What about Andy

photo courtesy  www.wort.lu

Saw with some sadness yesterday the news from Tirreno Adriatico that Andy Schleck is still in his long tunnel.    Nice that his CYA oriented team is covering it's butt, feeling the need to make public statements insinuating the kid has mental problems.

As if that's what he needs right now.  

It's bad enough the kid takes a lot of crap in the blogosphere, and in the mainstream media.   But when your own team of polo shirt wearing scientists feel the need to explain you.   Good God, where have the great Direttore gone?    Humans, like Alfredo Martini, Fiorenzo Magni, or Luciano Pezzi - who made a name resurrecting and bringing back to glory several champions who'd been wrecked and written off.

It's all too much like kicking a puppy if you ask me.  OK, so Andy boy didn't grow up as a crusty black faced miner with coal under his fingernails, but as the middle class son of comfortable means in one of Europe's most affluent principalities.   Doesn't mean he's not a warrior.   That he didn't finish on the podium of several grand tours with his own legs and heart.  Or attack solo to win L-B-L.   So quick to write him off.   He's just going through some form stuff right now.  

That's the problem with today's hyper-digi-society.  Every move, 24-7 is out there, under the microscope.   Sure, the Schleck boys reaped and surfed the benefits of all that image maker bs for years.   But now he's experiencing how digi-stardom can be a fickle mistress when the legs aren't turning like you expect them to.  

It's not just the media part - it goes to the training part too.   I'm sure they've got that kid wired with all kinds of data.   A polo shirted NASA team suffering over TSS spreadsheets in labs.   Like Drago in Rocky, a team of accomplished scientists monitoring his every watt, every minute.    Who are now throwing their hands up because they can't 'explain' it with data.

But he's not a machine.  He's human.

Hey, I'm no expert in training, but pretty good at observation and deductive reasoning.   Maybe that's the problem - he's not a machine.  Maybe they should just chill out, let him train and live without the distractions and pressure for awhile.   All antico.   He'll come round.

Maybe the polo shirted scientists are the problem.  Maybe he needs a wise old senator like Fiorenzo Magni to guide him how to get out of the funk.  Il Leone would just put an arm around his shoulder and say...

"Pane e polvere" 

(How did you train Fiorenzo?) 

"Pane e polvere.  (Bread and dust)  That means countless kilometers…400 km per week.  All the time.  Rain, wind, hail, it didn't matter."

Pane e Polvere Quote & Photo:
http://www.bdc-forum.it/intervista-a-fiorenzo-magni-3

"You see this?" (famous photo of a breakaway in 1951 Giro of Magni with Coppi, Bartali, Kubler, Koblet, VanSteenbergen, and Bobet). 

"This is me.  How could you believe I could stay behind these people?   Pane e Polvere.   And willpower.  With the will you can do everything.   Get busy.   I can’t stand anyone who tells me 'I’ll do it tomorrow' ”

So go get busy Andy.

Go somewhere warm.  Or not so warm, maybe that's better.   Unplug from the Radio-Schleck entourage for a few weeks.   No texting and tweeting.   Unplug the SRM.  And just ride your bike like you did when you started.   For hours and hours.   And hours.    And when you're done, eat a little and sleep a lot.  Then get up and do it again.  Repeat.

And when you're so tired of training you're ready to break the bike in half.   You'll be ready.  

Of course, it's not so easy to do these days, is it.   Alfredo Martini in an excerpt from an interview understands why.

"(back in my time) it was easier for an athlete to respect the rules, because there were fewer attractions, less 'benesessre'. I would say instead that we ought to applaud those kids who ride the Giro, Tour and Vuelta today because they really have to abandon something to do it.   In our time, if young guys went to bed at nine o'clock in the evening it was also considered a bit of a 'defect', but you could do it without problems back then, because there were fewer distractions." 

"Today, however, they all have the car in the garage, five TVs in the house, the girls waiting for them outside the door of the house, etc.. Etc.., All things counter-productive in comparison to what it meant to the racer once."

"Before it was easier, it is not true that they were better than now, it's simply because they had another situation. The guys back then had fewer distractions from consumer society. Things that, inevitably, today pull the athlete away from those goals he wants to achieve." 

"Contrary to what you might think, we were not better back then, but in winter we recuperated much better because at eight in the evening we were in bed - not because we thought that we were doing the right thing, but simply because we did not have radio, tv and it was very cold."

"Back then, it was easier to be a pro cyclist. Today, it is much more difficult to do, that's why riders are applauded today more than yesterday, and that's why people gather in a hundred thousand on top of the Zoncolan doing 20km walk to see the runners pass. "

Time tested wisdom and perspective, from two great senatori.   

Heed Martini's perspective.  Cut the 24-7 wireless connection.  

And cut the kid some slack.