Northern Idaho News

TANDEM FOLLOW-UP TO PAST COLUMNS

Bicycling Back to School, Pro Cycling Conspiracy Contest

By Bill Schneider, 8-23-07

Bicycling is on my mind today, but two completely different issues.

Next week is Back to School Week in many communities, so as a follow-up to a June column, Making the Connection, I have a proposal for parents on how to safely get their kids to school and reduce their carbon footprint at the same time.

And last week’s column, Pro Cycling Backpedaling Fast, stirred up a lot of offline comments for me, at the coffee shop, at the salon, and out on the group rides. Something is rotten about the story of Tailwind Sports suddenly walking away from professional cycling, but what is it?

First, back to school. Earlier this year, I expressed my concern for people not making the connection between their daily energy use or overuse and the depletion of wildlife and wildland. One thing I mentioned was the incredible traffic jams showing up like clockwork twice every weekday at elementary schools caused by parents driving their kids back and forth to school.

All in the name of safety, and nobody faults parents for anxiety over child predators or traffic hazards and making the special effort to personally deliver and pick up their kids from school. Because of this, fewer and fewer parents allow their kids to ride bicycles to school. Consequently, the only category of bicycles with declining sales is kids bikes. Meanwhile, sales of all other categories are soaring. In addition, and hardly unrelated to this issue, we face an obesity crisis in this country--and not just among children, of course; parents, too.

But there is a solution. One commenter mentioned after the last column came out, and I want to re-emphasize it. All parents won’t be able to do this, but I bet a lot of them can.

Instead of driving your child to school, get your bicycle and your child’s bicycle out of the garage and ride to school together. By doing this, you can assure the safety of your child, get some exercise (for both parent and child), have a little more precious family time each day, avoid the “school jams,” and save some energy along the way.

Now on to the pro cycling. Last week, I lamented the loss of Tailwind Sports, America’s professional cycling team that has won the Tour de France eight out of the last ten years. Based on the number of comments, mostly offline, one point in the article hit a nerve. We have a lot of good business people out there, apparently, and many don’t buy the cover story Tailwind Sports sent out i.e. achieving the top ranking in its market niche and being the likely winner of the Tour de France again next year and perhaps several years to come, and suddenly deciding to simply disband and walk away from the sport--and from many millions of dollars.

Here is a quote from the column: “To this I say, wow, there most be a big back story on this decision. What company would achieve the number one ranking in its market niche, have the current Tour de France winner (Alberto Contador) and third-place finisher (Levi Leipheimer) under contract, have a $45 million sponsorship deal almost cooked and then suddenly volunteer to go out of business?”

So, over the last few days, I’ve heard a number of conspiracy theories about why Tailwind really disbanded and abandoned cycling. And now, I want to hear your idea on what really is going on.

I decided to set the bar high by giving you one of the theories I’ve heard. So, here’s a challenge. Top this one--and keep in mind, this is commentary.

During this year’s race, a few days after yellow jersey wearer and Rabobank team leader Michael Rasmussen was pulled from the race by his own team management, the French doping police came up with one or two more positive drug results, this time from Discovery Channel riders, perhaps even Alberto Cantador, the eventual winner. Instead of going public with another massive doping scandal, race officials decided they couldn’t afford more bad publicity in this year’s race. (It could hurt business, you know, and the Tour de France is a very big business.). So instead, they went to the management of Tailwind Sports and said, in essence, “We’re tired of you Americans coming into our country, into our race, and kicking our butts, so let’s make a deal. We won’t reveal this positive drug result and we’ll even stop trying to find dirt on Lance Armstrong so we can take him out of the record books if you guarantee us that you will walk away from cycling and never come back to the Tour de France, so our French riders will have a chance to win our own race. Deal?”

Can you do better than that one? Don’t be shy. Use the comment section to give us your theory on what happened.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.