Bike Hugger 

I would love to know how Lance winning the tour is better for the entire industry and cycling. Please explain such a stupid statement. Are you on his payroll or does he put something in the water over there in the US to make you all so blind and dumb.

Better yet, tell us why you’re so much smarter than us and know better.

There is no question that Lance Armstrong winning the Tour outright is the best thing for the business of cycling. It might not please a true cycling fan, or a purist, or a cycling nationalist, but in terms of growing competitive cycling’s audience, but a dominant Lance is the biggest draw the Tour could hope for.

Cycling is obviously a very old, grand sport with rich tradition long before Armstrong came along, but please ask how many Tour viewers could name even one other cyclist on the American team before Lance came along. People who don’t even own a bicycle watch a few minutes of the Tour at work because Lance Armstrong is competing.

Maybe these new American fans are stupid and ignorant. But they spend money on cycling equipment, they increase TV ratings, and quite frankly, the Tour should be thrilled to be picking up new casual fans who without Lance would not even be aware of the Tour. 

If you want competitive cycling to thrive as a sport somewhere besides Europe, dominant stars like Lance Armstrong are very good for your sport. If you want to keep cycling a small, purist niche sport, then by all means, keep it a closed, arrogant, purist exhibition.

What a strange reply. You suggest that no one knows any rider except Armstrong. Maybe thats true in your redneck hicksville area but please don’t tar us all with you own patronising views of non specialist cycling fans. Here in the rest of the world cyclings audience is wide and varied and not so self centred and inward looking. I think the problem is that in America nobody is interested in anything unless it contains other Americans and only then if they win things and dominate the rest of the world. If america can’t form a cycling culture without the help of Armstrong then I think you all have a real problem. If you do only base your entire notion of cycling through the perspective of Armstrong Brand and his success then I feel really sorry for you all and yes you really are missing out on the history of a truely (as you say) “grand sport with rich tradition.” As a last point what about Hincapie, a truely great american cyclist who one everyone of Armstrong 7 tours with him but then of course that doesn’t count in america where you are only interested in the WINNER/DESTROYER.

In the US, the Lance Effect is huge for mainstream media coverage, traffic in bike shops, even an uptick in bike racing at the local level. The media did cover le Tour during his retirement, but not at the same level. My post had nothing to do with some egocentric US view and I stand by it. You can see it in the crowds and Livestrong worldwide. At the same time, if he doesn’t win and comes back that’s equally good cause we’ll have another year at least of a good show.

Flames aside - I think it’s a pretty safe fact, the for the Industry, Lance winning is a good thing.  If you were at interbike last year - it was the top of every discussion.  Lace has huge brand value in the US and throughout the world. 

For cycling - eh.  That’s a harder argument and harder to quantify in hard dollars.  Having been to the tour and other events a number of times - people on the hillside ALL looked for Lance.  He’s the superstar of the sport and he draws fans.  This means more exposure, which means more ad opportunity, which means more sponsorship, which means teams will live on.

Ask ANY team manager on another team if they have more reach because Lance is back and I bet they all say yes.  Love him or hate him - he makes their sport more marketable.

I’m bummed the hero’s journey observation got trumped by Americans are stupid.

The only thing more stupid than Americans are faux-cosmopolitans who go onto websites that have large American audiences and then try to pick a fight, and then ignore responses explaining why the Americans believe what they believe. Not very cosmopolitan of you at all.

Anyways, back on topic. Personally, I can’t help but notice the parallels between this year’s Tour and James Joyce’s Ulysses:

- Two protagonists crossing paths exactly twice during a journey.
- One of the heroes has a second personality in conflict.
- Infidelity in a partnership as a major theme.
- Dialogue which is carefully structured with many minced words and allusions. Also, it tends to run-on.
- Three distinct parts, broken down into episodes, with resolution only coming in the final episodes (the second part is long and boring, and only serves to link the first and third part).
- In the penultimate chapter, someone pisses on someone else’s flowers.

It’s been a while since I read Joyce in Public School, but the similarities are tantalizing. I can’t wait to see if someone gets a brick thrown at them sometime this week.

That’s a good observation as well. Frank’s was that the Tour was Penelope and she was flirting with Contador.

Lance is Lance.  The metaphors and comparisons are more or less interesting.  Love him, hate him.  Philanthropist, doper.  Greatest cyclist, tour specialist.  Take your pick, some of the above, all of the above.  No doubt that his return to racing is good for the sport and his foundation.  And it’s much better than reading about him in the gossip pages.  But would his winning the tour be better for cycling in general?  Have any of the great champions of the tour ever retired a winner?  I would like to see him in yellow again.  I would like to see him win the tour.  But it may be better to have an epic struggle and have him lose so that there may be a rematch next year.

“But would his winning the tour be better for cycling in general?”

I think the answer here is “absolutely.” Ask the shop owners who were around when LeMond won and they’ll tell you that the publicity of that heralded the best era in their shops. People who had never considered riding suddenly got onto bikes. People did long cycling trips, people started to commute more, ride on weekends, etc.

I’m of the mindset that more cyclists = better for cycling. If a percent of all car trips in the US were replaced with bike trips, the effects would be staggering.

Just the other day my cousin-in-law IM’d me to say he was watching the Lance retrospective on Versus, and then decided to keep watching the Tour. There’s one more cycling fan who wasn’t interested in it before Lance came back.

Bike manufacturers all over the world create their products to sell in the US and other markets. Fondriest might sell a lot of bikes in Italy, but Specialized sells a lot more bikes in the U.S.

Would it be good for *racing* if he were to win? I think probably not. It takes (for me) some of the trill of Contador’s potential victory away. I’d yell and cheer if Lance won, but I’ve already done that seven times. Yes, eight would be cool, yes it would be cool after a retirement. But I want to see the up and coming star make his name in the halls of cycling and set the stage for the years when Lance isn’t around to bail out a sagging local bike shop economy.

**Alberto, I am your FATHER.**

Lance Armstrong for SUPER-PRESIDENT

Lance winning the Tour will be good for cycling?

I suspect Greg LeMond, David Walsh, Paul Kimmage and countless others who love the sport might disagree with you on that.

Sure that’s another side of the debate. In tomorrow’s team announcement, if they bring in the big dollar sponsors we’re hearing about, then that’s nothing but good for the growth of the sport. Lance has 3.5 M twitter followers many of whom no nothing of our bike culture. As someone said on Twitter last week, I’m getting less, “you suck” and more “go lance” from drivers.

So it’s a simplistic case of money into cycling is good for cycling? Regardless of the character of the person who is behind it, and regardless of their growing power in the sport?

ProCycling this month had a run-down of the most powerful people in cycling. No prizes for guessing who was No. 1. Lots of people find that a very scary prospect indeed. Lance’s vision of the direction the sport should take is very different from most cycling fans I know.

Are you here in the States or abroad? Our perspective is different because of the saturation of ball sports here. Balance of history, culture and ESPN commentary mangling Contador’s name.

I’m not in the States. Given what you’d say, I’d change your line on him winning to “If Lance does win, so much the better for the entire industry and cycling in the US”

Although Lance has his fans in Europe, generally your once-a-year viewer of Le Tour, he is very unpopular with many serious cycling fans. It has nothing to do with him being American- someone like Vande Velde or Zabriskie would be well received.

Sure. I get that. Or if George had been in yellow—he has a huge fan base. This tour has a very complex narrative btw, as I initially wrote and now ever more complex. There’s a double standard for Contador.