The Road To Paris
Posted by Phil Aaronson at 2:34 PM
The Road To Paris is a one hour documentary on Lance Armstrong's preparation for the 2001 tour. It came free with the subscription to Cycle Sport I gave my wife for Christmas. She, like me, is a huge cycling fan.
A couple really telling scenes jumped out at me. The first scene highlighted just how damn dedicated Lance Armstrong really was. Johan Bruneel, directeur sportif for what was US Postal at the time, now Discovery Channel and another man were trying to get Lance to stop because the road was flooded. It was raining, and water, a river really, was rushing across the mountain road they were on. Lance ignored them, yelling, "I'm fine, I'm fine", he hadn't yet seen what was blocking the road. He went around the corner and had to stop at the water's edge, head down in frustration.
The second was a quick scene of David Zabriskie. Again, this was 2001 when he was a domestique on the US Postal squad. There's a shot of him in some hotel room doing a "weight" workout with surgical tubing. Another teammate is relaxing nearby looking at him like he's nuts. Dave says, somewhat sheepishly, "I do this workout three days a week." I was thinking, and that right there is why Dave had a fabulous tour several years later, last year. He was one of the very few riders to match Lance in the time trial stages. Not the workout per-say, but that he was obviously willing to do that something extra. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to just lie down on the bed like everyone else after a full day of training. Instead he's pulling on surgical tubing.
Links
A couple really telling scenes jumped out at me. The first scene highlighted just how damn dedicated Lance Armstrong really was. Johan Bruneel, directeur sportif for what was US Postal at the time, now Discovery Channel and another man were trying to get Lance to stop because the road was flooded. It was raining, and water, a river really, was rushing across the mountain road they were on. Lance ignored them, yelling, "I'm fine, I'm fine", he hadn't yet seen what was blocking the road. He went around the corner and had to stop at the water's edge, head down in frustration.
The second was a quick scene of David Zabriskie. Again, this was 2001 when he was a domestique on the US Postal squad. There's a shot of him in some hotel room doing a "weight" workout with surgical tubing. Another teammate is relaxing nearby looking at him like he's nuts. Dave says, somewhat sheepishly, "I do this workout three days a week." I was thinking, and that right there is why Dave had a fabulous tour several years later, last year. He was one of the very few riders to match Lance in the time trial stages. Not the workout per-say, but that he was obviously willing to do that something extra. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to just lie down on the bed like everyone else after a full day of training. Instead he's pulling on surgical tubing.
Links
- The Road To Paris at World Cycling Productions.
- DZ, Dave Zabriskie's website.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home