Dear Lance,
This is part thank-you note, part goodbye. I first saw you on TV in the 1999 Tour, when I was just 6 years old and you were just the American in the yellow jersey. You won the opening time trial, then the mountain stages, and with each passing moment the excitement flowed faster and faster into my living room, buoyed by the voices of Phil and Paul. You wore that jersey, that symbol of a winner, with cocksure aplomb. It hooked me in a way I didn’t fully understand.
I grew up like most American kids, playing baseball in the summer and football in the fall. I didn’t really know anything about the sport of cycling, but my dad made sure to keep me and my brother on bikes. Some of my best childhood memories come from bikes, countless hours of jumping off mounds of dirt with my brother, or seeing how fast we could ride in circles. Bikes were a thrill, an adventure. But then my dad turned on the Tour for the first time. Seeing you race changed everything, Lance. I learned that cycling could be more than just a time killer.
Over the next seven years, watching the Tour became a summertime tradition between me and my dad. We’d catch primetime coverage on TV after my baseball practices, or even better, after we’d spent the day flying around trails on my little 24” Giant Animator. Those days transformed into a ritual; from start to finish, everything became about bikes. My Dad and I would ride to the local park and time trial it home in time to watch the next stage of the Tour. Riding next to him, I tried to imitate the elegance I saw on television, trying to get aero, hoping I looked like a pro.
Every year you extended your streak, my infatuation with cycling grew stronger. I was sucked in, watching stage after stage, Tour after Tour, willing you on to yellow jersey after yellow jersey. I remember thinking it was all over after you crashed with Iban Mayo in 2003—but then Ullrich waited. I remember thinking you would falter from dehydration that same year—but you found a way. I remember Beloki’s unfortunate crash during stage 9—and your savvy subsequent detour through the field. I remember “The Look.” I remember the attacking, the counter attacks, the nail-biter time trials, the stage wins, the close calls. You exposed cycling’s paradoxical merger of civility and brutality. It was beautiful and fascinating, calm and chaotic. The tensions of the ticking time clock at the end of a stage, or the swell of intensity under the red kite, gripped me with far more power than a ball, strike, or field goal attempt.
More From Bicycling
Somewhere amid those seven years, the Tour convinced me I wanted to be a cyclist. I wanted to see the world by bike. I wanted to attack rivals like you, but I also wanted to effortlessly pedal across county lines. You were so elite, such a champion, I wondered if it was possible to detach cycling from what I saw you do to the sport year after year—dominate it, rule it, bend it to your will.
My cycling dream seemed far-fetched until I saw my dad pedal his new road bike down the driveway one day. It was a Cannondale CAAD 3—Team Saeco edition—the same machine that climbed up Alpe D’huez under top pros. Cycling, and being a cyclist, was more real after that. I dreamt of that bike—the perfect machine—and I realized I didn’t want to be like you as much as I just wanted a deeper relationship with the bike.
I still loved cycling after you left, but the doomsday signs began to overshadow the sport. I watched Floyd win the Tour in 2006, but then I watched the media tear him apart. I watched you launch your comeback in 2009, but then you made your admission to Oprah in 2013. I became disenchanted with racing—my competitive attention turned to things like skiing and skateboarding—but cycling’s roots held in my psyche. And they didn’t stop growing. I bought myself a road bike, and I began to find solace in riding. Just riding.
When I was riding that bike, discovering new roads and challenging myself day after day, the feelings I had about doping didn’t matter so much. Even today, when I go on rides, I feel like my mind totally shuts off, and the bike brings a sense of calm, like a meditation. Other days, it offers that endorphin rush, an obvious pleasure. The bike is medicinal in a way you and racing and competition could never be.
You took a lot of my trust in professional cycling, Lance, and I want to forget you for that. But I also know that without you, it’s unlikely I would have been exposed to cycling in the same way. Without you, my dad and I would not have tuned in to the Tour every year for 8 years straight. Maybe the TV coverage wouldn’t have been the same at all, maybe I would never have seen a proper bike race. You were my gateway. You drew me in to the beauty of racing, the beauty of just riding a bicycle.
But it was never you who kept me around the bike. No, what kept me from saying screw it all and forgetting cycling is what the bicycle gave me, and still gives me, in return. The sense of freedom to escape and explore, the personal challenges set and achieved, the camaraderie among new friends, the hours of tinkering, the thrill of a high speed corner or sense of achievement after an hour long climb. For that, I have to say: Thank you, Lance. Thank you for bringing cycling to my eyes, for giving me and my dad a reason to turn on the television together, for showing us the beauty of racecraft. Now you’re part of two extremes in my relationship to the sport, a gateway to this world I love so much, and a reminder of its failures. And maybe I shouldn’t forget either one.
Trevor Raab is the staff photographer for Runner’s World and Bicycling, a CAT 1 cyclocross racer, and, occasionally, a product reviewer for the Test Team. He fits the typical “how I got in to bikes” story: his dad introduced him to mountain bikes when he was a kid, then he had a stint as a skateboarder in high school, and since 2011 he’s been riding every sort of bike he can find.
