More on Tour de France asses: Don't Take it from Me...

I’ve got a couple of posts cooking, but in the meantime I had to share this excerpt with you. I’m reading Lance Armstrong’s War by Daniel Coyle right now. I’m really enjoying it, because, unlike other Lance Armstrong bios, it is about the bike. There is little mention of cancer, or hope, or any of that cheezy crap that surrounds popular portrayals of Lance Armstrong. What I like most about it is that Coyle is a really good writer, and does a really good job of portraying the people he describes as interesting, 3-dimensional, multi-faceted characters. He doesn’t go out of his way to paint Lance as a saint, nor does he glaze over some of his dubious connections with known drug cheats. But when I came across this passage about Tour de France asses, I just had to share it with all y’all. Read it quick, before I get busted for copyright infringement. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did:

Watch this clip to see the famous butts mentioned in the passage.

But first, let me make sure that it’s properly cited, so hopefully I don’t get in any copyright trouble. The following passage is taken from Lance Armstrong’s War by Daniel Coyle, copyright 2005 Harper Collins Publishers. Excerpt taken from Chapter 7, "The Q Factor", pages 66-69.

Today, however, was a day whose importance no one could deny. It was March 3, the first significant gathering of Tour contenders at the Tour of Murcia, a weeklong stage race in eastern Spain. Armstrong, Ullrich, and Mayo had come to these sun-bleached plains to begin their seasons in earnest. This morning they were taking the first steps towards Paris by engaging in the age-old and indispensable early-season ritual of their profession: the belly pinch and the ass check.

The belly pinch usually comes first, and it is often employed under the guise of a handshake delivered by a rival, a teammate, or a coach. The purpose is to measure body fat. The preferred technique is to smile broadly–hey there, you old so-and-so–grasp their target’s hand, and tug them forward in a teasing manner, twisting their bodies slightly to grant access to their unprotected midsection, on the side just above the waistline. The French are particularly known for their vigorousness of technique; on encountering Gallic teams, several American cyclists reported finding their midsections covered in red marks, as if they’d been attacked by a pack of lobsters.

The ass check is a more unobtrusive art. It is practiced from a distance, and requires not only a keen eye, but also experience. An ass, properly examined, is one of the best available calibrations of potential. Ass checking is not a pastime, it is part of the race, as sure a measure of a rival’s ability as timing a baseball pitcher’s warm-up with a radar gun. When most riders reach top form, their asses become small and vaguely feminine, as if grafted from a disciplined teenage gymnast.

“It’s not written down, but it may as well be,” says former Postal rider and OLN commentator Frankie Andreu. After a while, you get everybody memorized, what’s big for them, what’s small for them, what they look like when they’re going to tear it up.”

“First, you have to know the guy. You have to know the ass,” Bruyneel says. “After you know it, it tells as much as [powermeter] numbers.”

With the possible exception of supermodels, is there a more body-discerning group on the planet than professional bike racers? Their vocabulary has as many words for “fat” as Eskimos have for “snow”: puppy fat, chicken skin, baby fat, cheese, despite the fact that none of them is remotely fat. In fact, 10 percent of men and 30 percent of women cyclists are estimated to suffer from eating disorders, according to Dr. Arnaud Megret of the French Cycling Federation.

But the obsession is bent towards strategic purpose, because within the society of riders, fat is not fat, nor is an ass merely an ass–it is time. It’s a simple idea: the more you weigh, the slower you go uphill. An extra ounce here or there sounds meaningless, but it can make a huge difference, especially on a long climb. Of course, trainers like Ferrari have figured it out: each kilogram (2.2 pounds) adds about 1.25 percent to a rider’s time on a climb. On a typical eight-mile climb, that works out to just over a second per additional ounce. [my italics added for emphasis]

“Losing weight is the single most important thing you can do,” Armstrong says. “You have to train. You have to be strong, of course. But if you’re too heavy, it’s all over.”

At this particular moment in eastern Spain, the peloton was pinching and eyeing one another with carefully distinguished abandon. They were gathered on the street in loose circles by nationality, clutching plastic cups of espresso, eyes quick behind sunglasses. There, pixielike, stood Damiano Cunego, the promising twenty-tow-year-old. There was Spanish phenom Alejandro Valverde, who’d finished third in the 2003 Vuelta a España and had been widely consecrated as a future Tour winner. There was Eric Zabel, the elegant German veteran. There, skinny-assed and relaxed, stood Iban Mayo chatting in indecipherable Basque. Armstrong was nowhere to be seen–according to custom, he’d signed in early and retreated to the team bus, to avoid the crowd. But what of the ass everybody wanted to see? What of Ullrich? The clock ticked forward. Five minutes to go before the start. Four minutes. The crowd, which included a sizable contingent of Germany’s sporting press, shifted anxiously.

With two minutes to go before the start, a T-Mobile sedan pulled up, the door swung open, and out stepped Der Jan himself, striding purposefully toward the stage in his pink racing kit, hat pulled low.

The crowd pressed forward, craning its collective neck. It saw the slightly rounded face, the giant Duran Duran sunglasses, the hoop earring, the muscular thighs heaving beneath black Lycra, the gently amused smile. It was all there, along with–yes–a big ass. Not the biggest anyone had ever seen, no, that would have to be 2000, when he showed up twenty-five pounds overweight. No, the 2004 vintage was looking decidedly mid-range. Not huge. but not small, either: Depending on how you looked at it, he was either a little bit fat, or a little bit more muscular.

Then, as their eyes roved eagerly over the rest of his body, the onlookers saw something else. Ullrich appeared to be walking stiffly, his abdomen unnaturally rigid beneath an arch of rib. It was a subtle adjustment, which would not have garnered any attention, except for the fact that dozens of eyes were staring at that precise spot, a spot that, as he strode to sign in, revealed the truth: Ullrich was holding his belly in. Not just a little, either. He was hoovering that baby, sucking his bellybutton spineward, expanding his upper chest in the ageless, hopeless Charles Atlas-wannabe manner of suburban dads at the beach. Reporters scribbled and photographers fumbled for zoom lenses as the old Ullrich equation began to crystalize: Ass plus belly equaled Jan was big again.

In the days afterward, Ullrich and his cortege would make considerable efforts to some lengths to enlighten the media on the subtle yet vital distinction between being big and being powerful. The training he had done had added some muscle, yes. But not fat. This subtlety was apparently lost on the marketing department for team sponsor Giant bicycles, which postponed a planned photo shoot until such time as its star could look a little less, well, fat...

Wait, let's watch some more Tour de France asses,
just for fun (I sing the song they sample at the end to
myself sometimes on hard rides to get myself pumped–
I know, I'm such a dork!)...