Cyclismas: Your cycling roots go back to the 1980s. I guess you must have known then of guys like Wayne Stetina and John Vande Velde. Two, three decades on and you’re telling the story of the team that Peter Stetina and Christian Vande Velde ride with. Is that cool, or does it just make you feel old?

Mark Johnson: It’s cool, and when I’m around the younger guys like Dan Martin and Peter Stetina their enthusiasm makes me feel younger than my 47 years!

Cyclismas: Jonathan Vaughters opened his introduction to Argyle Armada with a quote from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. It’s a much abused and rather clichéd quote at this stage – ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’ – but, for once, used aptly. Let’s take both sides of the picture, the worst first. Garmin started the 2011 season with the dismissal of Matt White, ended it with the folding of the women’s team. There were all sorts of other issues during the year, from the way the team dropped riders so they couldn’t take points to rival teams, through the tension with Thor Hushovd and the team’s role in the race radios brouhaha. Fair to say it was the year the team grew up, lost a lot of its innocence?

Mark Johnson: I also cringed when I saw that quote, but it’s what JV chose and in the end it fits the year and his intro.

I believe that what the team lost, and Vaughters told me this more than once, was the ability to position themselves and ride as just the ‘100% clean team.’ For the sake of their fans and their sponsors, they had to move beyond a marketing slogan (one they backed up with substance, nonetheless) and start delivering wins.

So yes, in the sense that they had to move beyond the peach-fuzzy gloss of youthful enthusiasm and promises and start delivering substantial wins, they did lose some innocence. Beyond that, they still maintain a degree of the fifteen-year-old’s goofiness that other teams don’t have.

Cyclismas: The good times. If you’re only going to win one Classic in a year, you might as well let it be the Queen of the Classics, Paris-Roubaix. You were in the little vélodrome in Roubaix when Johan Vansummeren broke away at the Carrefour de l’Arbe, fifteen kilometres out. You watched on the big screen as Leopard’s Fabian Cancellara began his chase, Thor Hushovd unable to hold his wheel. You knew what Vansummeren was capable of, you knew what Cancellara was capable of. For you, personally, as someone who has been a freelance writer and photographer with the team since 2007, what was watching those final few miles like?

Mark Johnson: Even though it seems like I saw more of this team in 2011 than my own wife and family I tried to maintain journalistic objectivity and distance with the team. The moment Vansummeren rode into that vélodrome was one of the moments those efforts collapsed.

Johan Vansummeren enters the vélodrome in Roubaix as he solos to victory in the Queen of the Classics. (Photo courtesy of Mark Johnson)

That moment reminded me of two other sporting moments that will forever resonate with me: the day the US Olympic team beat the USSR in ice hockey in 1980 and the afternoon Greg LeMond won the Tour in that dramatic TT win over Laurent Fignon in 1989. All three were simply electrifying, and that’s saying something for a person who is not really that big on sitting around on a Saturday afternoon watching sports on TV.

The Roubaix win was emotional especially because Vansummeren is as humble as he is tall. He is such a deserving winner, and the fact that the Belgian water carrier from Lommel did it at a race that, while technically in France, feels as much a Belgian classic as Flanders the Sunday previous, made it all that more poignant to see him win.

The fact that Thor Hushovd sacrificed his own Roubaix victory desires to make it happen made it even more touching, and that really came through as I observed Thor’s face display a chiaroscuro mix of melancholy and joy in the team bus after the race.

Also, the day was such a joyous contrast to the clinical, all-for-Lance disciplinary methodology Armstrong employed to win races. That Roubaix day put an alternative spin on the way American teams have traditionally won at the highest level of cycling.

Cyclismas: The team had two pretty successful Grand Tours, in France and Spain, but the mood between the two – certainly as you paint it in Argyle Armada – was markedly different. The Tour was like one long, extended party, the Vuelta like a rite of passage. Did that surprise you, or are you used to that in the Vuelta?

Mark Johnson: It didn’t surprise me, but it was certainly a striking contrast and I’m glad it came through in the narrative. Those boys were really suffering at the Vuelta.

