Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

This is the blog where I get to sound like some sort of cycling Fox Mulder. Maybe you caught the big piece that ESPN did on the Slipstream-Chipotle Professional Cycling Team last week. I thought the article was a great discussion of the Jonathan Vaughter's ethic in running a team in a way where doping is going to be a thing of the past. I liked that a major sports media outlet ran a story about cycling that was positive. I want to believe in this team, I really do.

As I've chronicled here in the past, I lost my faith in professional sports. Not just cycling but all the big money sports who, with fan and media complicity, foster and live by a winner takes all mentality that now infects and pervades out entire American culture. While I think that cycling has become the poster child of the insidious use of performance enhancing drugs that grows out of that mentality, one only has to look at the Mitchell Report to see that the problem is in no way limited to cycling or the broader world of endurance sports.

That's what I like about this team. It's going to be ok to lose. One doesn't have to win everything all the time and be the biggest, bestest, whateverest team around. The team's goal is to compete in an honest way that honors the races, the other riders and the fans. Sometimes the team will win, sometimes the team will lose, sometimes that loss will be spectacular but that will be ok. I want to believe that the team really will ride that way. I want to believe that the riders will buy into the system. I want to believe that sponsors will want an authentic model of how a team will be run. I want to believe that the fans will cheer for a team that doesn't dominate.

Only time will tell. If the team runs its program the way it intends and can't find sponsors or fans in two years, that'll say a lot about our culture and the culture of sport. I hope that's not the case.

I want to believe...

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