Book Review: Slaying the Badger

(The first in an occasional series of book reviews.  This is designed to both get me to read more books and to enable me to write more regularly too.  Expect a mix of novels, social history, nerdy science and, just sometimes, sport).

Slaying the Badger by Richard Moore

I was talking with my new boss the other day at Work One (see the footnote here for my distinction between 'Work One' and 'Work Two') about how I like to operate at work, what my values and principles are, all stuff that I love (mainly because it means that I get to talk about myself) and we got to talking about the Tour de France.  Now, anyone that follows my Twitter during June and July knows that I'm a huge TDF fan but not everyone might realise that I use it as my one "sporting metaphor" at work.  I usually get very turned off when people try to engage me with football metaphors: "we're down two nil in the eighty-fifth minute, we need a super-sub" or "I'm just the skipper on the pitch, I need all the other ten men to get behind the ball too".  Bleugh.  

But for some reason the Tour is a totally resonant gold-mine for me of how I want my team to behave, lead and perform.  I could go on for hours but three examples should do;

- Cycling is a team sport but it's also an individual sport.  Each team has a leader and the rest of the team (the "domestiques") are paid to support him.  This means that you competitors whose job it is to support and shelter their leader and that alone - this could be anything from: giving up your musette (feed bag) if the leader misses picking his up on the move; pacing the leader back to the pack if they stop for a wee or have a problem; all the way up to giving up your bike if the leader's bike has a failure.  There's a wealth of things to think about there for work and other things you do in your life - how are you acting as a domestique in service to others?  When are the team leader?  When do these roles change?  (On the last point, the best example of this is Bradley Wiggins as winner of the Tour leading out his team-mate Mark Cavendish for the stage win in Paris in the 2012 Tour - leader turned domestique for the day.  

- The above, combined with the fact that to "just" be a domestique still means cycling 200km+ a day, every day for three weeks pretty much blows my mind.  These are world-class athletes and they not only sublimate their ego and own ambitions to the service of the team leader but put themselves through agonies to do it.  Legends.  

- But probably the thing that I love the most about the Tour (and it's similar to why I love cricket) is the way that there are competitions within competitions and the balance of power and advantage can switch one way and another many times within a day.  A rider might break away from the pack and be supported by a rider from another team during that lonely 150km because that helps their team to achieve something they want.  Sometimes this is explicit with deals being done ("support me today and I'll set you up for a stage win tomorrow") on the wing and sometimes it's more serendipitous.  

I was talking with my boss about all this and it turns out he is also a big cyclist and TDF fan and said he'd lend me a book he'd been reading.  He did and I read it over Christmas and it's highly recommended by me for general sports fans or cycling aficionados.  

It tells the story of the 1986 Tour which featured a see-saw battle between the new wave, represented by Greg LeMond and combative old-guard in the shape of Bernard Hinault (the eponymous 'Badger').  It's a cracking read that moves at huge pace and colours in the history and context of the race to make it fit together.  There is a wealth of interviews with the key participants including LeMond and Hinault and their coaching teams.  

The paperback edition (as linked above ) also has a fascinating epilogue that explores and justifies the author's designation of the 1986 race as the "Greatest Ever" in the subtitle to the book.  The final passage touches on a few of themes I talk about above so I thought I'd quote from it at length;

"The reaction from one reader prompted me to think about another aspect of the story, an obvious one but one that I hadn't given much consideration to because it seemed so obvious.  The reader, Gabriel Karaffa from New York, notes that the 1986 Tour was a 'stark example' of so many different people 'pursuing their own agendas'.  The problem, of course, was that so many of the dominant players - from the charismatic, wealthy team owner to the coaching genius to the two strongest riders - happened to be in the same team.  In cycling, perhaps more than any other sport, this is a recipe for conflict.  Because, as Karaffa notes, 'cycling was not originally a team sport, but it evolved into one ... The problem with this, of course, is that only one rider can win the general classification ... Were it to completely convert to a team sport, all events would be decided by team classifications'.

Those of us who follow cycling closely accept that it is a team sport and rarely reflect on how unnatural this is.  Perhaps it's best described as an individual team sport.

But it is an aspect of the sport that cuts to the heart of the 1986 drama.  Neither Hinault nor LeMond was drawn to cycling in order to become a member of a successful team.  Teenagers do not embark on the road to a career as a professional cyclist harbouring dreams of becoming a domestique.  The team role is something that is forced on the majority of riders by their own limitations.  For those without limitations - Hinault, LeMond - it is a nearly impossible compromise."

