Champions Past and Present

“My relationship with Lance is zero,” [Alberto] Contador said at a news conference, one day after winning his second Tour. “He is a great rider and has completed a great race, but it is another thing on a personal level, where I have never had great admiration for him and I never will.”

Alberto Contador, quoted in The New York Times

Seeing these comments from AC. If I were him I’d drop this drivel and start thanking his team. w/o them, he doesn’t win.

hey pistolero, there is no “i” in “team”. what did i say in March? Lots to learn. Restated.

Lance Armstrong, on Twitter

Not much more than 24 hours after the 2009 edition of the Tour de France came to a close, two champions of the race (and teammates, after a fashion) — current champion Alberto Contador and seven-time winner Lance Armstrong — are already engaging in a war of words.

I have to say, this is not exactly the kind of conduct from either rider that I’d expect from a true champion. Armstrong has made some comments in the press about how strong Contador is, and given the younger rider credit for being the best. But he might be better served to not react to Contador’s comments.

And, on the other side, Contador would probably better serve his own cause by playing it calm and cool and professional. Granted, he’s made a statement generically thanking everyone who helped him win. And perhaps he’s even said so in private. In public, he should just be saying nice things about his teammates — even Armstrong. Downplay the internal strife. It serves no purpose to air that dirty laundry and stir things up. Especially not with a year before the 2010 race begins.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think when it comes to the psychological warfare, Armstrong is more experienced and more skillful. Rather than fight on that front, Contador should focus on the business of riding and racing, and letting his anger at whoever he’s angry at go — until he needs to motivate himself to victory.

It’s not as if cycling fans don’t realize there’s been some tension between the two. Contador, being the young ambitious buck that he is, expected to be the team leader in 2009. And no doubt he expected a team to be built around him for this year’s Tour. Given his results last year, he’d earned that priviledge.

With one announcement, the unretirement of the winningest Tour champion in history and said champion’s signing up to race for Team Astana, Contador’s dreams for 2009 were shattered. Sort of. Contador is still a dominating stage racer, and he’s got time on his side. He’s eleven years younger than the man who was his rival. And Lance was an unknown last summer. Would he even be in good enough condition to be a factor in the 2009 Tour? (Contador had plenty to fear in that regard, as Lance’s performance this year bore out. Coming back after that long a layoff and placing third is no small feat.)

Of course, Armstrong’s history with the team’s directeur sportif might have also given Contador pause. Johan Bruyneel, after all, guided Lance to all those wins. And if Lance were in reasonable shape, one can hardly blame the Spanish rider for wondering where his DS’s loyalty would reside. The past champion or the present?

Exactly what was said during the team’s strategy sessions, the scenarios Bruyneel sketched out and how he wanted the riders to race, we’ll probably never know. Exactly what was said after races, we won’t be privy to. But we’ve had hints for the last three weeks that things were not all sweetness and light in Team Astana-land. Contador, to his credit, played it pretty cool. Armstrong tried to do the same, but little jabs slipped out on occasion.

We’ve had glimpses of the strain. Both Levi Leipheimer and Lance Armstrong spoke of fireworks behind closed doors, but said little else, other than some things done by this year’s champion were not according to the DS’s plans.

Given the verbal darts these two are now throwing at each other, can you imagine what things must have been like behind the scenes?

“On this Tour, the days in the hotel were harder than those on the road,” Contador said. “The situation was tense and delicate because the relationship between myself and Lance extended to the rest of the staff.”

Tense, indeed. Contador not only had to play out the chess game between Astana and the other teams (the Schleck brothers of Saxo Bank, Bradley Wiggins of Garmin-Slipstream, and others), he also had to match wits with his own erstwhile teammate, Armstrong. The mental game was perhaps the toughest of all.

In winning, Contador proved that he could pull off a Tour win, despite a team that may have been fractured on the inside, and despite his suspicions about who the DS really wanted to win the race. Not any easy task, by any stretch of the imagination. From my perspective, I thought Bruyneel would have been happy with either result, but he was playing the “who’s the leader” game more to confuse Astana’s opponents than to cause strife internally. Bruyneel probably should have let his two biggest guns in on the plan, if he was just trying to mix up the other teams.

Maybe I’m a bit old-fashioned, but it seems to me that a true champion should try to keep himself above the fray, and try not to engage in the kind of jousting that Contador and Armstrong seem to be caught in.

A champion is also measured on how much he respect his teammates and opponents. You can win a race on your own not a grand tour.

Axel Merckx, son of five-time Tour champion Eddy, on Twitter.

That’s good advice for champions past and present. One of these two should let go of the argument. I understand that there are some hurt feelings, but at some point someone ought to be the bigger man and walk away from the pettiness. The question is, will either one do so? Or will these two proud champions be going at each other until the 2010 Tour begins in Rotterdam next July?

I see the seeds of a generational conflict here. And a great rivalry, too. Although I think that the rivalry between Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador will last longer and — if Schleck lives up to his potential — be one for the ages. The 2010 Tour is going to be very interesting, indeed. Who knows? With these two characters focusing on each other, perhaps Bradley Wiggins or Andy Schleck will sneak up — unexpected — and steal the victory. It could happen. And we only have 11 months and one week, or so, to wait until it all begins again.