Search This Blog

Monday, February 20, 2006

Inspiring the Next Generation

Is there life after Lance for U.S. professional cycling? The answer at the beginning of 2006 appears to be a resounding "Yes!" based on the people attending the February 19, 2005 Prologue Stage of the inaugural Tour of California (ToC @ http://www.amgentourofcalifornia.com/ ).

I stayed up to watch the taped ToC prologue on Monday morning on ESPN2 (shown here on the east coast at 1:00 a.m.). The commentary was provided by Paul Sherwin and Bob Roll. With all due respect to Paul and Bob, I did find myself missing Phil ("His legs are pumping like V8 pistons") Liggett's narration though.

The commentary appeared to have been put in after the race was finished and was, IMHO, less than stellar - likely because Paul and Bob (two otherwise great cycling commentators) had to compress alot into one hour. The transition footage was sometimes very abrupt. As an example, Levi Leipheimer was shown leaving the starting gate and then finishing less than 30 seconds later whereas it seemed that some of the other riders got almost a minute or so of coverage while they were on the course. It was almost as if the ESPN producers and camera crews didn't know who to really focus on. Perhaps more importantly, it didn't appear that they had received meaningful pre-race guidance on how to best cover the race and its riders. Hopefully, Monday's ESPN's Stage 1 coverage will be better.

Nevertheless, it was great to see U.S. cyclists take five of the top 10 prologue positions.
1. Levi Leipheimer ( http://www.levileipheimer.net/index.htm )
2. Bobby Julich ( (http://www.bikeride.com/julich/ )
3. George Hincapie ( http://www.georgehincapie.com/news.php )
4. Floyd Landis ( http://www.floydlandis.com/blog/ )
5. David Zabriskie ( http://www.davezabriskie.com/pages/1/index.htm )
That being said, there's still alot of riding left in this tour.

Levi was clearly pumped after his prologue win yesterday. His emotion carried over to the podium. He tried putting on the ToC race leader's gold jersey thinking the zipper was in front and then laughed after he caught himself. At the Grand Tours, the podium jerseys have their zippers in the back. I believe that the podium jerseys for the other U.S. major tour, the Tour de Georgia, have had their zippers in front. The fact that the ToC jerseys have their zippers in the back shows attention to detail and is probably indicative of the aspirations of the ToC's organizers.

You also gotta love this about Team CSC's ( http://www.csc.com/mms/cycling/en/) Bobby Julich ) as reported @ http://www.velonews.com/race/dom/articles/9515.0.html: "To prepare himself for his first major race of the season, Julich skipped the usual trainer warm-up and instead went for a ride across the Golden Gate Bridge. 'I must have passed two or three hundred people out on a bike ride,' he said. 'I felt like I was just on a ride, hanging out in San Francisco. Then I thought I better hurry back and start this thing.'" As I e-mailed some friends of mine this morning, "Can you imagine us on a Sunday bike ride and suddenly seeing a CSC team rider in full regalia come zipping past us?"

On a side note, something like this happened a couple of years ago in '98 or '99, when the then-U.S. Postal Service cycling team was in the northern Virginia area for what is now the CSC Invitational and took a training ride on the W&OD bike trail ( http://www.nvrpa.org/wod.html ). Cyclists were literally jumping on the trail to see if they could hang with Postal.

What's up with OLN? Each year, they provide great coverage of the Tour de France and then seem to fall back on "what worked last year." This year, their 2006 professional cycling race coverage ( http://www.olntv.com/nw/article/view/11040/?tf=nwArticle.tpl ) looks like last year's. OLN's first race coverage is not till March (the Paris-Nice race). I've sent my complaint in to OLNTV @ http://www.olntv.com/article/view/744/?tf=footerArticles.tpl . Still waiting on a response ...

OLN missed the inaguaral Tour of California in the U.S. of A that according to Tom McManners of Discover Adventures ( http://www.discoveradventures.com/bike_race_tours/tca.asp ) boasted "200,000 cycling fans [who] came out to watch a race less than 2 miles long." Read more about Tom's great write-up of the prologue stage and the implications for U.S. cycing @ http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fullstory&id=3799.

As usual, I thought Chris Brewer's and Graham Watson's race coverage @ http://www.thepaceline.com/ was first rate.

Bobby Julich ("Bobby J"), in 2nd place after Sunday, stated in the Velonews.com story: "Now it's up to us to inspire the next generation, and I think the Tour of California will help us do that." He was communicating that same message last year when he was here in the D.C. area racing in the CSC Invitational.

Levi Leipheimer is helping Bobby J. carry that "Inspiring the Next Generation" banner. According to Tom McManners' story, Levi "shared his insight that this race will,'definitely be the fastest growing race in the world that we'll see (over the next years) and inspire the next generation of cyclists. It (The Amgen Tour of California) will have a huge impact on cycling.'"

ESPN, who's providing the tape-delayed broadcast of the race, had no ToC prologue coverage on their web home page Monday morning. There was no CNNSI.com home page coverage either. I had to do a search on ESPN.com to find the article @ http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=cycling&id=2336795. So much for our sports media like OLNTV and ESPN helping to "inspire the next generation."

Right now, I don't see Lance communicating the message that Bobby J. is communicating. Lance is probably in the best position to do this but he was absent yesterday. Perhaps he was concerned that his presence might overshadow the other riders; perhaps he had family or LAF commitments. Hopefully, he'll make a ToC appearance and take up the "Inspire the Next Generation" banner.

Go USA!