September is usually a quiet time in the newswires of professional cycling. You usually can get all the news you need by briefly scanning the headlines of cyclingnews.com and velonews.com. Vuelta results, riders changing teams, news from Interbike, then the World Championships. Mainstream sports news, let alone mainstream media rarely picks up any news of cycling unless it’s a doping scandal. But then Lance steps back in from the shadows. Maybe he’s sick of dominating the tabloid headlines with his personal life and wants to get back to the bike. Lance has announced and confirmed he will make a comeback, and all of the sudden, the TODAY show is picking it up, it’s all over ESPN, interviews in Vanity Fair, and the cyclingnews servers are overloading. The bike industry must love it. There’s no doubt that Lance mania has always brought a lot of new people into the sport of cycling. Hopers, dreamers and survivors. There’s no doubt Lance has done more for raising cancer awareness, and giving hope to those fighting the illness. It’s hard to hate the guy for that.
When Michael Jordan came back to play with the Wizards, it was sad. He was older, slower, but he was still Jordan. He could still toss in 45 points, but the Wizards still sucked. The tv commentators called him “Floor Jordan” instead of “Air Jordan” because he lost that skyward step. It was still entertainment, though, and probably the only reason anybody watched the Wizards play. If Lance just shows up, wins a time trial here and there, it will be looked upon as a failure. He has to come back and win. Lance didn’t just win the Tour de France. He dominated his rivals, broke their spirits, and crushed the hopes of a lot of pretenders. His main rivals at the time are all gone: Ullrich, Mayo, Vinokourov, Kasheckin, Basso. All out of the sport for positive doping tests or they are creeping back after serving suspensions (Basso), but won’t ever match up again. So what’s the endgame?
I’m waiting for when he will start working on his next book: It Was All About The Bike After All.
About a month ago, professional bike racer Dave Zabriskie called me to see if I knew of any nice places to stay in Park City or Deer Valley. His coach wanted him to train and sleep at an altitude above 8,000 feet. This was right after I started my new job as Director of Marketing for Deer Valley Lodging. Duh. This was a no-brainer. Thanks to a cycling-friendly General Manager at The Village at Empire Pass, one of our Deer Valley slopeside properties, we were able to set him up with some nice accommodations while he spent time motorpacing behind a scooter on the roads of Park City, and sleeping above 8,000 feet. Dave leaves for Beijing on Sunday, and will be representing the United States in the road race and individual time trial. A former silver medalist in the World Championships time trial, Z is no dark horse in this event. He beat Armstrong in the Tour de France to claim a yellow jersey, and I believe he still holds the record for the fastest ever average speed in a TDF time trial stage. And did I mention that he beat Armstrong, which was sweet. Unlike current time trial world champion Fabian Cancellara, who can’t help being Swiss but often refers to himself in the third person, which I find quite annoying, Dave is pretty down to earth despite being an international star. If you read this recent interview on cyclingnews.com, you have to think he’s got as good a shot as anyone for a medal. As you can see below, Z has shorn the Dirk Diggler moustache which he sported for much of the 2008 season, something we have never seen before in professional cycling.
Good luck Dave. I’ll give you ten bucks if you race with a face mask on.
So my phone rings and it’s an unfamiliar SLC number. Turns out, it is founder and CEO of DZ Nuts chamois creme, Dave Zabriskie. Dave is a professional cyclist with Team Slipstream and a former winner of the Maillot Jaune in the Tour de France. In that opening time trial a few years back, he shocked the world by beating all comers including a retired, silly well-known Texan (see Dickipedia) and everyone’s favorite recreational drug-using former Eastern bloc talent-squanderer Jan Ullrich to claim the leader’s jersey in dramatic fashion in the world’s most televised biking contest. Dave has had his flashes of brilliance on the bike since that historical moment, but some who know him well would argue his real talent is in making people laugh. Here’s to Dave and his wife and new baby, and to a speedy recovery from a nasty fall in the Giro d’Italia, right after helping his team win the opening time trial (editor’s note: Dave is still the only American to have won a stage in all three of the Grand Tours). Shaka.