Lance Armstrong is back… Beware of the return of the fair weather cyclist

Lance Armstrong TT

Lance Armstrong announced this week that he would be returning to pro cycling in 2009 with the hopes of claiming his 8^th Tour de France title. Rumour has it he would be signing on to race in the Tour of California, Tour of Georgia, Paris-Nice and The Dauphine-Libere and possibly joining team Astana.

As an avid cyclist I’m happy to see Lance return to racing but not for the reason one might think. I believe that Armstrong is one of our sports greatest champions; I believe that Lance’s return to the peloton will hopefully breathe new life into our troubled sport.

Maybe his return will bring the North American fans back that seem to have left the sport to go back to baseball and football in the absence of an American champion. Maybe his return will rekindle the enthusiasm that has been missing for the Tour in the last couple of years. The lack of leadership in the last few years and the scandals that have seen Floyd Landis, Michael Rasmussen and Tom Boonen suspended from cycling for drug offences both performance enhancing and recreational. Let’s face it cycling has gone through some hard times in the past couple of years, hopefully Lace Armstrong’s return for better or for worse will bring positive attention back to the sport we love.

The one problem with Lance Armstrong returning to cycling is the influx of fair weather racers at our weekly races. Once Lance get back into the peloton, a bus load of want to be racers will be pulling up to bike stores everywhere to buy the newest, greatest bike that Armstrong happens to be riding this year. Once they have this high octane machine with all the bells and whistles like the Zipp wheels and power tap, the new eleven speed Campagnolo super record groupo, you know they’re going to want to test their new bike in race conditions.

So picture this, our brand spanking new racer let’s call him Jimmy, pulls up to the line with his new machine, twenty pound overweight with the latest euro kit on, all stretched out, in all the wrong directions. He hasn’t ridden a bike in years but when he rode home from the bike shop he managed to ride at 32 km/h for over 5 minutes and now without even trying to ride with a club to see what group riding is all about, he going to race tonight, but hey how hard can a crit be? It’s only a 1.5 km course with four corners, how hard could it be. Jimmy is on the line next to you and he might just make it to the corner in time to go around it with the pack, I know Jimmy’s going to be dropped in minutes but he might make one corner and then stand up to try and sprint with the pack causing a crash, when he figures out he’s in too big a gear and can’t push it, so he fights to keep himself in the pack and starts to wobble all over the place and takes someone out.

I know Jimmy should know better than to line up at a race without knowing exactly what he’s getting himself into, but I don’t lay the blame entirely with him. In my case the FQSC who is in charge of regulating bike races, sees nothing wrong with selling a novice rider like Jimmy a day license so he might try racing. They don’t put him in a novice category like they do other states and provinces, so he might learn how to race at a pace that he can handle, or have a minimum requirement that he has ridden with a club, so that he might learn how to ride within a group. This would teach him how to react when something happens in a pack like someone swerving to miss a pot hole or slowing down abruptly to pick up a quarter of the train tracks. Don’t get me wrong I’m happy that Lance Armstrong is coming back to racing, and that he will be influencing people to take up riding and start living the healthy lifestyle that cycling offers, but I wish that our racing federation would act responsibly and either force beginner racers into a novice category or require a club membership, instead of throwing them into our pack and causing havoc with our race. Enjoy the ride and be safe.