Vital battle still raging for the soul of cycling

SIDELINE CUT:Paul Kimmage's row with Lance Armstrong addressed key questions which have not gone away, writes KEITH DUGGAN

IT HAS ALWAYS seemed strange to me how many sports stars – particularly our elite Gaelic Games players – list Lance Armstrong's book It's Not About The Bikeas their favourite book. The reason may be that, having been confronted with a 20-questions type scenario, this is the first book that springs to mind, in much the same way as practically every GAA star of the 1990s vouched for The Shawshank Redemptionas his favourite film and why it seems so many contemporary hurling and football stars polled about their Ideal Date are convinced that Beyonce is the woman for them.

Quite apart from the fact that Beyonce has recently become Mrs Jay-Z, meaning that the mere approach of a GAA star, regardless of how many All-Stars he possessed or how much All-Ireland bling he held in his back pocket, would bring the wrath of New Jersey’s rap scene down upon him, it should be noted such a rendezvous would be a recipe for a disaster.

In fact, I feel certain that the reality of a date between the globally-renowned chanteuse and a gnarly, taciturn half-back/engineering student from mid-Leinster or a free-scoring forward from south Armagh or south Dublin would be the perfect opposite of “Ideal”. But it would make for the best reality television show of all time.

However, Armstrong’s book seems to represent many things for athletes trying to tap into their deepest reserves of inner strength and resolve. Armstrong’s story has passed into modern sports lore: he not only battled back from the bleakest cancer diagnosis to return to full fitness, he then went on to obliterate all previous cycling form by winning the Tour de France in seven consecutive years, between 1999 and 2005. It was a feat deemed superhuman, even in a sport where the boundaries of ordinary human capability often seem stretched.

Any of us who remember the brief Irish national obsession with international cycling will probably therefore understand the nature of the showdown between Armstrong and Paul Kimmage, the former professional cyclist who has since become an award-winning sportswriter, now with The Sunday Times.

At a press conference at the Tour of California last weekend, Armstrong sought to dress down the Irish man for what he deemed to be an inappropriate depiction of his return to cycling. The California race represented Armstrong’s first race on home soil since his surprising decision to return to the sport.

The field also included Floyd Landis, the American rider who seemed set to pick up where Armstrong had left off when he won the 2006 Tour de France, only to be stripped of the title after he failed a standard doping test. The Italian Ivan Basso was racing in California having served his time in exile for doping.

Paul Kimmage’s question was fairly straightforward if somewhat provocative: he asked the illustrious champion why he stood by Landis and Basso when they had neither admitted nor apologised for their transgressions? Armstrong, though, had his own axe to grind. After confirming Kimmage’s identity, he went on the attack over a line that he contended Kimmage had written. , He stated: “You said ‘Folks, the cancer has been in remission for four years but our cancer has now returned.’ Meaning me.”

It was, of course, no accident, that Kimmage had explicitly used the word “cancer” as a metaphor for what he feels to be Armstrong’s questionable track record as a professional cyclist and his ambivalent attitude towards substance abusers in the sport.

Armstrong clearly took exception to the insinuation and told Kimmage: “You are not worth the chair you are sitting in, with a statement like that.”

Armstrong is polished and poised and articulate and he had the moral high ground as he lectured the journalist before graciously condescending to reply to his original question, with an answer that amounted to firmly sitting on the fence. Before he left off, he told Kimmage: “I am not sure I will ever forgive you.”

It was a startling scene (like everything else in life, it is available on You Tube) and highlights the often-obscure struggle for the soul of cycling, a sport which surely has slipped off the international radar in recent decades.

Whether or not it was appropriate for Paul Kimmage to refer to Armstrong in the terms he did is a matter of individual opinion. The inference may well, as Armstrong intimated during his measured tirade, offend people around the world who have been affected in some way and by some strain of the killer illness. But it is also true Armstrong, from the moment he published that best-selling book, has linked his battles with the illness to his subsequent glories. He is the most vivid living proof imaginable that such illnesses can be beaten and has become one of the most high-profile charity fund-raisers on the high-end charity scene to which many retired sports stars devote their time.

Throughout Armstrong's career, investigations and allegations into his own possible substance abuse have followed him. Five years ago, he took libel action against extracts from L.A. Confidentiel, published in France by Pierre Ballester and David Walsh, after they appeared in an English newspaper.

Even after his retirement, reports have appeared here and there and interviews with former employees – some of which were conducted here by Newstalk’s Off the Ball crew – all seemed to colour in a fairly dubious backdrop to Armstrong’s all-conquering legend.

But nothing was ever proved and, as he has pointed out, he may well be “the most tested athlete in the world”. And he has won multiple international honorary sports awards and has also become a member of the celebrity glitterati. Cycling fights for any exposure it gets in mainstream American sports and media coverage but Armstrong, partly through his phenomenal record but also through his force of personality, has transcended the sport to become Letterman-couch material.

When he ran the NYC marathon, partly to raise money, he had Hicham El Guerrouj among his pace team and the organisers fixed a dedicated camera on him throughout.

His decision to rejoin the tour seemed to come from leftfield and it was, he declared, partly inspired by his wish to fight “the burden of cancer”. It should be acknowledged that Armstrong’s passion for raising money to fight the ravages of the illness he overcame should be considered genuine. Who knows how many people he has helped?

But it is also the case that he represents a shadowy figure to those, like Kimmage, who are deeply dismayed by the poisons that have invaded cycling in recent decades. Those two separate engines that have fuelled Armstrong’s motivations, collided here.

And no matter how many races Armstrong will win this season, he failed to better Kimmage in this instance – not bad for a man who finished his cycling life as a domestique almost 20 years ago. Kimmage poured his heart out in A Rough Ride, his own classic account of life and disillusionment in the sport that he loved – and a book that rarely features on favourite reading lists of sports stars around the world.

He responded to the attack from the feted world champion in spirited fashion, pointing out that he, too had lost people through that illness, that he too had raced bikes professionally and that exposing the ills of professional cycling had become his life’s work. It was a brave stance to take in what was a hostile room. After a few charged seconds of awkwardness, the public relations man called for the next question.

“Back to the Tour of California,” someone began in a sardonic voice and there was widespread laughter, which disguised the sound of all the uncomfortable questions being brushed away under the carpet.