Cycling aficionados call it the Lance Effect: Lance Armstrong‘s unprecedented seven-win tear through the Tour de France sparked a surge of interest in bicycle racing in the U.S. — and a corresponding jump in high-end road bike purchases. Armstrong’s influence is credited with upping the popularity of bike commuting as an alternative to driving.
But the Lance Effect began to slacken after his retirement. American TV ratings for the first post-Armstrong Tour de France, for example, plummeted nearly 50 percent. Now Armstrong is coming out of retirement, with plans to race — and win — the 2009 Tour de France.
If the Lance Effect returns to full strength, will it draw more people to biking to work, instead of driving their CO2-spewing cars? And in that case, is Armstrong’s return to cycling good for the environment?
Alas, the Lance Effect probably won’t do much to blunt the greenhouse effect. Cycling industry insiders say there is no evidence that Armstrong has had a significant impact on the number of bike commuters. While Armstrong’s example has made cycling more popular, it hasn’t drawn many more people into the saddle so much as it has shuffled existing patterns in bike retail. The last few years have seen a sizable shift from mountain bikes to road bikes, with little change in the overall number of bikes sold per year (about three million).
One area where the Lance Effect definitely has taken hold: participation in charity rides to benefit the fighting of diseases — for example, the rides to benefit the National Multiple Sclerosis Society — has grown dramatically since Armstrong first took to the Tour.
High gas prices are probably doing more to shift drivers into bicycle commuting than Lance Armstrong is. But Lance is doing his part in Austin, Tex., where he recently opened a bike shop of his own that caters especially to commuters.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
I’m a regular bike commuter, and it seems pretty clear to me that me and other bike commuters are NOT following in Lance’s illustrious footsteps – or perhaps, treadmarks. The only thing that bike racing and bike errandry have in common is a two-wheeled vehicle. The bikes aren’t remotely the same, the riding style isn’t the same, the equipment needed isn’t the same. I can see the corresponding jump in high-end road bikes, but the next sentence is a non-sequitur.
Correlation, in this case, really isn’t causation. About the same time as Lance got popular and bike commuting got more popular, something else happened you might recall: gas got really expensive.
I think that the publicity of bike races does much more to encourage cycling as a hobby than as a form of commuting transportation, unfortunately. And here’s something on the bike commuters who don’t get so much attention: http://www.rooflines.org/1079/journey_to_work_what_about_bikes/
Lance doesn’t matter much to bike commuters. TV ratings of bike racing don’t have much to do with bike commuting.
It’s the same situation with auto racing — there’s very little connection between the Indy 500 and driving to the office.
Lance Armstrong winning all these Tour de France got American people to start biking more than using their cars. This is causing pollution to decerease. Since people have now been stopping the use of bicicles because of Lance Armostrong’s retirement, the pollution is something the Americans should pay attention at. There should be an externality tax charged in order for people to decrease the use of cars. As in any other economic situation, there are some winners and losers from the situation. The biking industry is going to get more money because more people will be biking, as well as public transportation, but the car company is going to do badly because less people will be buying cars.
While I agree with the idea that cycling is good in general for the environment, a nation full of elite athletes might not necessarily be good for the environment. Think of the additional food that they might eat. It reminds me of this blog that I read a while ago about how Michael Phelps was killing the environment.
http://www.intenttodistribute.com/2008/09/michael-phelps-is-killing-environment.html
The Tour de France link seems a little tenuous when you look at the swelling ranks of young bike commuters, who ride vintage fixed gears in tight jeans rather than carbon frames in spandex.
Why would one man’s (admittedly slightly dubious) success in competitive cycling result in people adopting bikes as a regular mode of transport? My commute from home to work is nice, but ain’t no French countryside. Besides, wearing a bright yellow or green jersey to work is just plain tacky.
How come people aren’t surprised that the Usain Effect hasn’t gripped American commuters?
One thing, though – I hope the Usain Effect does happen. People might begin to prefer spending national holidays sprinting across the vast American outdoors instead of biking, thereby reducing the ridiculous number of SUVs packed to the brim with bikes and biking paraphernalia crowing our freeways.
Why? Something called ‘drag coefficient’, which pertains directly to fuel consumption.
Here we go again.
Club cyclist here, for fifteen years or so. We saw plenty of newly minted cyclists as a result of the Lance effect. Most of them were astride Treks and wearing Disco jerseys. Bike racing is the least green sport ever. Racers drive miles to the starts. I’ve been on the crew of races from the Tour de Georgia to the San Francisco Grand Prix. Every one has a car sponsor.
Bike racers and charity riders are like downhill skiers. Do you know anyone who uses downhill skis to get to work? They bust out their skis, go somewhere to ski, then go home, all by car. Same deal with racers and charity riders.
The late geat Sheldon Brown said it best. Cycle commuting is the highest possible form of use of the bicycle.