It is almost two years since the American Floyd Landis soared clear of the
pack to win the 17th stage of the Tour de France. And it is almost two years
since I first set eyes on Allen Lim. We were both in Morzine that afternoon
and watched the final kilometres of Floyd’s epic ride from the same vantage
point – a large, flat screen on one of the outside broadcast units
positioned just behind the finishing line.
“Who’s that guy?” I inquired. “Which one?” “The small Asian guy.” “Oh, that’s
Allen Lim.” “Allen Lim?” “Yeah, Floyd’s coach.” He was wearing headphones
and being interviewed, but the thing that struck me most was how happy he
looked. The guy was absolutely thrilled. Me? I wasn’t happy. For me,
Landis’s performance was just too good to be true. I remember looking at the
proud American as he stood on the podium and thinking: “This is a doper.”
And I remember frowning at his beaming coach: “And this is his sorcerer.”
So it was somewhat of a surprise to discover that Lim was a key member of
Jonathan Vaughters’s staff at Garmin-Chipotle, the cleanest and most ethical
team in the Tour de France. Had “JV” lost the plot? Can a leopard change its
spots? ALLEN LIM is showing me how he makes his magic potion; it is 6:40 on
a Wednesday morning in room 243 of a Novotel in a suburb of Nantes and his
fifth working day on the Tour begins with a rice cooker, a frying pan and a
small electric hot plate. “What you eat on the bike is fundamental,” he
explains, removing rice and eggs and some packets of prosciutto ham from a
specially designed case. “In China, they call this ‘chong’.”
For 92 minutes I watch, enthralled, as he applies himself with the precision
and devotion of a gourmet chef . . . Pouring the water (1.75 litres) into
the cooker and measuring the Calrose rice (1.5 kilos) . . . Frying the
prosciutto (20 slices) until crisp and slicing into tiny pieces . . .
Lightly scrambling the eggs (12) before mixing them into the prosciutto and
rice . . . Dashing the mix with soy sauce and balsamic vinegar . . . Pouring
the mix into silicone trays to set and sprinkling with salt and sugar . . .
Dividing the mix equally into 64 squares (seven per rider) . . . Wrapping
the squares neatly in slips of paper foil.
“Do you think you would find that appe-tising in a race?” he demands, offering
me a square. “Yes,” I reply, “it’s delicious.”
Lim, 35, is no ordinary Gordon Ramsay. First out of bed each morning and last
to hit the pillow each night, he’s a human dynamo, the heartbeat of
Vaughters’s team and the brains behind most of their cutting-edge
technology. Every night he spends hours poring over the data from the
riders’ on-board computers. He’s found the “space boots” (a massage
simulator) to ease sore legs; the “cooling hats” (an air-condi-tioned cap)
to help them sleep in sweaty hotels; and the latest, a hand-cleanser, a
policy recently introduced on the team bus.
“The culture that Jonathan has created here has always been one of, ‘If you’ve
got an idea, speak up’,” Lim smiles. “The cleanser was Shannon Sovndal’s [a
team medic] idea. His notion was that if we did something as simple as
squirt-in [with a hand cleanser] when you come on to the bus, and squirt-out
when you leave, we would eliminate some of the risk of getting sick in the
middle of the race.”
Lim has been blessed with a truly brilliant mind. He’s an encyclopaedia of
physiology, a wizard with technology and a superb amateur psychologist.
Chinese proverbs are (naturally) a speciality and during our 90-minute
cookathon I was bombarded with favourite wisdoms and witticisms from
everything from Waiting for Godot to The Art of War to Full Metal Jacket.
This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my
best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
Without it my life is useless . . .
However, there is one subject that, two years later, still leaves him
curiously tongue-tied: “What happened at Morzine, Allen? Tell me about
Floyd.”
THE FIFTH stage of the Tour - a mostly flat 240km to Chateauroux - has just
started; we’re sitting on the team bus travelling towards the finish and Lim
is retracing the path of his journey through cycling. The younger of two
boys born to Chinese immigrants, it began at the Los Angeles Olympics in
1984 when he watched, enchanted, as the road race passed near his home in
the northern suburbs.
