The cycling race...

Simon Brooke said:

Serious question, not an attempt to start a flame war:

At the world cup final, the Marseillaise was played and the camera panned
along the faces of the French team. Of them, apart from Zidane, who was
born in Algeria, and Barthez, the clown the French put in goal to keep
the crowd entertained, every single face was black.

Ribery will be very surprised to learn he is black, as will others.
BTW, that clown?, scroll down, take a gander, and tell me you're not
thinking of running out to buy a red rubber nose and big shoes.
http://www.anvari.org/cols/Soccer_Wives.html

R

Simon Brooke said:

Serious question, not an attempt to start a flame war:

Why not? Why is cycling a sport at which black athletes don't seem able
to excel? Is cycling systematically racist, preventing good black
youngsters from getting a chance? If not, what is the reason?

I believe it is some combination of nature and nurture.

RicodJour a écrit :

Quoted message said:

Simon Brooke said:

Serious question, not an attempt to start a flame war:

At the world cup final, the Marseillaise was played and the camera panned
along the faces of the French team. Of them, apart from Zidane, who was
born in Algeria, and Barthez, the clown the French put in goal to keep
the crowd entertained, every single face was black.

Ribery will be very surprised to learn he is black, as will others.
BTW, that clown?, scroll down, take a gander, and tell me you're not
thinking of running out to buy a red rubber nose and big shoes.
http://www.anvari.org/cols/Soccer_Wives.html

R

Black as in hair ? Like [censored] Sagnol's ?

Paging Jimmy the Greek.....

Mark VandenBerghe

"Simon Brooke" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Serious question, not an attempt to start a flame war:

At the world cup final, the Marseillaise was played and the camera panned
along the faces of the French team. Of them, apart from Zidane, who was
born in Algeria, and Barthez, the clown the French put in goal to keep
the crowd entertained, every single face was black. So France isn't
short of black sportsmen. Indeed, go to any European athletics event and
you'll see that most countries field a high proportion of black
athletes.

As is frequently noted on this group, the United States has its fair
share of cycle racers - and, in most sports in the US, black athletes do
extremely well. Francophone Africa isn't short of cycle racing - indeed,
the ASO, the people who run the Tour de France, also run the Tour of
Burkina-Faso, a country which has no less than thirteen cycling
academies. In endurance sports such as marathon, black athletes do well.
The last five winners of the London Marathon have been from Ethiopia or
Kenya. So there's nothing genetic about being black which makes you
unsuitable for endurance.

Watching the Giro, this May, it was with surprise that I noticed that
there was a black rider riding in the peloton. Just one, but there was
one. In this year's Tour de France, as usual, none.

Why not? Why is cycling a sport at which black athletes don't seem able
to excel? Is cycling systematically racist, preventing good black
youngsters from getting a chance? If not, what is the reason?

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
;; Our modern industrial economy takes a mountain covered with
trees,
;; lakes, running streams and transforms it into a mountain of
junk,
;; garbage, slime pits, and debris. -- Edward
Abbey

In article
<[email hidden]>,

Simon Brooke said:

Serious question, not an attempt to start a flame war:

-- Oh, this match? I only want to add light to the matter.

[...]

Take it to alt.politics.racism.

--
Michael Press

"Simon Brooke" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Serious question, not an attempt to start a flame war:

At the world cup final, the Marseillaise was played and the camera panned
along the faces of the French team. Of them, apart from Zidane, who was
born in Algeria, and Barthez, the clown the French put in goal to keep
the crowd entertained, every single face was black. So France isn't
short of black sportsmen. Indeed, go to any European athletics event and
you'll see that most countries field a high proportion of black
athletes.

This sort of indicates that either the amount of money earned by cyclists is
too low for black athletes to waste their talent on or else black athletes
do not have the combination of endurance AND strength required by cycling,
cross country ski racing and the like.

Personally I have a hard time believing either.

A third possibility - the overwhelming white presence of really smart assed
agressive white guys in the lower ranks of racing who seem to have only one
thought in their heads and that's smashing anyone that starting out.

I remember on my first hard bike ride, I was passed by the Berkeley Bike
Club riders in the Oakland hills. As they came past their were laughing at
how they'd dropped all the new guys that had showed up for their ride. As I
was huffing and puffing along the new guys came by in one's and two's. What
exactly was the reasoning behind a training ride that has no other reason
than to allow someone to demonstrate their knowledge of a particular ride
well enough to utilize the terrain to take advantage of others? I might add
that over the years that ride seems to have disappeared and I seldom see
group rides with the Berkeley Bike Club now.

