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footsteps and win the Tour de France. Och's teams had placed riders fourth on a couple of
different occasions, but had never won i t .
Och asked me what my own ambition was. "I want to be the best rider there is," I said. "I want
to go to Europe and be a pro. I don't want to just be good at it, I want to be the best." That was
good enough for Och; he handed me a contract and packed me off to Europe.
My first race was the Clasica San Sebastian. They may call it a "classic," but in reality it's a
horribly punishing single-day race in which riders cover more than a hundred miles, frequently
over bone-rattling terrain, in terrible weather. It is atmospheric and historic, and notoriously
brutal. San Sebastian turned out to be a gorgeous seaside town in Basque country, but the day
of my debut was gray, pouring rain, and bit-ingly cold. There is nothing more uncomfortable
than riding in the rain, because you can never, ever get warm. Your Lycra jersey is nothing more
than a second skin. Cold rain soaks it, plastering it to your body, so the chill mingles with your
sweat and seeps down into your bones. Your muscles seize up and grow heavy with frigid,
sodden exhaustion.
The day of my debut, it rained so hard it hurt. As we started off into the stinging, icy downpour,
I quickly faded to the back, and as the day wore on, I slipped farther and farther behind,
shivering and struggling to pedal. Soon, I was in last place. Ahead of me, the field was growing
thinner as riders began to give up. Every so often one would pull over to the side of the road and
abandon the race. I was tempted to do the same, to squeeze the brakes, rise up from the bars,
and coast to the side of the road. It would be so easy. But I couldn't, not in my first pro start. It
would be too humiliating. What would my teammates think? I wasn't a quitter.
Why don't you just quit?
Son, you never quit.
Fifty riders dropped out, but I kept pedaling. I came in dead last in the field of 111 riders. I
crossed the finish line almost half an hour behind the winner, and as I churned up the last hill,
the Spanish crowd began to laugh and hiss at me. "Look at the sorry one in last place," one
jeered.
A few hours later, I sat in the Madrid airport, slumped in a chair. I wanted to quit the entire
sport. It was the most sobering race of my life; on my way to San Sebastian, I had actually
thought I had a chance of winning, and now I wondered if I could compete at all. They had
laughed at me.
Professional cycling was going to be a lot harder than I'd thought; the pace was faster, the
terrain tougher, the competition more fit than I ever imagined. I pulled a sheaf of unused plane
tickets out of my pocket. Among them, I had a return portion to the States. I considered using it.
Maybe I should just go home, I thought, and find something else to do, something I was good
at .
I went to a pay phone and called Chris Carmichael. I told him how depressed I was, and that I
was considering quitting. Chris just listened, and then he said, "Lance, you are going to learn
more from that experience than any other race in your whole life." I was right to have stayed in
and finished, to prove to my new teammates that I was a tough rider. If they were going to rely
on me, they needed to know I wasn't a quitter. Now they did.
"Okay," I said. "Okay. I'll keep going."
I hung up, and boarded the plane for the next race. I had just two days off, and then I was
scheduled to compete in the Championship of Zurich. I had a lot to prove, to myself and
everyone else and unless my heart exploded in my chest, I was not going to be last again.
I finished second in Zurich. I attacked from the start and stayed on the attack for practically the
entire race. I had little or no idea tactically how to ride in the race I just put my head down and
bulled through it, and when I stepped onto the medal podium it was more with relief than
elation. Okay, I thought to myself, I think I can do this after all.
I called Chris Carmichael. "See?" Chris said. In the space of just a few days I had gone from
depressed rookie to legitimate competitor. The turnaround provoked murmurs around the sport:
Who's this guy and what's he all about? people wanted to know.
It was a question I still needed to answer for myself.
AN AMERICAN IN CYCLING WAS COMPARABLE TO A French baseball team in the
World Series. I was a gate-crasher in a revered and time-honored sport, and I had little or no
concept of its rules, written and unwritten, or its etiquette. Let's just say that my Texas manners
didn't exactly play well on the continent.
There was a big difference between the discreet jockeying of European cycling, and the
swaggering, trash-talking American idea of competition I was reared with. Like most
Americans, I grew up oblivious to cycling; it wasn't until LeMond's victory in the '86 Tour that I
really noticed the sport. There was a way things were done, and attitudes that I didn't
understand, and even when I did understand them I didn't feel I had to be a part of them. In fact,
I ignored them.
I raced with no respect. Absolutely none. I paraded, mouthed off, shoved my fists in the air. I
never backed down. The journalists loved me; I was different, I made good copy, I was colorful.
But I was making enemies.
A road is only so wide. Riders are constantly moving around, fighting for position, and often the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]