Chasing Lance

Ten minutes ago, I finished reading Martin DuGard’s Chasing Lance, a book surrounding Lance’s final Tour de France race in 2005. It was something I had found in the library earlier this week, so I figured if I could get my hands on it for free (I hardly ever stop by the library for the purpose of borrowing books as their selection is typically so shitty), why not take it with me? So far, I’ve read almost everything there is to read either about Lance Armstrong, including Armstrong’s It’s Not About the Bike and Every Second Counts, as well as Lance Armstrong’s War by Daniel Coyle. Each book I’ve enjoyed immensely (even It’s Not About the Bike, something I read well before I began cycling), although when reading Armstrong’s words, I feel it necessary that a reader must keep an eye on what’s bullshit and what’s not. That’s not to say Armstrong is slinging a bunch of bullshit at his readers, but like any memoir or autobiography (I should really look up the difference between the two genres because as of right now, I have no idea as to what that difference may be), people tend to either (a) get a bit confused when digging through the past, or worse yet, (b) simply gloss over pertinent facts with a thick layer of bullshit. If you think I’m wrong, get your hands on a copy of James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces.

Regardless, Martin DuGard’s book is the weakest of the four mentioned above. Too often, Dugard strays off course by either spending too much time discussing the geographical history surrounding each of the cities hosting the Tour’s starts and finishes or elaborating upon the day-to-day minutiae of traveling through France to report on the biggest bike race in the world. In other words, while DuGard does somewhat of a decent job touching upon the actual cycling and cyclists, he’s laced his work with much too much filler.

I don’t know about you, but when I pick up a book titled Chasing Lance, I want to read about Lance, his teammates, his tactics, his team director (that silly Belgian who seems to have difficulty pronouncing the ‘th’ sound in English, making the word weather sound like wedder, which is simply hilarious as far as I’m concerned). When I read a book about the Tour de France, I really don’t give a rat’s ass if, at the base of the Col de la Schlucht near the village of Saint-Die-des-Vosges, a monk and mapmaker living in the area during 1506 had decided that Amerigo Vespucci had actually been the first explorer to discover the New World instead of Christopher Columbus. Spare me the details, bud--I want to read about bicycle racing. I want the inside scoop. Tell me about how you happened to hop in a porta-potty a few minutes before the first mountain stage was scheduled to begin and you just so happened to bump into Lance himself as he sat there on the plastic bowl with a steroid-filled needle hanging out of his ass. That’s the kind of stuff I want to read. Whether or not you and your writer-friend-travel-mate rocked out to Pearl Jam as you ground the rental car’s clutch to shit while crawling to the top of the Tourmalet may seem interesting to you, but trust me, you’re the only one in that select group who actually wants to hear about it.

And that’s the problem with this book. As much as the title would have potential readers believe they’re going to be reading about Lance Armstrong, they’re not. There is very little in this work dedicated to actual Lance interviews and Lance material. In other words, you could probably pick up a DVD copy of the 2005 Tour de France and learn as much just from watching a few minutes with the sound off as you could from reading this piece of crap book.