Photo via Velonews
After the heat of doping allegations ended Lance Armstrong's reign of terror over cycling in 2005, a series of Americans quickly stepped up to fill the massive vacuum. They were all unconvincing facsimiles of Lance, faulty versions of the greatest heel in cycling history. Tyler Hamilton won an Olympic gold medal in 2004 and remains the only American to win a Monument Classic, but his serial blood doping habit and deep connections to the US Postal Service—Armstrong cyclo-industrial complex—mangled his career and he rapidly moved from winning stages at the Tour De France to farting around the US circuit. Floyd Landis won the 2006 Tour but popped a positive for testosterone and brought the entire Phonak team down around him. His only post-suspension win was a time trial victory at the Tour of the Bahamas. Levi Leipheimer kept his distance from the USPS miasma, and came within 31 seconds of winning the 2007 Tour, but he still had all the drug problems of his countrymen.Lance was a psychopathic competitor that almost mortally wounded an entire sport, but he got stateside fans interested in the Tour and there was a hefty windfall for his services. Logically, his lieutenants saw the opportunity to replace him, to keep riding the wave and cash Nike's checks. But none were good enough, or wily enough, and after Lance went down, the whole apparatus fractured.Americans had a reputation as cutthroats. The European cycling establishment, the French press in particular, saw them as arrogant riders who didn't give a shit about the rules of the sport. The USPS' superiority complex and Lance's sustained denial in the face of ever-more credible evidence of his doping motivated the UCI—when it became clear they couldn't hitch their wagon to Armstrong anymore—and the non-Anglo press to evict him as thoroughly as possible. Which meant more scrutiny for his network and teammates. The unrepentant were chased out of the sport and the only prominent Americans left racing at the highest level were ghosts of the glory days like Leipheimer, Christian Vande Velde, and George Hincapie.But a new American star is approaching his predecessors' ominous level of form in a whole new way. Andrew Talansky just won the Criterium du Dauphine over a loaded field featuring all the heavy favorites for the Tour De France, which starts this weekend. The Dauphine is the most important warm up race for the Tour, and the last three winners of July's Grand Boucle have stood at the podium at the Dauphine. What's most impressive about his win is the marauding style with which he won.The race, up to the last stage, was fairly cursory. Chris Froome and Alberto Contador, both former champions targeting first place in Paris, played to their strengths. Froome followed the wheels of his dominant Sky teammates after killing the time trial and Contador rode away from him with a daring attack in the high mountains. The pair entered the last stage separated by eight seconds, looking forward to dueling it out on the last climb when Talansky seized the race. Together with right-hand man Ryder Hesjedal, they kamikazed unexpectedly into the early break, along with a handful of other top-10 hopefuls. It was an optimistic and bold move. Had they been caught before the final climb, Talansky would likely have paid for his efforts and been dropped. But he broke Contador and Froome and won the race comfortably. It was probably a surprise for them and other podium hopefuls, but it's right on the ascendant trajectory Talansky's been on his whole career.Talansky won the NCAA cycling championships when he was a freshman at Lees-McRae College. Immediately, he made an ambitious move straight into the deep end of the sport and signed with an Italian team. It didn't work, but he quickly recovered and joined Garmin, the biggest American team, where he started developing into a star. When he was 23, Garmin handed him the keys to team leadership for the first time at the Vuelta A Espana, and he nabbed 7th at the hardest Grand Tour race. He followed that up with 10th at the 2013 Tour, moving up seven spots during the last week of the race. Every time he gets a chance to lead, he's succeeded. His Dauphine win is the breakthrough he's been looking for, but he's come very close to winning other prominent week-long stage racesIn short, he has a history of continually outperforming expectations and his past results. If he needed any more symbolic reassurance that the full resources of Garmin are at his disposal, the team they're sending to help him is full of young climbers. Garmin was home for most of the Lance-era American riders, but none of them made this team. Gone are 36-year-olds Tom Danielson and David Millar. Rather than pay tribute to old dogs' achievements past, Garmin engineered