This neatly encapsulates the excitement at the heart of the sport for me.  We saw some of this in the 2012 Tour with Cavendish (a cyclist built and conditioned to win) being de-prioritised by Team Sky to make sure that Wiggins won the race.  This led to Cav leaving the British (dream) team to join Omega-Pharma-QuickStep where the operation will be built around him to win the Green Jersey.  

Roll on 29th June!

Campaiging for President Obama

I think that yesterday (Tuesday) might go alongside this day as a highlight so far of my trip to America. 

I had arranged a brief chat with Congressman Keith Ellison who represents Minneapolis and bit of the surrounding suburbs.  We met over at the Congressman's District Office which I got to by using the excellent Twin Cities 'Nice Ride' bike hire system (a bit like the Boris Bikes in London).  The system is cheap and efficient but I kept trying to ride the bike like my road bike at home and was confused when I didn't get quite the same level of responsiveness...

Anyway, I arrived safely enough - albeit somewhat cold from the biting wind there was yesterday.  (Yes, Mum I'm wearing my hat and gloves...).  An interesting chat with the Congressman about local and national political issues including the campaign against an amendment to outlaw gay marriage - more info here.  My time was about up when Keith asked me if I wanted to come with him to the campaign office (there is a very strict division between the 'official' office which is taxpayer funded and the campaign office which is a political operation). 

As you can imagine I jumped at this chance and was excited to experience a Congressional campaign in the full swing of trying to reach 750,000 constituents and persuade them to vote for the Congressman.  Better than that however, I was able to actually join some of the team on the phones canvassing constituents to try to persuade them to vote for both the Congressman and also President Obama. That's a pretty special moment! 

Again I thought I'd about exhausted my welcome when Keith and his Communications Director grabbed me and said, "we're going to record a campaign advert, do you want to come along?"...  We battled through city-centre rush-hour traffic and made it to the radio studio just in time to lay down two different versions of a campaign advert about the second of two proposed constitutional amendments - about voter registration and participation - more info here. 

And finally we went over to the local Fox affiliate TV station for the Congressman to do a live TV interview.  You can see the video of the TV interview here.  I was in the green room willing him on! 

A very unexpectedly fascinating day and I also gathered a load of info from Keith on Detroit (where he grew up) which I've put together with the stuff I saw when I was there the other week. 

I move on to Seattle tonight on the Amtrak.  It takes about 36 hours but it supposed to go through some of the most beautiful scenery - including Glacier National Park. 

A Streetcar Named Desire

For me one of the key aspects that make city live-able and a place that exists as a home and cultural and social space rather than just a location is the ease of travel to and around the conurbation.  In Nottingham we're very lucky to have one of the few municipally owned bus companies still in existence (NCT) along with a tram system, currently being extended with two new lines.  This has resulted in the City being voted the best for public transport and the bus service being similar recognised many times.  I'm a passionate advocate of public transport, walking and cycling and try to avoid using the car wherever possible.  In fact I didn't learn to drive until I was nearly 25 but then I didn't need to having grown up in London and then been to University in York - two places where it's better not to have a car at all.

One reason for a company to locate in or remain in a city is the ease by which their goods can reach or leave their location and how easy it is for their staff to get to the workplace.  But more important to me is how this "transport experience" feels for the people who live and work there.  Lots of my colleagues at work commute by car for an hour or more (I used to have a boss who drove from Kidderminster every day to Nottingham - the thick end of 90mins each way) which I find totally abhorrent - I love the fact that I can ride my bike and it takes me about 30mins to do the journey - great exercise integrated into my day, cheap and better for the environment.  In fact on the rare days that I have to drive I often find that it takes longer than biking or getting the bus. 

I'm in two minds about how to approach the transport issue if I do go to America.  I'd be reticent to hire a car unless totally unavoidable - I really want to experience the Greyhound and Amtrak systems firsthand (more on which in another post) but at the same time I recognise that the majority of people in the cities that I am likely to visit are going to be large users of their cars so I should try to replicate this as much as possible.  

I'm really intrigued by the data to be found at Walk Score - just the sort of geeky stats and social anthropology that turns me on!  And I see that we've now got some UK data too here.  I'm not sure how useful some of that data is as my street is classified as only average walkability when I know that you can (for example) walk and buy all the ingredients for a top-notch Sunday roast (mainly courtesy of J T Beedham).  On the American site I like the contrast between Portland and Jacksonville.  I was interested to see that Los Angeles has a rating of 'Somewhat Walkable' - my perception of those huge highways in permanent gridlock where no-one walks obviously aren't quite accurate. 

Fundamentally: how easy it is to get around, get to work and to socialise without a car are a key determinant for me of where I chose to live and work.  I'll be interested to see if this is the same in any of the places I hope to visit.