More and more I'm having problems with bike clubs in the US and the bay area
in particular. Rides seem to have no other reason than to build the egos of
the strongest riders in the group. They generally start with no warm-up,
ride too fast for an endurance ride and too easily for a hard ride. The
strongest guys in the group may be able to maintain this sort of riding but
all it does to those with less training is to weaken them ride after ride
until they simply stop riding in the group.

The sum result is that the average American club rider is always shocked at
how much faster European club riders are. Everyone I know of that goes to
Europe and rides around talks about 50 anrd 60 year old European riders that
drop them without a problem in any terrain.

Stupid is as stupid does I suppose. And American clubs sure have a lock grip
on that philosophy.

Simon Brooke said:

Serious question, not an attempt to start a flame war:

At the world cup final, the Marseillaise was played and the camera panned
along the faces of the French team. Of them, apart from Zidane, who was
born in Algeria, and Barthez, the clown the French put in goal to keep
the crowd entertained, every single face was black. So France isn't
short of black sportsmen. Indeed, go to any European athletics event and
you'll see that most countries field a high proportion of black
athletes.

As is frequently noted on this group, the United States has its fair
share of cycle racers - and, in most sports in the US, black athletes do
extremely well. Francophone Africa isn't short of cycle racing - indeed,
the ASO, the people who run the Tour de France, also run the Tour of
Burkina-Faso, a country which has no less than thirteen cycling
academies. In endurance sports such as marathon, black athletes do well.
The last five winners of the London Marathon have been from Ethiopia or
Kenya. So there's nothing genetic about being black which makes you
unsuitable for endurance.

Watching the Giro, this May, it was with surprise that I noticed that
there was a black rider riding in the peloton. Just one, but there was
one. In this year's Tour de France, as usual, none.

Why not? Why is cycling a sport at which black athletes don't seem able
to excel? Is cycling systematically racist, preventing good black
youngsters from getting a chance? If not, what is the reason?

Here's my Wild Ass Guess.

Most black people in the US live in urban areas. Urban areas are not
very conducive to endurance sports like cycling and XC skiing. Sport
minded people (white, black, whatever) in urban areas are drawn to
other sports that have a critical mass. Cycling doesn't. I grew up in
Brooklyn and most of the guys I rode with were (are?) black. There were
plenty of white guys too. Guess what? Not many of them in the pro
peloton either.

To become a pro cyclist you need to live in an area you can ride lots
in, an area that has supportive clubs, and you need the interest to
persue it as a full time endeavor from an early age. I guess not that
many black people live like that.

Times change. Look at inline skating. It brought skating to the urban
areas and hot areas and now there are black/minority people into speed
skating at the highest level. Wasn't long ago that that was not the
case.

Why more African people are not in the pro peloton isn't a mystery
either. Cycling is the national sport of Eritrea, and there are bike
races all over the place there. Only 4 million people there, just like
Norway. But in Norway even though cycling is only a niche sport, people
are rich enough that if a kid shows promise, their club can send him to
some races in Europe and eventually he gets discovered. Not the case in
Eritrea. No clubs are sending promising kids to Europe on the club's
dime.

Joseph

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Here's my Wild Ass Guess.

Most black people in the US live in urban areas. Urban areas are not
very conducive to endurance sports like cycling and XC skiing. Sport
minded people (white, black, whatever) in urban areas are drawn to
other sports that have a critical mass. Cycling doesn't. I grew up in
Brooklyn and most of the guys I rode with were (are?) black. There were
plenty of white guys too. Guess what? Not many of them in the pro
peloton either.

The San Francisco bay area and the Los Angeles area are ideal for bike
riding and have large populations of blacks. There ARE some really good
black riders in these areas as well. Yet it was unusual to see a black on
any white club ride (though the Oakland Yellowjackets have a large number of
black riders and some of them are killer-strong) and even more unusual to
see them in a race.

I'm reasonably convinced that it has something to do with blacks fear of
whites but I can't put my finger on it. I DO know that in the Master's
racing everyone I saw was more than welcoming of black racers to the point
where everyone was opening gaps to let them in and giving them advice, but
the black riders would show up to one or two races and then you'd never see
them again. Maybe that smacked of the white guys looking down their noses.
But the two black riders I paid attention to were more than strong enough
right from the start - they just didn't have the knowledge of racing
strategies and how to ride in the peloton. They suffered like dogs to stay
with the pack because they didn't know how to race yet. But hey, so did
everyone that started racing.

