[an error occurred while processing this directive] French evolution: Leader Armstrong winning fans

Relationship between champ, French public improving

07/19/2002

By ANDREW HOOD / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

LA MONGIE, France – After four tumultuous years, Lance Armstrong seems to finally be winning the love of the French public.

When Mr. Armstrong won Thursday's 11th stage of the Tour de France and again seized the leader's yellow jersey, crowds of French fans cheered as the American stepped onto the podium. "The relationship is improving year by year," Mr. Armstrong said. "I do all I can for the Tour de France."

Mr. Armstrong has done plenty. This was his 13th career Tour stage victory, one that pushed him into the overall lead for the first time since winning the opening prologue July 6. It was an important step toward a fourth consecutive victory in cycling's greatest race.

As Mr. Armstrong pedaled along the difficult 97-mile climbing stage through the French Pyrenees, a sign read: "Lance Armstrong, yellow jersey, great father."

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That's in sharp contrast to 1999, when Mr. Armstrong returned to the Tour determined to win at all costs.

He has butted heads with race organizers, felt persecuted by French police and been dogged by a skeptical French press.

"The incomprehension is mutual," Mr. Armstrong said before the Tour. "It isn't easy for foreign riders to feel at ease with the French public, who obviously would like to see a Frenchman win the Tour de France and become a national hero. Nothing could be more normal, but it contributes to the distance between me and the French public."

Part of the problem, at least from Mr. Armstrong's perspective, has been mutual bewilderment. Part of it is cultural. Winning is what counts, at least to Americans.

To the French, however, the Tour de France is a rich part of the national psyche and an annual rite of summer laced with tradition and symbolism. Mr. Armstrong didn't help himself when he said in 1999 that the Tour de France "is a bike race, not a popularity contest."

It doesn't help, either, that a Frenchman hasn't won the Tour since 1985.

Those close to Mr. Armstrong say the relationship is getting better.

"I don't think that the country has ever loved Lance as much as today," said Bill Stapleton, Mr. Armstrong's longtime agent. "The French people have adopted Lance, and they respect him as a champion."

Organized doping

Mr. Armstrong's dramatic comeback from cancer coincided with cycling's darkest moments, however. In America, Mr. Armstrong's first Tour victory in 1999 was more than a sports story. In France, Mr. Armstrong was guilty by association.

The 1998 Tour was mired in scandal when police busts revealed that large-scale organized doping was rampant inside the ranks of Europe's best cycling teams. Riders and teams would covertly organize dosages of steroids, blood additives and other banned doping products to avoid detection.

When Mr. Armstrong won in 1999, he beat riders who had admitted to taking performance-enhancing drugs and later served suspensions for doping. The French press asked how a man who nearly died from cancer could so easily win what's called cycling's hardest race.

"Many in the French press found that his story was too beautiful to be true," said Jean-Pierre Bidet, a beat writer covering Mr. Armstrong for the French sports daily L'Equipe. Headlines with heavy innuendo calling Mr. Armstrong an "extraterrestrial" and "super man" infuriated the Texan.

In the 2000 Tour, a French TV crew followed a U.S. Postal Service team car leaving Armstrong's hotel and later found IV-bags laced with blood. The French prosecutor's office opened an investigation into the case, which continues despite no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Armstrong or his team.

Things came to a head before the start of last year's Tour. Cedric Vasseur, a popular French rider who held the yellow jersey in 1997, wasn't selected to join Mr. Armstrong in his 2001 winning campaign. In fact, Mr. Armstrong did not have French riders on his nine-man team last year or this year.

Booed and jeered

Mr. Vasseur is from the region near last year's start at Dunkirk. The Tour opens each July with a flashy, high-tech show introducing the teams and riders. When Mr. Armstrong entered the stage, he was loudly booed and jeered by the local partisan crowd.

Then news broke that Mr. Armstrong was working with controversial Italian doctor Michele Ferrari, who worked with many of Italy's top stars in the mid- and late-1990s. Dr. Ferrari is facing charges in an Italian court related to the administration of banned substances to professional cyclists. Mr. Armstrong continues to defend his relationships with Dr. Ferrari despite heavy criticism.

Mr. Armstrong has never tested positive for banned substances throughout his career despite being tested dozens of times a year. That has helped him gain credibility, especially among the skeptical French press.

"The main newspapers in France now, they're Lance supporters," Mr. Stapleton said. Mr. Armstrong also took heat last year for becoming the first cyclist at the Tour to hire bodyguards. Since then, he has moved out of his home in Nice along the French Riviera and to Girona in Spain's Catalunya region.

Mr. Armstrong is inevitably compared with Greg Lemond, America's other great cyclist who also won three Tours in the '80s.

Lemond vs. Armstrong

In those days, the French dominated the peloton, or main pack. Mr. Lemond, who has a French-sounding last name, endeared himself to the public by learning French, speaking openly with the cycling press and riding on the team of five-time Tour champion Bernard Hinault, the last Frenchman to win the Tour in 1985.

In contrast, Mr. Armstrong came to Europe in 1992, rarely speaking French and riding on American teams. He joined the French Cofidis team for the 1996 season but was dumped when he was diagnosed with cancer in October of that year. The team refused to pay his full salary during his painful chemotherapy treatments, a grudge he continued to hold when he returned to competitive cycling in 1998.

This year, Mr. Armstrong has been appearing regularly on French television, speaking in French. He's signing more autographs and seems to be making an effort to become more open with the passionate French cycling fans.

As far as Mr. Armstrong is concerned, doing all he can for the race means winning it in dominant fashion. Whether he speaks French or not doesn't really matter. Being first when the Tour ends in Paris in nine days does.

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