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Papillon: The Joe Papp Diary 2005
Joe Papp is a UCI Elite rider with the UPMC cycling team. He was a double stage winner at the 2003 Vuelta a Cuba (UCI 2.5) and has finished in the top-10 three times at the UCI Pan American Continental Championships (2005, 2004, 1996). Joe's writing is good enough to make boring races intriguing and intriguing races captivating.
A Cuban Odyssey
Part 4 - Make pain your constant companion.
While staying positive during an unpleasant experience in hopes of salvaging something (or surviving intact) is a commonly-preached life skill, it's especially appropriate for the stage-racing cyclist and bears repeating. It would take my hitting rock bottom while still being able to pedal my bike (this happened at the finish of stage three in Bayamo) for me to realize that no matter how bad I thought I had it, I could suffer a lot less than I might have deserved to if I just got on with making the best of it.
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For example, short of actually crashing and seriously injuring myself again, breaking both of my bicycles and not being able to find a spare or becoming sick with Dengue fever, I would never have it as bad as the riders on the Cuban provincial teams. Cycling in Cuba is structured according to the old Soviet sports model, with provincial or regional cycling academies developing talent at the local level before sending the best athletes to the capital to train as part of the national team. In theory it's a great program, especially if the financial and material resources exist to fund all of the developmental programs and support the athletes. On the ground in Cuba in 2005, however, it's a resource-starved program that still identifies and develops the best athletes, but often can't support them beyond providing coaching, a lumpy mattress pad to sleep on in Havana and gruel three times a day. And that's for the elite national team riders.
The provincial athletes, who this year rode for teams from Ciudad Habana, La Habana, Guantánamo, Cienfuegos, Sancti Spiritus, Pinar Del Rio, Ciego De Avila and Matanzas survive on whatever support their respective coaches and local sports ministry types can secure, be it a spare tire donated by a foreign rider, food and lodging obtained through the local motel deportivo (a series of sports hotels operated by INDER, the National Institute of Sport and Recreation, that are supposed to host Cuban athletes from whatever sport that happens to be competing in the town in question), or bars of guayaba paste bought for pennies from roadside vendors and eaten in place of carbohydrate gels or energy bars.
The UCI's Pan American Confederation secured donated team kits for all of the Cuban riders for the past two tours, though this year it seems only five teams received new clothing (mainly the Cuban "A" and "B" national teams). The provincial guys are definitely riding solely for the love of sport, and unlike the national team riders, most of them don't draw any salary as athletes from the government. Some of them do (mainly the ones who did stints on the national team or have other international results to speak of), but even then we're talking in the range of the equivalent of three or four per month (in almost worthless Cuban pesos).
The relationships between many of the Cuban cyclists are inevitably complex and incredibly hierarchical. No matter what ambition a provincial team rider might have, he almost always must suppress his individual goals for the greater good of Cuba winning the Vuelta. Since the national teams are drawn from riders of all the provinces, you can imagine what happens if Cuba "A" is trying to chase down a break and is in need of help. Even though there might be one or two local guys up the road, "Rider 2" from Cuba "A" goes looking in the field for the other cyclists from his province and puts them to work at the front until the break is brought back or the chasers are used up. I've finally improved my language skills to the point that I copy most of the dialog that passes through the peloton, and while it's at times incredibly funny to listen to the banter between the Cubans, when one of them is targeted by his national team compatriots for having failed to aid the cause or conspired with a foreign rider to further personal aims; well...watch out.
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It's tradition that the members of Cuba "A" always stay in the same hotels and eat the same food during the Vuelta as us foreigners, while the provincial guys are on their own to find enough calories to refuel their bodies for the next day's stage. If the "A" team guys are still so materially depraved that they ask the foreign teams for an extra energy gel or a spare tube, imagine the grimness of the provincial rider's reality. One of the few indisputable negatives of the Vuelta is the simple fact that because there is such a profound lack of support for cycling in general in Cuba, the level of competition is not as high as it might otherwise be. That's not to say that the Vuelta is not a challenging race, for that it most certainly is. Rather, there is a wide discrepancy in talent and there are usually two races happening simultaneously - the race between the foreigners and the national team riders, and then the competition between the provincial teams.
I remember ex-Kelme rider Jordi Riera consulting his imaginary libro del ciclismo several times last year as he sought to understand the tactics applied by riders from Matanzas and Cienfuegos who might otherwise have advanced their own positions if only they been able to break free from the yoke of their unspoken responsibility to la patria. I think it must be impossible for a non-Cuban to comprehend, though the intimacy with which I have come to experience cycling in Cuba has given me a broader perspective on what's happening.
I can't imagine that socio-political, economic and cultural concerns affect the outcomes of bike races anywhere else in the world like they do in Cuba, and the results can be...surreal. I've digressed a bit, but before I work back to the racing, I'd like to acknowledge one of those provincial riders - Serguei Viamontes from Cienfuegos. He's a class act and an example of what it means to focus on the positive and keep fighting the good fight. He's as competitive as Lance, but always a gentleman...always willing to let you into the echelon provided you're willing to work; not likely to close the door on you if you're beating him fair and square in a sprint; yet always willing to bump elbows and have a go at the prize. There is a lot of turnover at the provincial level because it's so hard for the riders to equip and maintain themselves, but Serguei has been around for as long as I've been racing in Cuba and I hope the Vuelta is graced by his presence next year.
Next Entry - We finally make it on the road - and much more pain...
Email Joe at joe@cyclingnews.com
