U.S. Cyclists Emerge Post-Armstrong

Lance Who?

Cole Kessler and Kevin Vermaerke (via Facebook and Team DSM-Firmenich)

Are you watching the Tour de France this month? Or are you a former fan who feels betrayed by years of being lied to?

Maybe it’s time to move on.

Lance Armstrong was both the best and worst thing to happen to American cycling. From 1999 to 2005, he won the Tour seven times in a row. It seemed too good to be true.

It was.

As dozens of cyclists race toward Paris in this year’s event, Lance is starring in a reality TV show on Fox called “Stars on Mars.” I hope it pays well. He told Oprah Winfrey in a 2013 interview that lying about blood doping cost him $75 million in lost sponsorships.

What does the emerging generation of Americans pro cyclists think about the GOAT, the greatest ever… a man whose stats are plastered over with a huge asterisk?

“I really have no recollection of Lance being a pro,” says 20-year-old Cole Kessler of Newbury Park, California, who rides on a development team for cycling club Israel - Premier Tech.

Cole was in diapers when Armstrong won his last Tour.

Kevin Vermaerke is 22 years old, also from California, and he’s currently racing in the Tour de France as part of Dutch team DSM-Firmenich. His memories of Lance? “He definitely did things that were not good,” he tells me, “but at the end of the day, he was a doping cyclist racing other doping cyclists, and he still won seven Tour de Frances in a row.”

Who’s Cycling Now?

Six Americans entered this year’s Tour, among the largest U.S. crop since 2014, according to DraftKings.

Two of them, Matteo Jorgensen and Neilson Powless, put on quite a show during the 9th stage last Sunday. American Sepp Kuss of Dutch team Jumbo-Visma is currently in 10th place overall. There are also two teams registered in the U.S. — Lidl–Trek and EF Education–EasyPost.

Kevin, meantime, is the third youngest rider in the race, dubbed an up-and-coming “Whizz kid.” He’s riding with DSM for the second time, and he’s hoping to erase memories of last year, when his Tour debut ended in a terrible crash.

“I tried to ride about five more miles [after the crash], and at that point I knew it wasn’t gonna get any better,” he tells me. “That was the end of my Tour.”

He was taken to a hospital where doctors discovered he’d broken his collarbone (again). “To go from one of the biggest sporting events in the world — in the race where you have the helicopter over you and so much noise from the fans — and then within 30 minutes you’re in a French hospital and it’s dead quiet… it was pretty heartbreaking, for sure.”

But now he’s back.

Starting On Mountain Bikes in SoCal

Kevin was born in South Africa, but his family moved to Southern California when he was a toddler. As he got older, his father — who’d been a competitive cyclist as a teenager — put Kevin on a mountain bike. He was racing in Orange County by the time he was 13.

“There'd be maybe 100,000 people out there on a Wednesday night every week during the summer,” he remembers. “Everyone was racing in their own category, and they had burritos and tacos after the race… it was just a really, really cool atmosphere.” He loved it, and he was good at it.

“Then I got my first road bike when I was 15.”

Kevin trained and competed, coached by one of his dad’s best friends. He started winning, got an agent, and then he grabbed the attention of World Tour scouts (the highest level of cycling). “It was all kind of flashy and exciting.”

Kevin went pro with the World Tour when he was 20 years old, joining one of 18 teams, each with 30 riders on the payroll. He moved to Girona, Spain, for training. “There’s actually quite a number of English-speaking World Tour pros that live here,” he tells me via Zoom from his apartment.

While some teams hire riders as independent contractors, Kevin is paid a salary by DSM. He says world-class rookies earn a minimum of $50,000 a year, though hot prospects can land six-figure deals. Adding in money from outside sponsors is difficult, since each team already has sponsors for everything from helmets to shoes. “You can’t work with conflicting clothing or equipment companies.”

During the year Kevin will ride 20-30 hours a week, covering anywhere from 300 to 600 miles total, depending on where he is on the racing schedule.

Cole Kessler, whom I mentioned at the top, also started on a mountain bike, but he jumped on his first road bike during Covid after his school shut down. He figured training on roads would make him more competitive in mountain biking, because “you become really fast.”

But he fell in love with the road bike.

Cole won a time trial at the American National Championships and, like Kevin, he relocated to Europe. (He says Spanish drivers are “chill,” but Italian drivers are “aggro.”)

