Tom Danielson: the interview: part 4
- Tom Danielson on a winter training ride in 2008. Photo: Tom Danielson
In the fourth and final part of my interview with Tom Danielson, I finish up with a few random questions that I wanted to ask him earlier but just couldn’t seem to work in. Here, Tommy D tells me about a number of bits and pieces, including his year riding with Frank Vadenbroucke, the state of doping in cycling, and his take on banning race radios. Also, he reveals how long he plans to continue pedaling professionally. Read the introduction to this interview here.
Daniel McMahon: Are you for or against banning race radios?
Tom Danielson: By taking the radios away I think we’re just taking a step back in racing and technology. The ability to know what’s going on at all times just makes more sense. On football teams you have a defensive coach, an offensive coach, and a head coach, and they all have assistants and microphones, and they’re going to guys up in the offices with other plans and analysis. So you’re just taking away from growing the sport.
And these are all potential technology sponsors. When I was on Discovery Channel we had AMD, which was a big sponsor and clearly a technology sponsor. They provided programs for Trek to help design the bikes, but more interestingly they made the race radios that they made for Formula 1 drivers and brought them to cycling. So by taking away that you’re kicking cycling in the foot.
Okay, you’re hurting us on the bike a little bit—we don’t really know how much time the breakaway has, we don’t know who’s in the breakaway, we don’t know what’s up ahead, right? But at the same time it’s like that’s just another component that’s successful with cycling. Maybe with Motorola or whatever companies, maybe they were thinking of sponsoring cycling, but now they’re saying, Great, we can’t get involved now.
Racing’s hard enough. All that’s going to happen is those guys aren’t going to let breakaways go very far. I don’t think you’re going to see too many breakaways win races anymore. Teams aren’t going to take the risks. The board could be wrong. And what happens when you have a flat tire? What happens when someone crashes? It’s just not a good idea.
DM: The past season seemed to be, more or less, a relatively clean year doping-wise. What do you think about the current state of doping in cycling, and do you think the current two-year ban for doping is appropriate?
TD: Yeah, I think it’s appropriate. And I think doping should be out of the sport. Everybody’s doing a great job making sure it’s not possible in the sport. I think that as technology improves we’ll see better tests, and we’ll see even fewer opportunities for people to dope. You can say that cycling is probably one of the cleanest sports out there for this reason.
The great part about being clean is that it’s even healthier, you know? I’m going to have children, and I think those in the sport want to view this activity as a healthy lifestyle. We want people to get involved and don’t want them to take risks and do things like that to their bodies. All the movements that have gone forward to clean up the sport have been doing a good job, and we need to keep them going in the right direction and keep it a clean sport forever.
DM: You raced on the same team as Vandenbroucke. How well did you know him?
TD: Yeah, we raced on Fassa Bortolo for a year together. While I didn’t know him like other people knew him, I definitely got to kind of see the myth. I rode with him at training camp and in three or four races. That year was when he was really starting to show promise. He was really high up in Paris-Nice, and then in Setmana Catalana he was going even faster and faster. In training camp he was lighting it up.
It was pretty cool to race with him and see him and be at the dinner table with him and meet his family. He was definitely a really different person. Before coming to the team I’d just heard so much about him, and to actually meet him and race with him was pretty amazing. It’s really disappointing and sad that he’s gone now. Hopefully it’s a lesson on a number of different fronts for everybody.
DM: What did you make of Armstrong’s comeback?
TD: Well, I’m a big fan. I think it’s great. You could definitely see the reaction and the wake of it at Tour California. Every race that he did seemed to explode. You know, you had NBC Universal taking on races they normally wouldn’t even cover—wouldn’t even be on TV. You had Tour California and people lining on the side of the road six, seven deep. You hear about Tour of Colorado coming back. He made the Leadville 100 a race that people didn’t even know about. Before him, yeah, it was a mythical race, it was great; there were other big races like Iceman Cometh that are maybe even a level above that race in terms of history and quality of fields, but he decided to do the race and now there’s a movie in theaters about the Leadville 100. It’s on CNN! That’s what the comeback means to the sport.
Armstrong and Danielson during the Disco days. Photo: Tom Danielson
Also, like with Livestrong, he’s a businessman, Lance. He knows how to make things thrive, and clearly you have to look at the cancer approach as a business: curing this disease and improving the lives of people affected by it. What better way to market your own company with the biggest race in the world and one of the most famous athletes ever? You can just see he’s getting cancer awareness, cancer-funding awareness, just exploding that scene like no other. You can see it with Livestrong and the Ride for the Roses. You can see how big that is—how many politicians he can communicate with. And he’s got phone numbers to folks in Hollywood and inside government—he knows everybody. He can meet with different presidents.
So I think that the comeback can’t be just viewed on a simple level like, Oh, he’s a great bike rider and Look, he’s getting results. You have to look at what’s going on with cancer, with research and funding, and what’s going on with exploding the sport of cycling. I think it’s pretty amazing.
DM: If next year’s Tour comes down to Armstrong and Contador, who will win?
TD: It could be either one of them! It’s another year, right? I’d say if you were to look at this year it’d be clear that Contador would win. But we’ll see how everybody’s going next year. You never know. I mean, Lance broke his collarbone, I broke my shoulder. Contador really hasn’t had many injuries or set-backs other than his big one four or five years ago. Cycling is a risky, difficult sport, and a lot of things have to go right. Both of those guys have to have those things go right on top of being the best guys in the world to make it happen.
DM: You’re 31. How long do you see yourself racing?
TD: I started at about 26, when I turned pro, so this was my fifth year as a professional. I’d like to go till I’m 40 or something. I feel like I’m relatively young. In the sense that I didn’t start training hard or racing hard till my mid-20s, so to go 15 years is fair. A lot of guys have 15-year careers. I think that’s fair. And we’ll see how I am when I’m 40. The great thing is that the sport is a lot cleaner, a lot safer, and that makes it so that guys who are 38, 39 can perform really well. You know I have to say one of my mentors, Ned Overend, he’s 55 this year, and he goes just as fast as any 20-year-old guy uphill—or faster—that I know.
DM: He’s still kicking butt.
TD: Yeah, so I look at that and say, I’d like to do that. We’ll see. It’s a great sport, and it’s a great lifestyle. It’s hard. But I also have to look at the last couple of years. I had a couple of years where I didn’t do very much racing. I had two years that I didn’t even do a Grand Tour. Physically, those are like two years off, so I think I’ve got a lot left in me. We’ll see what I can do. But the goal for me is eight or nine more years.
DM: Thanks, Tom. Great talking to you. Best of luck—and see you next year.
TD: Thank you. I appreciate it.
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