The Cruelty of Expectations

Covering the financial industry as a journalist taught me how expectations can change a story. Company A says profit doubled: that's good news by itself but the forecast was for a fivefold gain, so the results are disappointing. Company B says sales fell 20 percent, signaling problems. Because revenue was predicted to drop 59 percent, its investors might still be pleased. The same goes in sports, and last week at the Tour de France, French cyclist Thomas Voeckler fell victim to rollercoaster expectations: his own and those of an entire nation.

Voeckler unexpectedly took the lead of the Tour on July 10, with 12 stages remaining. The 32-year-old rider, who finished 76 out of 170 in 2010, wasn't among the favorites: a French TV commentator described him as ``not the most talented rider of the peloton, but a fighter who never gives up.'' The French public, starved of victory since Bernard Hinault won the Tour in 1985, embraced Voeckler as a national hero.
The race leader's yellow jersey, or ``maillot jaune,'' for Voeckler wasn't a total surprise for those who follow the Tour -- which is about all French older than one year. The hard-working rider became the public's darling in 2004 by staying 10 days in yellow, before Lance Armstrong crushed a nation's dream and won his first of seven Tours.
Meanwhile France was still waiting for its next Bernard Hinault, a fixture of the Tour who gives away the winning jerseys at the end of every stage during the podium ceremony: yellow for the overall leader, green for the best sprinter, white for the best rider under 25 years old and, my favorite, polka-dot for the ``king of the mountain.'' Once in a while a young rider is heralded as the new Hinault and his career is promptly torpedoed, crushed by pressure and unrealistic expectations. (The same goes in tennis: the last French winner of Roland Garros, the French Open, was Yannick Noah in 1985.)

 (Voecler in yellow surrounded by his team mates in the Pyrenées. Photo by Mathias-S.)

Voeckler was realistic about his chances to stay in yellow on July 10, candidly setting the expectations low. He said in interviews after the stage that he would fight as hard as he could to keep the lead but didn't expect to survive the Pyrenées mountains.

Voeckler is a ``puncher-barouder,'' the type of riders who break away abruptly from the peloton and ride alone or in small groups for hours to try to win a stage. They fight against a peloton of about 180 riders organized in teams who take turns drafting each other to catch up. But to win the 3,430-kilometer (2,130 miles), three-week Tour across France, you need more than kamikaze breakaways: you need to be good at climbing mountains and at time trials too -- not Voeckler's forte. You also need strong teammates who can protect you, bring you bottles of water and help you up the climbs; Voeckler's team was considered weak.

Everyday Voeckler stayed in yellow that week was as sweet as it was unforeseeable. In France, we say that the ``maillot jaune'' can give you wings, and that's what happened to Voeckler in the Pyrenées. There he was, ``our'' Voeckler, keeping up with the leaders in the mountains with panache. In his characteristic style, bouncing around out of the saddle, he looked comfortable amid Andy Schleck, Cadel Evans and Alberto Contador, the three Tour favorites. He fought like a lion and couldn't believe he was able to follow the ``cadors.'' French commentators started saying that Voeckler may have underestimated himself and should revise up his ambitions. After the Pyrenées, France started to dream in yellow: can Voeckler win the Tour?

``Everybody's talking about it,'' Voeckler said in an interview with a French newspaper on July 19, the day before the two most difficult stages in the Alps. ``It's premature. But I start wondering whether I'm right to give myself zero chance to win, or whether you do well to think I may win. Since my last yellow jersey in 2004, I know how it works and I know the French like to think that a French can win."
The seeds of high expectation were planted, even though Voeckler, in the same interview, repeated that he wasn't going to win.

(See video of Voeckler keeping up with the cadors in the Pyrenées here.)

Like a French movie, the story doesn't end well. In the first Alpine stage, Voeckler took risks on a descent and veered off onto the concrete courtyard of a house, losing time. Two days later, after starting the stage with a lead of 15 seconds, Voeckler made what a teammate called a ``small error'' by trying to follow two favorites in the lower portion of the Galibier pass. He should have waited for the third one, Cadel Evans -- the eventual Tour winner. It's the kind of mistake Voeckler wouldn't have made without the yellow jersey on his shoulders.
``We knew Thomas had very little chance to win. He lost more time than we had estimated,'' because of the tactical error, Anthony Charteau, the teammate, wrote in Le Figaro. ``There was so much pressure on him.''
Voeckler lost the lead later that day at the Alpe d'Huez, a legendary climb on the Tour. He was fuming when he crossed the finish, accusing a TV motorcycle of staying too close in front of Contador and allowing him to draft during the ascent of the Galibier. Voeckler's anger was a sign he had begun to believe he could win, in spite of himself. We made him believe it, and now he was crushed. After the following day's stage, the man who was France's hero for 10 days was seen riding his bike alone to his team's hotel. He finished fourth overall.

(View from the Col du Galibier.)

