Beer High

Here’s looking at you

Now that the final ruling on Landis has been rendered and in the spirit of Jones baring her soul, I too wish to come clean.

A few years back I was transporting a local fellow who needed a lift from a nearby factory to the route where the TdF was scheduled to pass along.

I was rolling along as fast as I could given his weight and lack of fitness on a bike. But he was getting more and more agitated about the slowness of our progress. He was cursing and complaining that he didn’t want to miss this chance to watch the TdF roll by.

So as we cycled along as best as we could and coming upon a small beer shop by the road, I had the brilliant idea that we should grab a couple of brewskies: one for him in the hopes that it would calm his nerves, and one for me as I knew it would put sizzle in my gears.

Last year, after his spectacular ride, Landis offered this as a reason for his extra-effort on stage 17: “It was an attack that stemmed from a quiet beer I shared with team manager John Lelangue on Wednesday night, when we resolved that the Tour was “not over.”

And Landis even joked about that beer during his post-race press conference.

Well I had a good laugh over that, as it brought to mind my own personal performance after we got the brewskies into us. We started to pick-up steam. We got ourselves into the groove and we just buzzed along at an ever faster clip.. We not only got there in time but managed having gotten a big head of steam to easily fly over the peloton. Salud mon amis!

p.s. I think we could have won the stage that day. He begged me to go for it. But I knew that we would be tested, so I ignored him. Besides I didn’t want to end up on French TV and be another bike in the long lists of bikes who end up confessing for past indiscretions.

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