Tom Simpson was not a pariah nor a witch, although if you didn't know much about his story, sometimes you might think so. Mention his name in anything other than condemnatory terms on social media over the past few days and you were guaranteed the righteous barbs of judgmental outrage on your head.
We all know the Simpson story, of death in the afternoon on the biggest, baddest mountain in France. Almost everyone believes he died solely because of doping, which is why when it came to marking the 50th anniversary of his death on Thursday, the Tour de France organisation opted to take its race out of sight and out of mind, to the western reaches of the Pyrenees, almost as far away from Mont Ventoux as possible.
This was too far for the Tour's media pack to travel, unlike in 2015 when Lance Armstrong passed within unsettling proximity of the Tour when he rode in the Day Ahead charity event with Geoff Thomas. As it turned out, the press room on the race itself was pretty empty that day because Armstrong, whatever you think of him, is still box office.
ADVERTISEMENT
In the post-Festina, post-Puerto, post-Armstrong world, the Tour doesn't want any negative images, particularly any association with the ghouls of its shady past. The Tour's brand is going global, selling an image of cycling and its history that is highly selective.
I never knew Tom Simpson, so I don't know if he was a 'good' person, or a 'bad' person, but I do know that he died racing in the Tour. I know that he was a professional cyclist racing at a time when a culture of amphetamines was prevalent and I also know that, as a man, he was much loved and mourned.
Joanne Simpson, his daughter, recently tried to get at the definitive truth of his death, opening up legal proceedings to obtain his autopsy. "I can live with the truth," she told me. "If that's the truth, that Daddy took amphetamines, then so be it."
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://ift.tt/2tvRPhw
No comments:
Post a Comment