Cole then won another important time trial in Europe and went to the World Championships. After that experience, he decided, “This is what I want to do with my life.”

Like Kevin, Cole is paid a salary, though a smaller one, since he’s on the equivalent of a Triple A ball club for the Israeli cycling team. “Good thing Europe is a lot cheaper than the big cities in America,” he tells me.

(Also, like Kevin, Cole has broken his collarbone a few times. Oh yeah, and Kevin is dating Cole’s sister.)

Is Cycling Clean?

I struggle to believe that any sport is clean, but especially cycling. A Wikipedia search of “doping cases in cycling” is longer than a drugstore receipt.

But Kevin says cheating would be difficult to pull off now. “I don’t think there’s another sport that’s as anti-doping… because of what happened with Lance,” he says.

Every morning and every evening he has to provide anti-doping officials with his address and a window of time when he’ll be at that location. “They can show up any time of the day and test me,” he says. “They don’t even have to show up within that window.” Kevin says he’s received about 10 surprise visits this year that were not directly related to competitions. “My team actually pays for extra doping tests.”

He says he’s never seen any doping, and he’s never been pressured to try it. Still, Kevin admits there’s some wiggle room for what’s considered “fair.” For example, he says some guys are “probably taking creams, and having ‘therapeutic use exemptions’ for certain injections [like cortisone]. Technically it’s allowed by the rules, but is it morally right?” he asks. “Maybe they don’t actually need that, it’s purely just to help.”

Cole Kessler agrees. “Obviously there’s still guys that bounce around the gray area and dip their toes into the black area, but those guys get found out pretty quick.” He points to the disqualification of Colombian rider Nairo Quintana from last year’s Tour after the painkiller tramadol was found in his system. (Quintana denies it.)

I ask Kevin, “Why not just let everyone dope and get it over with?” He’s heard that argument before, but he says illegal substances don’t help all riders equally, so it’s still not fair.

He also believes that training, nutrition and equipment have gotten so much better that cheating the old way is unnecessary. “One of the reasons that guys would take [the drug] EPO is to boost your hematocrit, which is the level of red blood cells you have,” he says. “Nowadays, guys are training at altitude, way above 6,000 feet, where your blood naturally produces more hematocrit.”

Kevin does take supplements, though: Vitamin D, Omega 3, and an amino acid called Beta Alanine, “which is supposed to help you buffer lactate a little bit slower.” Stuff you can buy at GNC.

Rethinking Lance a Generation Later

Kevin and Cole both met Lance Armstrong in the last year. They even rode with him. They like him.

“He was very nice,” says Cole. “I think Lance was great for the sport in America.”

“He really left a positive impression on me,” Kevin adds, “and even inspired me more than I already was.”

Both young cyclists don’t dismiss Lance’s lies and poor treatment of people, but they also see someone whose success cannot be completely attributed to cheating. Like the fact that he never made a mistake.

“No matter how many drugs you’re taking, I mean, the skill to not crash, seven Tours in a row,” Kevin says, “that’s something that will never be done again.” (Armstrong did fall off the bike in the 2003 Tour, when a fan holding a bag on the sidelines got it caught in Armstrong’s handlebar — nice job, fan.) Still, Kevin adds, “That was a very, very dirty era of cycling, I’m just lucky that I’m in this era now.”

This Year’s Tour de France

There is no other race like the Tour de France, and Kevin is thrilled he made the final squad for his team. “You really feel like the world is watching that race.”

As of this writing, after 13 stages, Team DSM-Firmenich is in the middle of the pack, and its star cyclist, Frenchman Romain Bardet, is in 12th overall. Kevin is in 79th out of 167 remaining riders, surviving five stages longer than last year, so far. Here are Kevin and Romain racing around California a while back.

I ask Kevin to describe his favorite part of the race, and here’s what he tells me:

“I think it’s just the speed. There’s this feeling you get when you’re in a race — the sound of the helicopter and the fans cheering as you zoom by in a split second — the feeling that you get when you’re going at those speeds with guys around you just a couple of inches away. It’s just an adrenaline rush that is a pretty scary thing. I think that adrenaline overpowers the fear.”

No drug can match that.

🚴 🚴 🚴 🚴 🚴

Finally, here are Kevin and Cole in their own words when I ask them about Lance Armstrong.