Matt Seaton : Greg LeMond

Bro Deal

Classical Latin? We had to translate it into cuneiform and from that into cave paintings. Later we had to communicate it to the class by beating two sticks on a rock.

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"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

TheDarkLord

ROTFLMAO. Good one Cranky!

plectrum

Ok Bobke getting rinsed in this post was also quite hilarious, but not as funny as Astana being barred from Giro ... hee hee! Too laughs on one forum, must be a record!

Gregers

We don't appear to have had much of a comeback from the self-proclaimed linguistic prodigy. C'mon, Brainy Bobke, fire up all those neurons you boast about.

Crankyfeet

Well he's managed one thing. He's completely hijacked Lim's thread with one on-topic post ironically...

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limerickman

I posted Seaton's article - as Seaton is a bloody good journo/writer and because he refers to the possible publication of a LeMond book.
And I assumed most members here would like to read Seaton's views.

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.."But finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. [I]I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets" - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it - Armstrong 2005 TDF
morelike hypocrisy.

earth_dweller

oh yeah, his take on it of course was to be his ol' xenophobic self and attacked the Italians by comparing them to the French

bobke

"We know that it is not what came to Marcel's mind when he bit into the little madeleine cake, but for me, the January edition of Procycling magazine has a morsel of that poignant Proustian recall. The reason is that it is guest-edited by Greg LeMond."


==using a Proust metaphor in talking about a stupid bike magazine is overreaching and pretentious, and therefor completely predictable that Lim would find it to his liking. Seaton has no idea what Proust did or did not think about.

""When Lance Armstrong was still in short trousers, LeMond was the first truly great American cyclist.""
gratuitous and irrelevant. and wrong...Major Taylor was the first great American cyclist, xenophobe and ignorant of anything not eurocentric.

http://www.majortaylorassociation.org/who.htm


"" LeMond invited me to ghostwrite his autobiography. It didn't pan out. He changed his mind about doing the book; I think he felt his career had somehow been eclipsed by Armstrong's, who had, to boot, published a bestselling autobiography."" I coulda been a contender but Lance beat Greg as Sally Jenkins whipped me, boo hoo. Who cares?

""only I'd think twice about accepting a lift from him. He spent a couple of years racing cars after retiring from cycling, and it shows. There were moments when I thought my life would end upside down in a ditch in Minnesota, my corpse dragged from a smoking Audi by one of those people Garrison Keillor likes to call "Norwegian bachelor farmers".""

Yeah, as a journalist you're leaving out several teensy weensy bits of info_ several DUIs. He was depressed AND had a drinking problem, er a drinking and a driving problem. Facts please first, opinions second.

I love Greg as a racer. If you bring up the driving, you can expect the DUI stories to emerge. If you bring up Lance, you will invite the enmity and envy Greg felt about Lance and the soured relationship.

Greg's palmares stands on its own without some bleeding sycophant euro dude to fawn over him.

Greg is the best, period. Leave him be.

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Keepin it real, son.

Crankyfeet

Um...read this quote from Drongo's post (#7) and really think about it.


Nice backtrack and attempt at covering your ass as well. The whole point of your first post was basically to attack Lim as if he wrote it...

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Drongo

Even the backtrack misses the point. Bobke has said the writer 'has no idea what Proust did or did not think about' as if that is a valid criticism of the piece.

Well, he does in fact know what Proust was thinking about, and it wasn't LeMond. Proust says he (or more correctly, the character Marcel) thought about the past. And that is the point Seaton is making. Marcel's sudden rush of happy memory (spurred by the madeleine) was akin to Seaton's sudden rush of happy memory (spurred by LeMond).

Is that pretentious? Maybe it is. Or maybe he's just giving a short-hand description of something that took Proust a page to describe. This incident is the most famous bit of Proust's writing, so perhaps he gave (undue) credit to the audience, perhaps thinking that if even Bobke has read Proust, everyone else will have a passing knowledge of what it is all about.

Oh, and there's something about casting the first stone that comes to mind, but I just can't seem to remember it now...

Runitout

Drongo, you have to admit that the unintentional irony about "pretentious strivings" was pretty funny.

I laughed so hard I posted on these forums.

(Yes, it's another refugee from DPF. Hi guys!)

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And saying so to some
Means nothing; others it leaves
Nothing to be said.

Crankyfeet

Welcome Runitout. You are most welcome to post here. But you have to survive by the seat of your pants... as Bobke knows well, despite coming in here with no pants on...


Good pick up there on the "pretentious strivings" irony.

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Gregers

A la recherche du cerveau de Bobke?

bobke

Proust of course wrote about the power of memory and parts of the self or our past hidden from ourselves that can be unleashed by a sensory experience, a non verbal or preverbal experience such as taste or odor, unlocking a powerful memory...and then of course goes on to write about it for a few thoudans pages.

What in the world looking at a cycling magazine and thinking back on Greg's career has to do with Proust...well, the less said at this point the better.

At any rate, many people yearn for the good old days, until they really think about it and realize that the good old days were generally not all they are cracked up to be.

Looking back is not the way to move forward.

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Keepin it real, son.