The sad case of Chad Gerlach...........

[scmarine84]

.....I'm watching Intervention. A friend tipped me that the subject was some guy who once raced with Lance Armstrong on the same team. From time to time I hear about or run into people who "raced with Lance Armstrong" and it depends on what they mean by the term "with". If they mean they were once in the same peloton, racing in the same race, that's one thing. That's the extent of my relationship with Lance Armstrong, although we did communicate from time to time before he turned pro.

So I was a little skeptical about this guy's story......until I saw him. Although they don't use his last name, his name is Chad Gerlach, and he raced WITH Lance Armstrong on the Postal team..........for a few minutes, almost literally.

He was an extremely talented bike racer; Lance was a once in a lifetime and Chad couldn't, or didn't recognize the difference. He was considered talented enough to be put on the U.S. Postal's domestic squad and was invited to the OTC to compete for a spot on the 2000 Olympics team, and what he did was the stuff of legend in the racing world.

Basically, I guess as a way of showing he wasn't intimidated by Lance, he decided that the best way to do that was mess with him. He poked Lance in the stomach and called him "fatty" (some people say he said "doughboy").

This was post-cancer Lance, so he didn't chase him around the parking lot with a tire pump like he did to Jonathan Vaughters, but you still don't fuck with the guy. Chad was sent home that day. He continued to race for Postal for the length of his contract, but didn't get a sniff of any major races.

I don't want to make it sound that Chad Gerlach was blackballed because of one incident; he was considered an extremely selfish rider, which is one of the worse curses one can utter about a racer. People don't realize how much of a team sport cycling is, and having someone not be a team player is as unacceptable as it would be on a football team. Especially one who harbored the illusion that he was just as good as Lance.

But it was tragic to watch, and it definitely struck a chord with me. Essentially, Chad was destroyed by losing cycling, and within a couple of years was addicted to crack. Someone asked me how a world-class cyclist could become addicted to drugs, but cyclists are addictive personalities, we're just addicted to riding a bike. Although there's pretty good evidence to suggest that bike racing, not bike riding but racing, is pretty damaging to your health. Look at the number of pro cyclists like Jacques Anquetil who died at 50.

As much of an arrogant asshole as Chad Gerlach may have been, I hated seeing that happen to him.