While the flush of victory carried them through the pain – and disguised it to a degree – at the Tour, the sheer, gruelling brutality of a three week stage race was so much closer to the surface at the Vuelta. At the breakfast table, dutifully spooning oatmeal past their teeth, they truly had the faces of slaves of the road.

Cyclismas: Park the big moments a moment, Paris-Roubaix, leader’s jerseys in all three Grand Tours, stage wins and the like. Let’s look at the little moments instead, those moments of magic that really enhance our love of cycling. Biggest little moment of the year for you?

Mark Johnson: One of the biggest was also one of the quietest: watching Christophe Le Mével push that boy over a hill in the Belgian Ardennes during their LBL recon ride was profoundly touching to me. I mean, Christophe didn’t need to do that, but he took the time and there is no telling how that moment might affect the trajectory of that kid’s life. As Paul Kimmage told me, they just seemed like decent people.

Also, seeing how much not winning Colorado and the Canadian races affected Ryder Hesjedal and Christian Vande Velde endeared me a bit more to the sport. The root of their disappointment was of course personal – anyone at that level of racing must be fuelled by a selfish desire to win. But I was really struck by their expressions of how their disappointment stems from their failure to deliver a legacy to the young kids watching them. In other words, the source of their disappointment at not winning was also extrinsic – focused on others – as much as it was rooted in ego. I guess I didn’t expect to find what were basically selfless impulses fuelling their sense of failure.

Another moment that comes to mind was sitting down with Thor in Pinerolo, Italy, after stage seventeen of the Tour. Hushovd is generally a pretty reserved guy; he’s nice, but he just doesn’t say much and keeps to himself. On this day, he really opened up about his frustration with the riders’ lack of consequence and leverage in the organization of their sport. They may be the stars on the road and in the eyes of the public; but when it comes to affecting the design of their profession, they aren’t even water carriers, and that dichotomy seemed to really bother Thor.

It was all the more moving because at that moment, Hushovd was poised at the acme of his profession – three more Tour stage wins, seven more yellow jerseys, the rainbow stripes – yet, when the subject turned to the business of cycling, his mood was one of dejection and frustration, not celebration.

It’s funny because, earlier that day, someone introduced me to Thor (not realizing that I had been haunting him since January) and Hushovd responded, ‘Oh, I know Mark, he’s like family.’ I guess I had developed familiarity with some of the riders to a degree I didn’t realize. I certainly did not try to fraternize with them throughout the year; I just watched and observed and gave them their space when I sensed it was time for me to do so. I can only hope my book treated them fairly and honestly.

Thor Hushovd at the Garmin-Cervélo team presentation, Girona, January 2011. (Photo courtesy Mark Johnson)

Cyclismas: Peloton politics pepper the story you tell in Argyle Armada, the big issues such as race radios, the UCI’s role in our sport, financial concerns, the lack of a riders’ union etc. Having spoken to Garmin’s riders, and others within the peloton, how would you describe the cohesiveness of the riders themselves when it comes to having a voice on these key issues?

Mark Johnson: The riders generally express the same concerns you summarize in your question, and they also all cited the same general reasons why they are not organized (language, judicial jurisdictions, socio-economic variations).

But until someone like a Marvin Miller arrives with the focus, energy, experience, and talent to organize them and skilfully negotiate with the existing power holders, I don’t see anything changing. A rider can’t do it. It’s too much to be both a professional labour organizer and a professional athlete at the same time.

Cyclismas: Everybody admits that cycling is tied to tradition. But it’s never been a sport stuck with just one way of doing things, it’s constantly evolving. Ten years ago the Tours of Oman and Qatar were hardly even dreamt of. Twenty years ago French was still the lingua franca of the peloton. Thirty years ago women were only slowly becoming a part of team personnel. Forty years ago the UCI had virtually no power. Fifty years ago anti-doping rules were in their infancy. Cycling never stands still. The changing attitude to doping aside, what’s the most important change you’ve witnessed since first coming to the sport?