He bought an old Schwinn varsity bicycle, joined the Montrose cycling club and
four years later finished fifth to George Hin-capie at the junior national
championships - four places ahead of a skinny kid from Denver called
Jonathan Vaughters. Hinca-pie and Vaughters would go on and make their names
as top-class professionals (Hin-capie is riding his 13th Tour) but for Lim
it was the end of the road.
“As much as I loved cycling then, and still love cycling now, it wasn’t in my
head that I could be a professional,” he says. “I was interested in other
things like science and culture. I loved going to class; I loved learning
history; I was your classic, very shy nerd growing up in school.”
After completing a degree in physical education at the University of
California at Davis, where he coached the cycling team to its first
collegiate national championships, he was hired as a resident coach with the
US cycling team in Colorado and started a masters in physiology.
It was at the University of Colorado that he encountered Professor Bill Burns,
a kindred spirit he describes as his mentor. In 1997 they travelled to Asia
to study the physiology of load-carrying in Nepal. “I had this very specific
interest in human performance, and so I went off to Nepal with Bill,” he
says. “I mean, if you think the Tour de France is hard, you’ve got guys in
Eastern Nepal who [weigh] maybe 50 to 55 kilos who are carrying 75 to 100
kilo loads for three to six hours a day for maybe two weeks at a time. The
terrain is so hostile that you can’t get goods across by any other means
except a helicopter or human porting; it’s one of the last cultures of the
world that exists in load-carrying.”
“And what did you learn?” I ask. “What surprised you?”
“It surprised me that their physiology was not unique; they weren’t healthier
or better or more unique than the average American or any other guy out
there but physically they could do things that we would consider to be
unbelievable. What I learned out of that experience was that it wasn’t
physiology; it was a lot about your mind and mindset. You just have to want
to do it, or have to need to do it in their case.”
In 1998, he started a women’s professional cycling team and was offered
financial support from the sponsor - Celestial Seasonings - to begin a PhD.
“Much of my work was done using cycling as a model for human performance,”
he says, “and looked at fundamental questions in sport such as: How do we
quantify what training load is? How do we quantify performance, especially
in a sport like cycling where there are tactics and environment and so much
that can play into the outcome?
“So my whole bent was on really trying to explore those notions, not just for
athletes but from a clinical perspective as well.”
“What about doping?” I ask. “Given your knowledge of physiology, I would
imagine you were interested in the effects of doping in sport?”
“Not at all,” he says. “I grew up in a traditional [Chinese] family and from a
cultural perspective, the notion of medicine to try to treat all ills wasn’t
something that sat very well with me. Even in the work I did on the clinical
side, with the cardiac and the cancer rehabilitation, the emphasis was
always on physical activity.
“It wasn’t about what we could take to treat disease; it was about what you
could do to change your habits, so the notion [of doping] to me was really
grotesque, as grotesque as the meds are for using the pharmaceutical
industry.”
Lim’s PhD in integrative physiology took six years to complete and by the end
the new doctor was ready for a break. In 2005, he accepted an offer from
Vaughters to join his exciting new development team. He was also working as
a consultant for Powertap, the designers of the new power meters being
coveted by the elite.
“It was Powertap who introduced me to Floyd,” he says. “He had left the US
Postal Service team [for Phonak] and was looking for someone to help him
with all the power analysis. It was a very interesting year for me because
he committed to riding the power meter for the whole of the 2005 Tour and I
came along to analyse the data.”
After a ninth-place finish in 2005, Landis returned a year later as one of the
favourites for the Tour with his favourite analyst in tow. On the 15th stage
to L’Alpe d’Huez, Landis seized control of the race and its prized yellow
jersey but cracked a day later, losing 10 minutes on the mountain-top finish
at La Toussuire.
“I was at the hotel, waiting for him to finish,” Lim says, “and the power
profile that day was, like, good, good, good and then no more fuel. He had
bonked [forgotten to eat], it was that simple.”
Lim spent a lot of time tossing and turning that night and returned to
Landis’s hotel before breakfast the following morning with a plan he called
“thermal regulation”. “I went to his room and said, ‘Hey, look, if you were
riding by yourself and it was 65 degrees Fahrenheit and the rest of the pack
was chasing you in 110 degrees weather, what would you think your chances
were?’ And framed from that perspective he thought his chances were pretty
good. We asked the soigneurs [masseurs] to fill up all these extra ice-cold
water bottles in the car and hatched this plan that he would go off the
front and keep himself cool by throwing all these water bottles on.”
