In the 11th hour, two “senior” athletes falter
| July 20, 2009 | 4:29 PM
More journal entries from Hank Schultz »
It was a hard weekend for the older sports set. Two standard bearers for plus-age athletes, Tom Watson and Lance Armstrong, fell short on Sunday.
Watson was a gasp away from becoming the oldest golfer — at age 59 — to win the British Open. At a time of life when his peers are packing their bags with ointment and pain relievers for yet another stop on the senior circuit, Watson went toe-to-toe with golfers 20 and 30 years younger and bested them all. But when he reached that penultimate putt on the 18th green, the pressure finally caught up to him, and he pushed a very makeable putt wide right. Watching him in the playoff with winner Stewart Cink was excruciating as Watson hit one errant shot after another.
Cink was a deserving victor, but there wasn’t a fan in the house who wasn’t pulling for Watson on some level. He has conducted himself with such grace over the years that almost no one has anything bad to say about him.
The same can’t be said for Lance Armstrong. His take-no-prisoners approach to dominating the Tour de France over the years left a lot of fans and fellow bike racers conflicted about whether to root for him in his comeback this year. He made a credible start to the Tour with a strong, but not overwhelming, performance in an individual time trial on the opening stage. He has ridden well in every stage since, showing that, at age 37, he is still among the best.
And he engaged in a contest of wills with 26-year-old teammate Alberto Contador, a former Tour winner himself, over who would be the leader of their Astana team. It has been more than a decade since Armstrong has ridden as a support rider in the Tour, and it’s a role he seemed unwilling to accept quietly. His stated goal at the outset of his comeback was to win the Tour. Since conquering cancer, winning this race has seemed to provide the principal motivation in his life.
On Sunday, on a hard mountaintop finish in Switzerland, Contador put the leadership question to rest in the final kilometers when he rocketed off the front of the pack as if shot from a cannon. In years past it was a move Armstrong would have made. Instead, the Texan was forced to ride conservatively and watch as his teammate and a number of other rivals disappeared up the hill.
The British commentators on cable TV, always favorable to Armstrong, put the best face on his performance. But in any other year, his ninth-place finish on Sunday’s stage would have been viewed as a disaster.
Armstrong still holds second place in the overall classification. Considering his age — 3 years older than the oldest Tour winner — he has performed magnificently. But barring bad luck or injury, Contador is the clear favorite to win. It’s possible, though unlikely, that Armstrong can finish strongly enough when racing resumes Tuesday to capture the second or third spot on the podium.
So on Sunday two very different athletes strove to turn back the clock. Both almost succeeded, only to falter at the stroke of midnight.
british open, lance armstrong, tom watson, tour de france
