back into its waiting arms. Maybe irrational love is why problems never gets fixed. Like Hugh Hefner refusing to grow up, cycling doesn't need to, it knows we will return.

by Ben Roberts. Pure Cycling will be his semi-regular look into life on two wheels.

Pure Cycling: The Madison

Balanced Sports columnist Ben Roberts takes a look at the Australian Madison Championship.

Cycling is for the early part of the 21st century what golf was in the latter part of the 20th century, the fashionable sporting pursuit of the upper middle class. Weekend warriors all over the metropolis’ of Australia slip into their Lycra every weekend and pedal off on their dream machines. Dream machines who's purchase has increased their planned retirement age by two years. Financial planners are trained to listen with understanding, they too have their own piece of elite sporting equipment in the garage.

They dream that they too could fly up the side of the Tourmalet, the Telegraph, or even Alpe d'Huez. They know the tactics, conserve energy now, attack the field later; attack now and make them catch you.

In the depths of the southern hemisphere winter bleary eyed white collar workers stare blankly at their computer screens. Asked for the monthly figures by executive management they reply with “Evans 24 seconds down on...I mean still working on them”. The 2.30am refrains of Messrs Liggett and Sherwen rolling around their head - “Bernard Eisel now comes to the front..he’s there for his man Mark Cavendish.”

The tour is more than a cycling race, it is a lifestyle choice whether you are in Marseilles or Melbourne. Every July those watching get a tour of the French countryside, a lesson in French history, even a physiological update that will assist them to take the stairs rather than the lift when trekking between accounts and marketing. They sip 'Australian Sparkling' as though they own a chateau in Champagne, and eat fresh bread and produce with the vigour of a hard-working Breton farmer. The race itself becomes secondary to the lifestyle that goes along with it. Maybe I will break a cycling code by saying so, but as a cycling race, Le Tour, is not the best.

My favourite cycling race is where chaos and organisation come together, the Madison. Conducted within a sterile velodrome it lacks the sociological, viticultural, and perhaps agricultural appeals of the tour; but it more than makes up for it with the excitement of the race.

The Madison to an uninitiated watcher could appear less an organised competition than an overcrowded and under managed training ride. The combination of having teams of two, one racing and one resting but still riding slowly, and the shorter laps of a velodrome can make it completely impossible to ascertain what riders are in fact leading. Originating out of New York's Madison Square, the race sought to replace the original incarnation of six-day racing which became considered hazardous to rider health. Such decisions in cycling history have been a rarity by either organisers or riders themselves!

In shifts of between two and four laps each rider seeks to benefit of their own team before linking up with their partner, literally, and launching them into action. Riders seek to be first across the line after pre-ordained laps, awarded points for doing so – but the real action comes in the pursuit to be 'laps up' on the field.

The race takes all the brute aggression, bike control, and wits that a cyclist could have. It is not for the faint of heart, crashes regular. Switching back and forth between riders keeps the race pace at an exhausting level for spectators, let alone the riders themselves. Spectators engaged at all times, every 10 or 20 laps as the field sprints for points, and as the race wears on the absolute need to take a lap by teams will have them on the edge of their seats.

Lapping the field is the primary objective of the teams, even with zero points a team will win the Madison if they can lap the other riders more often. The winners of a Madison will have been able to collect sprinting points along the way but also have conserved enough energy to have attacked the field at the right time to move one or two laps ahead. Not only this but they must remain aware of their rivals lest they too attack the field.

Friday evenings Australian Madison Championship was won by the pairing of Australia's anointed young cyclists, Cameron Meyer and Jack Bobridge. For the second year running I watched live the championship, enjoying every moment.