I learned this morning that another Tour de France has come and gone without my knowing. Though I risk alienating a large portion of my audience here, I have to be honest. The Tour, though beloved across the globe, just doesn’t interest me.

I know that even those who love The Tour dearly have mixed feelings about it these days. Doping has put a nasty cloud over the sport, like it has over so many sports in recent years. Floyd Landis went from the great next American hope to being the first cyclist to have a Tour win taken away from him.

Many months ago I wrote a BIY about Lance Armstrong that I never posted because something else came up that seemed more important at the time…and less bitchy. Rather than try to speak at length here about Spain’s win this week, which I know and understand very little about, I’ll just go ahead and post that article:
Lance Armstrong
is in town today promoting a smoke-free Wisconsin.

It is an inspiring thing to overcome cancer. It is also an inspiring thing to excel at a sport. To overcome cancer and to then excel at a sport (to arguably be the best in a sport) is, ergo, super-duper inspiring.

I guess.

The thing is, while I do not begrudge him his accomplishments and I wish him continuing good health, I don’t have any special warm feelings for Lance either. He doesn’t inspire me to excel. I don’t much care if I ever meet him.

I’m a short, overweight, introverted anti-Lance. I mean, I’m not anti-Lance…I’m just quite possibly his polar opposite. Most likely all that we have in common, besides both being from Texas, is the bicycle. But if you saw my collection of bicycles, you’d probably debate that we even have that in common. Although, I do own 5 Treks, only 1 of which I bought. Lance probably didn’t pick his free Treks out of the garbage, though.

There are many stereotypes in bicycle culture. The lawless Critical Mass rider is one. The spandex-clad “drive-to-bike” racer is another (oh, the stereotype dictates that they are lawless too…stereotypes seem to dictate that ALL bicyclists are lawless). This second category tends to be pegged as a big pack of folks on expensive bicycles who ignore stop signs and take up the entire road doing training rides, making it impossible for the good people of rural Dane County to get back and forth from home to the post office (or, to the local dump, for that matter). Lance’s popularity has done quite a bit to expand the pool of people who fall into this perceived group. The sale of high end bikes has, I’m sure, gone up in the years since Lance first won the Tour, and wearing a bike jersey is certainly more socially acceptable. Forgetting stereotypes, it is hard to throw a yellow wristband in Madison without hitting a Lance Armstrong fan.

But for all of Lance’s accomplishments, he hasn’t inspired me to buy an expensive bike or to wear a fancy jersey, or even to wear a yellow wristband (though I seem to recall being given one).

The hero worship of Lance doesn’t seem any different to me than the hero worship of any other sports figure. Lance and Brett Farve are not that much different. You could even make the argument that Lance and Jeff Gordon are not that much different. And soon you would come to the conclusion that cycling fans are not really much different, in theory, than Nascar fans. Are people truly inspired by Lance Armstrong, or do they just like feeling part of something? Does Lance Armstrong make us proud to be Americans, or do we wear yellow wristbands so that other people think we fit in?

The people that inspire me are the people who bike to work all through winter (I’ve missed more days this year than usual) or who do all of their grocery shopping on their bikes. Or sometimes I get inspired by people who volunteer their time to make the community a better place to bicycle and to live. When I see those people, it makes me want to dig deeper and try harder to be better.

I’m glad that Americans have found a hero who is admired for overcoming adversity and for excelling in an active pursuit. Despite what I’ve said, I think that it really IS better than worshipping Nascar drivers. But sometimes I wish that people could see the heroes in their own hometowns rather than always looking for a superstar bandwagon on which jump.

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