If you don't have black club racers you will never have black pro racers.

"Tom Kunich" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:ieftg.3727to

Quoted message said:

If you don't have black club racers you will never have black pro racers.

And if you don't have black recreational cyclists, you aren't going to have
black club racers... Just look around wherever you see cyclists: centuries,
heavily populated cycling roads, club rides, etc... very few blacks. I can't
figure out why there aren't more black people who are just in it for the
exercise and fun. I just put it down to some sort of cultural thing... it
just isn't part of black culture or history. For black kids growing up, how
many of them are going to have heroes who are white guys like Landis,
Lemond, Boonen, Ullrich, etc.? Chances are the bedroom walls of most black
kids in America have posters of NFL and NBA stars... or musical artists.

It'll take time but it will happen as it did with Tiger Woods, although I
don't know how many black kids are taking up golf because of him; it's still
a pretty cost-prohibitive sport like cycling. Motocross was always the same
way and now finally there is a black American (Bubba Stewart) who is at the
top of that sport... but no others. That's another cost prohibitive sport,
mostly dominated by white people who have the money to pursue that dream.

In article <[email hidden]>,

Brian Phillips said:

"Tom Kunich" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:ieftg.3727to

Quoted message said:

If you don't have black club racers you will never have black pro racers.

And if you don't have black recreational cyclists, you aren't going to have
black club racers... Just look around wherever you see cyclists: centuries,
heavily populated cycling roads, club rides, etc... very few blacks. I can't
figure out why there aren't more black people who are just in it for the
exercise and fun. I just put it down to some sort of cultural thing... it
just isn't part of black culture or history. For black kids growing up, how
many of them are going to have heroes who are white guys like Landis,
Lemond, Boonen, Ullrich, etc.? Chances are the bedroom walls of most black
kids in America have posters of NFL and NBA stars... or musical artists.

It'll take time but it will happen as it did with Tiger Woods, although I
don't know how many black kids are taking up golf because of him; it's still
a pretty cost-prohibitive sport like cycling. Motocross was always the same
way and now finally there is a black American (Bubba Stewart) who is at the
top of that sport... but no others. That's another cost prohibitive sport,
mostly dominated by white people who have the money to pursue that dream.

Two key points deserve to be made about that: all these sports are
middle or upper-middle class sports.

Blacks, demographically, are somewhere around 10% of the US population,
and while they are entering the middle and upper classes in growing
numbers, they are still proportionately underrepresented.

So aside from any other issues, there's just not a large population to
draw upon for these sports, which, as you note, are largely less popular
than football and basketball to start with.

--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos

"Ryan Cousineau" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Two key points deserve to be made about that: all these sports are
middle or upper-middle class sports.

Blacks, demographically, are somewhere around 10% of the US population,
and while they are entering the middle and upper classes in growing
numbers, they are still proportionately underrepresented.

Consider this - the growing illegal alien invasion will strike the lower
social and economic strata a great deal harder at first than the upper.
Allowing the illegal immigration will have a devastating effect on the black
segment of society.

Quoted message said:

So aside from any other issues, there's just not a large population to
draw upon for these sports, which, as you note, are largely less popular
than football and basketball to start with.

Theory - blacks aren't represented in cycling not because of socio-economic
reasons but because black culture has grown to avoid socializing with
whites? "Blacks Only" might have had a more lasting effect than we believe?

"Tom Kunich" <[email hidden]> wrote in
news:[email hidden]:

<snip>

Quoted message said:

Theory - blacks aren't represented in cycling not because of
socio-economic reasons but because black culture has grown to avoid
socializing with whites? "Blacks Only" might have had a more lasting
effect than we believe?

I think it's that most African-Americans remember the Bo Jackson "Bo
knows everything" commercials, in particular the one where he's riding
along on a bicycle, with his legs splayed out, looking like a 240-lb
doofus, saying "Now when's this tour day France thing?" It was
ridiculous and everyone knew it. Most blacks now assume they will look
as silly as Jackson so there is no way they would get on a bicycle.

--
Bill Asher

Brian Phillips said:

just isn't part of black culture or history. For black kids growing up, how
many of them are going to have heroes who are white guys like Landis,
Lemond, Boonen, Ullrich, etc.? Chances are the bedroom walls of most black
kids in America have posters of NFL and NBA stars... or musical artists.

