Diavolo Armstrong

Giovanni Gerbi/Diavolo Rosso

This is a  live version of the song called Diavolo Rosso by the great Italian Artist, Paolo Conte. Conte wrote the song about the first real bicycle racing hero, an Italian named  Giovanni Gerbi who won race after race from 1906 to 1913. His nick name because of his trademark red jersey was The Red Devil. Gerbi died in 1955 as the successful owner of a bike company in Asti Italy. He held the worlds records and his tactics were part of his legend. Gerbi never quite admitted to "cheating" but he did employ a lot of little tricks to sabotage the performance of his competition and actually his cunning is part of his legend.We will never know if Gerbi used any performance enhancing potions...that has been a trade secret of bicycle racing throughout the history of the sport. How many bike racers have died from amphetamine abuse and coke ODs? We will never know, it's only in the last  40 or so years, in the Mexican Olympics, that any real attempt at drug testing of athletes began. That was years after anyone first noticed that there might be a problem with substance abuse of performance enhancing drugs and techniques in cycling. What has emerged in the last 30 years are the statistics fro example on blood doping which show, for example, that in the span of 3 years, 1987 to 1990, 17 Dutch and Belgian professional cyclists died from this technique. We've always been aware of cyclings' dark little secret, but we demand super human performance from these athletes. I have been a cycling enthusiast all my life. I followed the career of Lance Armstrong since I first became aware of him in the early 90's. Lance truly did seem superhuman. It was even easy for me to forgive him when he started palling around with George Bush Jr....after all he was just raising awareness of cycling and the charity foundation work he was engaged in. I really believed the reports that he had always tested negative for drugs. I admired his triumphant battle with testicular cancer, after which he came back and won the Tour de France 3 times.

I suppose for me as well as a lot of other cycling enthusiast, the the charges and the deepening involvement  in doping and his participation is the cover up was all the more crushing. For me, it was like a small child discovering that there was no Santa Claus..

Armstrong has never tested positive for doping, yet we know...know...that he is the embodiment of athletic malfeasance. Stories have come bubbling up to confirm his guilt: accusations of fraud, bribery, bullying, perjury, etc. Swift and severe consequences must be applied, so Armstrong has been stripped of his titles, banned from cycling (not just as a sport but as part of other events as well), stepped down from his cancer foundation and if that's not enough, now there's a campaign to demand back his millions in winnings. After all, Armstrong must be made a lesson to others that we will not tolerate someone compromising the integrity of this sport.
Okay.
I'm actually agnostic on Armstrong. I don't know if he's guilty, but frankly, I don't care. What strikes me is how unevenly this outrage and the demand for integrity and justice is applied. Sure, let Armstrong be a lesson to others. But where is the outrage and the swift and severe consequences for those who have done damage to more than themselves? Where's the punishment for Jamie Dimon and his buddies at Bank of America/Countrywide? Who will hold the Congressional Republicans responsible for their record number of filibusters, putting partisan benefit ahead of the country? Yes, by all means, let us stand for integrity and fairness. But if we're going to do that, let's make it matter. Not in the cycling world, but for the whole country.