a team built with no other goals beyond helping Talansky win. Sebastian Langeveld and Johan Van Summeren are there to help guide him across the treacherous cobbles of Northern France and the flat stages. Tom-Jelte Slagter and Janier Acevedo will be the last teammates with him in the high mountains. It's a tactically adept, young squad. They won't go for sprint wins or ancillary competitions like King of the Mountains.But for all the momentum he has in his favor, Talansky won't be favorited to win the Tour. Oddsmakers have Froome and Contador as near-even favorites, and Talansky as slightly behind Vincenzo Nibali. Luckily, it's a huge crapshoot. The Tour De France is a grindhouse, and this particular route is one of the most difficult courses in years.Stage 5 features 15 km of some of the nastiest cobbles in France. The last time the race dared to tread this particular ground, two of the favorites broke their collarbones and crashes threw the overall standings into disarray. Tour organizers are doing their best to make the race unpredictable and stoke the type of aggressive racing Talansky excels at. They made mountain stages shorter and sharper, incentivizing bursts away from the field by giving the peloton less rope to reel in attacks. Winning the race has always been half about staying upright in the face of three weeks of turmoil, but this year organizers took that idea to its zenith.And that helps Talansky immensely. Froome is not a skilled improviser, and Contador may not have the strength in numbers to put him on the back foot as much as Talansky can. Their rivalry may turn internecine and allow Talansky to seize momentum as he did in the Dauphine. He won't be surprising anyone this time, but there is a clear course charted out where he can win the Tour. If anything, this is the best chance an American rider has to win the Tour De France since the halcyon days of USPS/Discovery.A win for him and by proxy, America, would have big ramifications for the sport at a global scale. Cycling is at a precarious position right now, with sponsors abandoning even big teams. Belkin came to the rescue of the old Rabobank team, but the California-based company is pulling out at year's end because it doesn't see the sport as worth investing in. A new generation of stars, like Talansky, Nairo Quintana, and Wilco Kelderman are starting to win big races and reinvigorate their countries, but the specter of Armstrong's generation has soured many on investing in the sport. Which is ironic because sponsors tend to make huge marginal profits by sponsoring teams. Thibaut Pinot's stage win in the 2012 Tour alone was worth almost $10 million to his team's sponsor, Francaise De Jeux. From a capitalism standpoint, sponsorship makes sense, but Americans are stubborn. We tend to care about what we're good at. With TV money going to races, and no spectatorship fees, cycling teams need bankrolling from private owners. Talansky in yellow would be good for the sport by raising its profile in the USA.The stakes seem higher when you look at where his rivals come from. Froome is the jewel of Team Sky's explicitly nationalist project to develop elite British cyclists. His team is bankrolled with Murdoch money, and has the type of financial stability to ensure it can be patient in crafting elite cyclists. Contador rides for Oleg Tinkov, Russian oligarch. He has financial backing from a hyper-rich cycling superfan whose team is his passion project. Both riders race for deep-pocketed, passionate teams, but there are fewer and fewer of those. If trends continue, cycling will see a serious budget disparity between nontraditional, rich teams like Sky who don't need advertising and teams that rely on visibility and exposure for sponsors to pay their bills.The problem there is that if Sky and Tinkoff Bank win more and more races as their budgets get marginally higher than the average, they'll soak up valuable exposure and teams reliant on sponsor dollars will be left further out in the cold. Not that Talansky winning would solve all these structural problems, but it would be evidence that cycling can still work as a business.More importantly, it's an opportunity for an American to erase the scarring legacy of the past two decades. Talansky is the perfect rider to do it. He won't grind out wins in time trials like the USPS boys. If he wins, he'll do it his way. He'll attack and spit and fight and charge up every climb. When the race inevitably splinters, Talansky is the best at seizing his moments and incising any advantages he has. He'll be ready.***Patrick Redford lives & works in Oakland, CA. He has a bicycle and opinions on the Sacramento Kings, both of which he'll yak about on Twitter @patrickredford.
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