Here are some black cycling role models:
http://www.screamifyouwantit.com/mambo/images/stories/spike_lee.gif
http://www.tropiccomics.com/ebay/lcwhitemcj2.jpg

--
E. Dronkert

in message <[email hidden]>, Brian Phillips

(') said:

It'll take time but it will happen as it did with Tiger Woods, although
I don't know how many black kids are taking up golf because of him;
it's still a pretty cost-prohibitive sport like cycling.

What on earth is cost-prohibitive about cycling?

There isn't enough difference in performance between the latest carbon
fibre wonder and a twenty year old steel ten speed with shifters on the
downtube to make a good kid on a cheap machine uncompetitive.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

There are no messages. The above is just a random stream of
bytes. Any opinion or meaning you find in it is your own creation.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Here's my Wild Ass Guess.

Most black people in the US live in urban areas. Urban areas are not
very conducive to endurance sports like cycling and XC skiing. Sport
minded people (white, black, whatever) in urban areas are drawn to
other sports that have a critical mass. Cycling doesn't. I grew up in
Brooklyn and most of the guys I rode with were (are?) black. There were
plenty of white guys too. Guess what? Not many of them in the pro
peloton either.

To become a pro cyclist you need to live in an area you can ride lots
in, an area that has supportive clubs, and you need the interest to
persue it as a full time endeavor from an early age. I guess not that
many black people live like that.

What he said.

Plus cars are important and maybe there's less car ownership to get to
races among black families in cities.

J "black kid grew up in Brooklyn" T

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Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Brian Phillips

(') said:

It'll take time but it will happen as it did with Tiger Woods, although
I don't know how many black kids are taking up golf because of him;
it's still a pretty cost-prohibitive sport like cycling.

What on earth is cost-prohibitive about cycling?

Travel. In my city you can play in ball sport tournaments for the cost
of the subway. No cars, no tolls, gas, motels, etc etc etc.

JT

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John Forrest Tomlinson said:

Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Brian Phillips

(') said:

It'll take time but it will happen as it did with Tiger Woods, although
I don't know how many black kids are taking up golf because of him;
it's still a pretty cost-prohibitive sport like cycling.

What on earth is cost-prohibitive about cycling?

Travel. In my city you can play in ball sport tournaments for the cost
of the subway. No cars, no tolls, gas, motels, etc etc etc.

Oh, one other thing. It's possible to race in my city with almost no
travel costs too -- doing the several local training series. But
riders that only do that dont' improve as much -- they have no expoure
to unfamiliar roads, hills, etc that are essential to developing in
the sport. Whereas most ball sport venues are much more similar
whereever you go

JT.

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John Forrest Tomlinson said:

John Forrest Tomlinson said:

Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Brian Phillips
([email hidden]'😉 wrote:

> It'll take time but it will happen as it did with Tiger Woods, although
> I don't know how many black kids are taking up golf because of him;
> it's still a pretty cost-prohibitive sport like cycling.

What on earth is cost-prohibitive about cycling?

Travel. In my city you can play in ball sport tournaments for the cost
of the subway. No cars, no tolls, gas, motels, etc etc etc.

After high-school basketball games, we would always try to get the
conductor to announce the results over the PA: "Next stop, Fulton
Street. And in local sports..."

Quoted message said:

Oh, one other thing. It's possible to race in my city with almost no
travel costs too -- doing the several local training series. But
riders that only do that dont' improve as much -- they have no expoure
to unfamiliar roads, hills, etc that are essential to developing in
the sport. Whereas most ball sport venues are much more similar
whereever you go

This is very true. We didn't have a car when I was a junior in NYC and
I only raced one or two races outside of Prospect or Central Park. I
didn't have the means to get there, and not being a star, nobody went
out of their way to help me. This I'm sure limited my development,
though probably not much, but who knows? I'm sure there are plenty of
kids white and black who are in this category.

Joseph "white kid who grew up in Brooklyn" Santaniello

Ewoud Dronkert said:

Brian Phillips said:

just isn't part of black culture or history. For black kids growing up, how
many of them are going to have heroes who are white guys like Landis,
Lemond, Boonen, Ullrich, etc.? Chances are the bedroom walls of most black
kids in America have posters of NFL and NBA stars... or musical artists.

Here are some black cycling role models:
http://www.screamifyouwantit.com/mambo/images/stories/spike_lee.gif
http://www.tropiccomics.com/ebay/lcwhitemcj2.jpg

Here's another, obvious one:

http://www.majortaylorassociation.org/news/bicmag06.shtml

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