A few hours later, Landis broke clear of the favourites on the Col des Saisies
and didn’t look back until he had reached Morzine. It was one of the
greatest performances the race had ever seen, but the celebrations were
short-lived.
“Where were you when you heard about the positive test?” I ask.
“I was back home in Boulder.” “How did you hear of it?” “Just like everyone
else.” “A news report?” “Yeah.” “What did you think?” “I was totally
floored: I was like, ‘Wow! Are you kidding me?’”
(Long pause.) “Go on,” I urge, “keep going. You say you were floored.” “Yeah,
I was very surprised.”
“Is that all?” “Yeah, I mean I felt . . . eh . . . I was just very surprised,
because it was totally unexpected. It would be the last thing I could ever
dream of.”
“That’s interesting,” I observe, “because it’s the first thing I would ever
dream. Are you just incredibly naïve or am I just incredibly cyni-cal?”
“Maybe a little bit of both,” he smiles. “I don’t think I’m naïve, I just like
to believe in the best of people and stay focused on the positive and do the
best that I can. There is so much that we cannot control.”
“And that was something you couldn’t control?”
“Emm, it was something that really inspired us to do what we are doing with
this team, with our antidoping programme, with all of the testing, with
having no doubt about what happens. So in a sense I came out of it with a
good lesson and a very positive experience.”
“Okay, fair point,” I acknowledge, “but stay with Floyd. I was in Morzine that
afternoon and I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought: ‘Landis is doping.’ And
I looked at you and thought: ‘And this is the guy who is giving him the
drugs.’”
“Oh shit!” he gasps. “No way.” “I thought, ‘This is the latest crooked doctor
on the block and what the sport needs now is to run these guys out.’”
“Shit,” he says. “And I wasn’t the only one thinking that.”
“Yeah.” “How does that make you feel?” “That’s a bummer,” he says. “I guess
they should all come and watch me make rice cakes in the morning.”
“You didn’t feel disappointed or betrayed?”
“No, because I didn’t know what was true or not true. I would have to make a
lot of assumptions to feel betrayed.”
“No, you don’t have to make any assumptions,” I argue. “He used drugs. He
tested positive. It’s in the urine.”
“You know, the bottom line for me is that I love cycling and I’m very easy to
believe in people, and see the best in people, not ignoring the truth or
ignoring the facts. I mean, that’s the whole basis of what we started here
with this programme.”
“Stay with Floyd, please,” I urge, “and the effect it had on you. You’re not
giving it to me.”
“I guess I don’t feel that.” “What did you feel? What was it? Anger? Sadness?
Disappointment?”
“I felt badly for Floyd and . . . I would be really selfish or self-centred to
make it about me - it wasn’t happening to me. Yeah, I had this experience
but it wasn’t about me; and for me to think, ‘Oh, I feel sad or betrayed or
upset’ would have been self-centred. I didn’t leave the 2006 Tour de France
hatching some business plan to open up some coaching service or whatnot.
“I came home that summer and called my mom up and she was like, ‘How’d your
friend do in that bike race in France?’ You know, and I was like, [laughs]
‘Oh, he did pretty well’. I was just happy to be home. So if anything I was
bummed just like everyone else was bummed.”
“Your body language tells me you were hurt,” I suggest.
“It’s a sense of hurt that people would think poorly of you,” he concedes.
“What about Floyd? When was the first time you met him after the positive
test?”
“Jeez . . . it was probably four or five months later at a fundraiser.”
“Did he say anything?” “No, he just kept on ranting about the testing.”
We’ve reached the finish and it’s time for him to prepare the postrace snacks.
He takes some tomatoes and mozzarella and fruit (kiwis) from the fridge and
lectures me on the wonders of balsamic vinegar. He’s in full flow again and
won’t stop until midnight. He’s a rare one, no doubt.
Floyd Landis rode 125 kilometres in an incredible breakaway on the 17th stage
to Morzine in the 2006 Tour, where Allen Lim was his coach and mentor. The
American was later found to have doped and was disqualified from the race
