We Might As Well Win by Johan Bruyneel

Author:Johan Bruyneel [Bruyneel, Johan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

II. WHAT I LEARNED FROM LOSING

10. "Lucky to Stare So Boldly at Loss"

I had to not only accept the idea of losing, but find ways to appreciate it—so I could learn from it as much as I had from my victories.

I WASN'T SHOCKED in April 2005 when Lance announced to the world that the upcoming Tour de France would be his last, win or lose. I hadn't even been surprised earlier that year when, in private, he told me that he was planning to retire after July.

I was stunned, quite honestly, that he'd decided to race at all that year.

It had become our tradition, beginning in 1999, the first season Lance and I won the Tour de France, to sit down within a few weeks after the end of the race and start planning for the next one. We never waited for the winter—the off-season—to discuss what we thought our weakness had been, how we could improve on it, what new thing we should try out. There was a very real practicality to what we were doing; it was a way to make sure we stayed ahead of the competition. But it was also a deliberately symbolic gesture, an important ritual we each appreciated: it reminded us that one of the foundations of our success was that we were simply willing to outwork all our rivals—to start sooner, work harder, focus more intensely, and devote ourselves fully to victory.

When he and I sat down in 2004, we hadn't yet even reached the point where we were ready to discuss strategy, or training, or teammates or rivals or rumors about the course of the 2005 Tour (which wasn't released yet). No—we were trying to decide if there would be a 2005 Tour for Lance.

For years, both of us had operated on the assumption, without making a big deal out of it in public, that seven Tour victories was the magic number. In fact, way back in 2003, before Lance had won even his fifth Tour, we were sitting together in his hotel room at the Tour of Murcia. It was only his first or second race of that season, and we were reviewing how we wanted the year to unfold. I glanced over at the screensaver on his laptop computer, and the word "Courage," in bright yellow, caught my eye.

But I looked again; something wasn't quite right. The word was spelled COU2AGE.

I really looked at the screen now. There were seven words on it, in a column, all in yellow:

HOPE

COU2AGE

PERS3VERANCE

WIS4OM

INTE5RITY

DE6TINY

MAG7C

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