Apparently the photo of Paul on the
home page (stolen from a French web site in true American Road
Cycling jingoist fashion and reprinted above) captioned with a
notice that
Paul is shown on the
Etape
Du Tour in the process of kicking
about 3,000 Euro-butts while wearing his
Official American
Road Cycling Jersey jersey, did not tell enough of the story to suit Mr.
Sullivan's taste for tales of horror. Here's the gritty.
The race was outlined thus, "No fewer
than 238 women will participate in the event. 44 countries will be
represented: 6,302 French riders (including the four-time Formula 1
World Champion Alain Prost), 1,764 British riders, 186 Americans, 43
Canadians, not to mention competitors from Japan, Belgium, Irland,
Chile, Argentina, China, Bermuda…"
The final tally showed 7,885
finishers while 643 dropped out trying to deny Monsieur Latrine the
sweaty fruits of his labor. That however, served them nothing,
because we are counting them as whupped anyway.
So nos Frere Latrine actually slapped
silly 4392 various and a sundry competitors, and it only took him 7h
48' 2" to do it. If he'd tried a little harder, he could probably
have taken off the 2", but he most likely lost his concentration
whishing he had SlingShot along for the ride in order to give
him somebody to pace just ahead of, while wishing Dan Sullivan
himself was there pulling his mangy ass along like a freight train
as usual.
By the way, American Road Cycling
is betting that not one of the people Le Paul beat was a woman,
because it is a known fact that Paul can't beat girls, even on
Angola Road—which is at least 10 degrees flatter than whatever climb
he is shown on above. Or at least that's what Mary says (both of
them) unless of course one of the Mary's cracks and goes off
cackling like a hen in labor about how much she hates everybody on
the ride, such like, "I hate all you fuckers. Look, I'm just an old
woman. I'm not Humberto, you know. Fuck all of you. I've got my own
fucking Gu Gel. Get the fuck away from me." But that's another story, a
prequel actually.
The careful reader will note that
only 186 Americans fielded an attempt, while Chile and Argentina are
mentioned separately, which would imply those countries have dropped
out of America until Lance stops showing up for races. Guess it's
starting to catch on, that is to say Paul's good sense and efficient
use of his time, wherein he does only a single race a year, and
beats more people in one day than Dan Sullivan has ever gotten
around in his lifetime, has spread to more people's training routine
than just that Lance
character.
In any case, Paul really enjoyed his
favorite dish of Frog legs. In fact he sent a missive, "Finished the Etape. Stop. It sucked. Stop. It was VERY hard and long climbs.
Stop."
Elsewhere Paul has been quoted, "My
Widdle Weggies Huht!"
He probably didn't beat that guy in
the Formula 1 car either.
Follow-up: On Paul's return to the U.S. he
reported that he noticed a French spectator on one of the harder
climbs very excitedly poke his friend's arm and repeat, "American
Road Cycling, AMERICAN ROAD CYCLING!"
Thus we have extended Paul's credits
from merely helping provide National prominence to
American Road Cycling, but now fully International
prominence...even though we suspect the
jersey did help bring
that along.
On their return from France, we had Paul and Liz
drive up Kain to compare it to this year's
Etape du Tour race he
completed. He reports Kain is steeper. His big climb was like the
first part of the big hill off 208 coming North out of
Washingtonville on the
Silence of the Lambs ride--only it went on for 2.5 hours. Even
the Hors Categorie climb was less steep. Though it had moments as
steep, none of those moments lasted as long as Kain. He also said
the ice cream was better at the top of Kain.
