When Lance enters a situation, he has a habit of shaking things up, raising the temperature of the room. I've come to believe that it's not something he can help: it's as though he's allergic to calm. It's almost like he's not comfortable unless there's a sense of discomfort, of intense and decisive action. He had a knack for seeking out weaknesses, for putting his finger on something that needs to be improved. He constantly judged everything: what kind of cereal we should have at the training table, where we should train, what kind of water bottle tops were best, which soigneur gave the best massage, where you could get the best bread, how to make espresso, what tech stock was going to take off—you name it, he knew it, and told you in no uncertain terms. Things he admired would earn an appreciative nod; things he didn't like would be dismissed with a puff of air through the lips: phffffff (a habit Lance seemed to have picked up from the Europeans). There were no gray areas; things were either amazing or awful. We used to joke that the one word guaranteed to piss Lance off was "maybe."
What Lance hated most of all, though, were choads. I'm not sure where the word came from—probably "chump" plus "toad"—but it meant what it sounded like. Choads were whiners, weaklings, guys who couldn't hack it or—worse—couldn't hack it and then complained. If you made a habit of being late or disorganized, you were a choad. If you weren't strong enough to ride in bad weather, or if you gave excuses for your performance, you were a choad. If you were a wheelsucker (someone who always rides in the slipstream of others), you were a choad. And once you were a choad, there was no going back.
(Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle, The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France [New York: Bantam Books Trade Paperbacks, 2013], 64)
