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The Mind Behind the Motor
By Diane Pucin (Times Staff Writer)
July 19, 2005
PAU, France — The question was asked in French. The answer came quickly and
loudly in English.
Johan Bruyneel, a poker-faced Belgian who drives with his knees and speaks
five languages, was asked this: would Lance Armstrong have won a single
Tour de France title without him?
"No," Bruyneel said, "I don't think so."
Bruyneel, 40, most noted for taking a wrong turn off a cliff in the Alps
during cycling's greatest race, has lived in the shadow of Armstrong since
the two joined forces in 1998. Bruyneel calls himself "the man without the
engine but the mind to win," and in Armstrong he found the engine.
Armstrong is pointed toward an unprecedented seventh consecutive Tour de
France title when the 2005 race ends Sunday in Paris. After staying even
with or gaining time on his top rivals last weekend in the Pyrenees, even
five-time runner-up and 1997 champion Jan Ullrich, who is fourth overall,
said Monday that, "I'm only racing for the podium now."
In other words, Ullrich is hoping to finish second or third. Defeating
Armstrong would only come, he said, if something unexpected happened to the
33-year-old Texan, who has a 2-minute 46-second lead on second-place Ivan
Basso and a 5:58 lead on Ullrich.
One of the few losses Armstrong's Discovery Channel team has suffered this
year came Monday when Basso, a talented 27-year-old Italian, announced he
had signed a three-year contract extension with CSC. Without knowing Basso
had re-upped, Bruyneel said he would like to see Basso inherit Armstrong's
role as leader for Discovery next year.
"Too bad," Bruyneel said.
It sounded as if Bruyneel felt it was too bad for Basso.
Bruyneel, the son of jewelry store owners, was a bike racer from a small
town near Brugges who started the sport late after getting his marketing
degree. After finishing his competitive career at the end of the 1997
season, he thought he would move into the field of public relations.
"It happened that Lance called me in the fall after I retired," Bruyneel
said. "We were talking and he said he wasn't happy with the leadership on
his team. As we continued to talk he asked me if I wanted to work with him.
I am a man of impulse and on impulse, I said yes."
Armstrong was still feeling his way back to the sport after spending nearly
two years recovering from the testicular cancer that had spread to his
lungs and brain. His French team, Cofidis, had ended its contract with the
American rider and Armstrong had signed with the U.S. Postal Service team
(Discovery Channel took over sponsorship this year).
Bruyneel had competed against Armstrong before the Texan had become ill.
"An immense talent with an immense engine," was Bruyneel's impression. But
Bruyneel also thought Armstrong was undisciplined, impetuous and
headstrong.
As a racer Bruyneel was meticulous in his preparation. He won a Tour stage
in 1995 when he rode the wheel of five-time champion Miguel Indurain into
Liege, Belgium, and passed Indurain at the end. Bruyneel's 1996 crash,
where he tumbled 20 feet off a cliff, then climbed back up and continued on
to finish the stage, is passed on as a Tour legend.
In the post-cancer Armstrong, Bruyneel found a young man willing to listen
to his ideas. It was Bruyneel who thought the racer should scout each Tour
stage himself instead of dispatching a coach to drive the route. It was
Bruyneel who urged Armstrong to establish a training base in Europe and do
testing in a wind tunnel to learn how to ride faster.
"It's a remarkable relationship we have," Bruyneel said, "and it worked
from the beginning. I met him and passed through his life at the right
moment. I didn't have a lot of experience and neither did he. I just had a
vision and he believed it."
The story goes that when Bruyneel met Armstrong for the first time, he told
Armstrong, "I'll see you on the podium in Paris."
That story is true, Armstrong said. "That's why, when I retire, I'd love
for Johan to win a Tour without me."
Every day for six years Bruyneel and Armstrong have spoken by phone seven
or eight times a day. They finish each other's sentences. They trust each
other.
"If Johan tells me something," Armstrong has said, "that's what we'll do."
Now Armstrong has won six straight Tours. Bruyneel is still undefeated as a
team sports director in the race. Yet he still passes through each day
almost unnoticed.
As fans mob the team van each morning looking for Armstrong or his
girlfriend, Sheryl Crow, Bruyneel walks among them to slip into a car.
During the stage Bruyneel steers with his knees while he speaks to each of
the nine team members constantly in a handful of languages. He monitors the
race on a small television mounted on the dashboard.
And at the end of the stage, as Armstrong slips on another yellow jersey,
as media members and town mayors, teenage girls and old men beg for
autographs, Bruyneel walks unnoticed again to look ahead to the next stage.
"Johan doesn't get as much credit as he should," Discovery member George
Hincapie said. "He's really a great technical mind. He understands racing."
Bruyneel also knows what the best racing minds think. Can he win without
Armstrong?
"I start from the idea that we can't replace Lance," Bruyneel said.
"There's no one who can do what Lance has been doing for years. But I think
this team can win another Tour.
"I think we can find and develop good racers."