The truth is that it was long before Lance Armstrong started winning the Tour de France, sans testicle, (1999 was the first one, not 1993, come on that’s common knowledge) that people started paying attention to cycling and to Lance Armstrong. He was world champion and ranked No. 1 in the world in 1996. In 1986 Greg LeMond won the first of three Tours de France and a world championship; he was the 1989 Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year. Trust me, people paid attention. I was 11 years old and I remember that. So that must’ve put PB at what 49 at the time?

But then again the main argument is why should you care? I know that PB probably throws wheat grass smoothie empties out the open roof of his purple Del Sol (Sigma Kappa called, they want their car back) as he cruises by lycra clad cyclists riding down LOVR on his way to his weekly workout that includes an hour of prancing (I’ve seen him run) up and down a blue basketball court with a bunch of newspaper nerds without an athletic bone between them. I know this because I used to be the only cool athletic one of the bunch.

What Pembertonian doesn’t understand, and BSlim does but won’t admit, (he owns two bikes), is that cycling is the most painfully grueling sport there is, second to triathlon of course, and that if he just got his hairy feature writing ass onto a bike and tried to ride across a freeway overpass he would realize that these are some amazing athletes. To be able to ride up an 8 mile long mountain pass road with 21 switchbacks at an average 8 percent grade in under 40 minutes as they do every year on the Alpe d’Huez in the Tour de France is one of the most amazing feats in sport. A close second might be Simon Lessing running 13.1 miles at Wildflower in 1:13:38 after riding 56 very hilly miles on his bike. That’s ridiculously fast. And for PB, that means 1 hour, 13 seconds, just to clear that up.

So get out there, borrow a bike from BSlim, and try to ride up Perfumo Canyon Road sometime. After you give up, drive your Del Sol to the top (I don’t know, tie the bike to your hood), that’s only a mile and a half. Take BSlim’s bike off and ride down as fast as you can. I guarantee that your hands will hurt from squeezing the brakes all the way down to slow down those fat mountain bike tires that you’re riding on and know that road bike tires are less than an inch wide and these riders top 50 miles an hour on descents.

vive le Tour
viva la Vuelta
viva la Giro
Long live the Tour

- Lambo, AKA the dude who stole Lance’s bike.

The most exciting 10 seconds in sports? Probably not.
The most exciting sporting event to come through Paso Robles in decades? Probably so.
It’s not every day you get to see Lance Armstrong speeding by your neck of the woods.
But that’s what happened Thursday when seven-time Tour de France winner Armstrong and company wrapped up Stage 5 of the Tour of California in Paso Robles. These WCBias exclusive shots came at the 5k marker in Paso Robles. OK, never again will we mention cycling on this blog.
Oh yeah, turns out Lambo didn’t jack Armstrong’s bike after all. Sorry for the mistaken identity, not to mention our libelous post. Luckily for Mr. Neff’s sake, almost nobody reads this blog … and the three or four who do definitely don’t care about cycling.