Steve Walsh asks a good question in a comment on another post. Professional cycling is an unusual sport in that, while there are teams, there is a leader of the team who gets the glory if he or she wins. In baseball, by contrast, each member of the team gets the glory if the team wins (though one is usually designated "Most Valuable Player"). There may be a star player on the team, such as George Brett (a future Hall of Famer) in 1985, but that person doesn't stand atop a podium as the "victor." I have no problem with the way cycling is organized. When a team is put together, each rider is assigned a role. George Hincapie served Lance Armstrong as a domestique (servant) during all seven of Lance's Tour de France victories. George was not capable of winning a three-week stage race and knew it. But he could help someone else win. George is well paid for his work (I'm sure) and takes pride in the fact that someone on his team won. George basks in Lance's reflected glory. He was part of something historic.
As long as everyone on the team has an assigned role to play, there are no problems. But this year, Astana had two erstwhile winners of the Tour: Lance Armstrong (1999-2005) and Alberto Contador (2007). It could have worked out, had Lance agreed, as a condition of joining the team, to work for Contador, the way Hincapie worked for Lance. But there was no such understanding, to my knowledge. Lance came back to win, thought he could win, wanted to win, and tried to win. Nor did Contador agree to play second fiddle to Lance, to my knowledge. So Astana started the Tour with two chefs. That, as the old saying goes, spoils the broth. It didn't take a rocket scientist to know that there would be tensions. Both Lance and Contador are proud, ambitious, and highly successful in their chosen field. Neither has played the role of a domestique.
Whose fault is it that things turned out as they did? I blame everyone. I blame the team's director, Johan Bruyneel, for allowing both riders to start, with no clear understanding of who would be subservient to whom. I blame Lance for not insisting that he be the team leader, even if that meant kicking Contador off the team. I blame Contador for not leaving the team before the Tour started. I honestly thought this would happen, but it didn't. I certainly hope it never happens again, on any team. There were times during this year's Tour when I knew Lance was restraining himself. It was painful to watch. I wanted him to be single-minded in his pursuit of an eighth Tour victory. Maybe he wouldn't have won, but at least we would know that it wasn't for lack of trying.
I might add that it was unfair to the other seven riders on Astana to put them into this situation. All of them knew that there was tension between Lance and Contador. None of them, I'm sure, wanted to take sides between them, for obvious reasons. It could harm their careers. Had there been one team leader, the members of the team would have had clear roles to play and could have expressed themselves without fear of recrimination for "taking sides."
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 