France has already turned its sights to its next big hope: Pierre Rolland, a 24-year-old team mate of Voeckler. Rolland helped his team leader for 10 days, then won the Alpe d'Huez stage after receiving Voeckler's permission to leave his side. He was the first French winner of the coveted stage since...Bernard Hinault. Can Rolland, who won the white jersey for the best young rider this year, be a future Tour winner? That will be France's question, and the cycle of hope -- and the hope of its cycling -- will continue.

Lance in My Hometown (For Five Seconds)

The Tour de France started its last Alpine stage in my hometown, Chambéry, on July 14, the National day Americans call ``Bastille Day'' (The French say ``le 14 juillet.''). About 10 minutes after the start, the riders passed through my village, Les Marches, on a road that's about 1.5 km (1 mile) away from the house where I grew up.

The temperature was very hot, in the 90s, and people kept cool in the shade while waiting for the riders.

The kids got excited when they spotted the television helicopter, the surest sign that the peloton was getting closer.

 Here they come, very fast: probably at 55 km/h (35 miles/hour) on that road. Video courtesy of P.W.

And here he is: Lance Armstrong, passing through my village in a blur.

Chasing Lance Armstrong: a Novice at the 2008 Boston Marathon

Once again, I was about half an hour behind my champion.

I crossed the finish line of the 112th Boston Marathon 27 minutes and 47 seconds after Lance Armstrong, my sports hero.

Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner, and I were among the 25,000 runners lining up at the start of the race at 10:00 a.m. April 21, 2008, in cool, sunny weather. The magnitude of what was coming sunk in when one of the rope holders who keep runners in the right place before the gun said he had nine Boston marathons under his belt. Boston is the world's oldest annual city marathon and among the most prestigious, a prize coveted by long-distance runners.

There are no beginners in Boston, no first-time marathon runners. Almost all participants earned the right to run 26.2 miles (42.2 km) from Hopkinton to Boston by finishing another marathon under a tough qualifying time. They put on in hours of training in the winter, at dawn or night, or on the treadmill when it was snowing or too dark outside. In the school bus that took us to the start at 6 a.m., I looked for runners who might look a bit out of shape, to reassure myself. All I saw were the hollow cheeks and thin legs of long-distance runners.

I struggled from the start, even though the first half of the course is downhill. Running is an equalizer. Anything can happen in a marathon, to the elite athlete and the amateur, no matter how hard they trained. My legs just didn't feel right for the first 10 miles (16 km), hurt by a succession of downhill and small hills. I couldn't find a cruising pace. I focused on short-term goals -- drinking water every two miles, taking food at mile 8 and 16 -- to keep me going. I wrapped up the first half in 1 hour 36 minutes 43 seconds, knowing the worst was yet to come: the uphill part of the course and 13.1 more miles.
The crowd of about 500,000 spectators, according to the Boston Marathon's Web site, picked me up in Natick and carried me through the end. Boston's spectators are the loudest I've ever heard. And the 2,400 students from the all-girl Wellesley College mile 12 are the loudest of the Boston Marathon. Their screams can be heard more than 500 yards ahead. It felt like approaching a gigantic beehive. The crowds made me feel special, like a champion. They made me forget about a blister that I felt popping at mile 21 (34 km), just as I finished the ``Heartbreak Hill'' near Boston College.

I actually missed the ``Heartbreak Hill,'' which earned its nickname for being the last of a succession of hills over 5 miles at a crucial part of race where many of us are running out of steam. I trained for that hill. I was ready to conquer it. Yet I didn't notice I was on it until after I reached the top. There are so many rises between mile 16 and 21 that I didn't know which one was the last, the heart breaker. At the top of each hill, I just braced for the next.
I finished in 3 hours 18 minutes and 45 seconds, one minute and 9 seconds more than my personal record in New York City, in November last year. Robert Cheruiyot, who won his third straight Boston marathon and fourth overall in 2 hours 07 minutes and 46 seconds, said in an interview with a special edition of the Boston Globe before the race that his training had been disrupted by violence in his country, Kenya. Ethnic fighting left more than 1,000 dead and displaced 500,000 in December. The worst that happened to me during the race was a bloody blister, plugged ears from mile 22, feeling legs near cramping on a couple of hills and nauseated toward the finish.

Growing up at the foot of mountains near Grenoble in the French Alps, I have vivid memories of the Tour de France and those heroes climbing up hills after hills on their bikes. One of my first crushes was Bernard Hinault, a five-time winner of the Tour, starting in 1978 when I wasn't yet 5 years old. As an adult, I biked up some of the mythical passes of the race, at speed as slow as almost a third the Tour would.

When Armstrong picked up running as a hobby after retiring from professional cycling in 2005, I was one marathon ahead of him: my first, Paris 2002. He finished the 2006 New York City marathon in 2 hours 59 minutes 36 seconds, saying, ``for the level of condition that I have now, that was without a doubt the hardest physical thing I have ever done,'' according to the Associated Press. Five months later, I ran Austin, Texas, Armstrong's hometown, in 3 hours 33 minutes 44 seconds, or 34 minutes 8 seconds more than the champion.
In November 2007, I followed him by 30 minutes 53 seconds in the New York City ING marathon.

With Boston, I feel like I'm closing the gap.