Mark Johnson: The emergence of English as the lingua franca of the peloton. Notwithstanding the fact that the photographers’ briefing meetings at the ASO events are still in French (and why not, it’s a French organizer, and most of the photogs speak French anyhow), the fact that English is now the language of the business and sport of cycling portends a larger shift in power that I suspect may happen once higher-functioning business people realize how much money is being left on the table by pro cycling’s current status as, in Christian Vande Velde’s words, the world’s biggest amateur sport.

Also, the booming popularity of the sport among participants in the US and in Europe. It’s stunning to see how many everyday people have become enthralled with riding the bike, and I think that on-the-ground passion will help the professional side of the sport, once it gains more professional management.

Am I concerned pro cycling will turn into a soulless, two wheeled F1? Not really; universally, among all the insiders I spoke to throughout the year about the future of the sport, maintaining a balance between the sport’s primitive appeal while also giving it more management maturity was constantly mentioned as essential to the sport’s longevity. I hope that came through in the book!

Finally, while it’s fashionable to bash the UCI (and they often deserve the beatings), it seems to me they have done more than many other pro sport governing bodies to try and crack down on doping. Yes, their application of rulings and enforcement consistency is lacking, if not corrupt, at times; their infantilization of the riders is undignified; and basic human dignity seems secondary to the UCI’s impulse to hang suspects out to dry in the court of public opinion. But compared to the big American sports, where doping infractions bring a slap on the wrist, the UCI has forced pro cycling to confront its doping problems. Does the clean end justify what can seem to be some scandalous UCI means? I don’t know. Regardless, along with what seems to be a changing acceptance of doping among many of the younger riders, I think the diminished acceptance of doping is an important change – if it lasts.

Cyclismas: Cycling, a lot of people tell us, is too complicated. It needs to be simplified so that fans can understand it. Because, apparently, we don’t actually understand it at the moment. You followed Garmin for most of a season, from the Classics through Cali, on to the Tour, through the Quiznos Challenge and the Vuelta, and then on to the two Canadian races. Each race was different, each race was contested by different groups of riders, sometimes races were on in one place while another was ongoing somewhere else. Given that you’ve had to sit down and explain those races to fans, to unify a season, what would you change?

Mark Johnson: I’d more clearly delineate the top level races. The UCI is kind of stumbling in that direction with the ProTour, but then you’ve got something called the WorldTour – and what the heck is the difference? And the fact that a brand new race with no fans on the roadside, a blanket of filth in the air, and a bunch of listless, bemused riders like Beijing can get WorldTour status while still in the newborn ward discredits the prestige of the entire series.

Give the new fan something they can get a grip on if they want to know what to tune into for the most important races in the most spectacular settings with the best riders racing. And then, at the end of the year, let those key races crown a season champion.

I tend to agree with Serge Arsenault [organiser of the two WorldTour races in Canada] in the book; the template is already there.

Mark Johnson with the tools of the trade (photo courtesy Joel Westwood/Velopress)

Cyclismas: Photography. Like riding a bike, it’s something anyone can do, so a lot of people think it’s not all that hard. Point, press, hey presto, a classic image. The reality is a little bit different: there’s a wee bit more to it than just pointing your iPhone at the peloton as they whiz past and cleaning up in the image in PhotoShop or filtering it through Instagram. Care to share some insight as to the type of kit you cart round with you, the pros and cons of digital over film, and what life’s really like behind the lens?

Mark Johnson: I have a blog post on exactly what kind of camera stuff I lugged around with me while shooting this book, rather than rehash that here, I will leave you to look at that.

The conversion to digital from film is a blessing and a curse. For new photographers, it’s a blessing because you can ramp up your skills without the cost of film and developing. Getting instant feedback on the back of your camera on what works and what doesn’t makes this a fabulous time to start taking photos.

For professionals, the curse is that you shoot a lot more images than with film, which means you have to spend more time editing those photos down to a few selects. The product delivery time-frames are a lot shorter now, too. There is no more post-event down time while you or a lab develop film.

Of course, the pressure to be in the right place at the right time is always there, too. With experience, you gain confidence in your equipment and your control over it and light, so you don’t worry so much about getting the key finishing shot. Even when your equipment fails (and it does, especially with the beatings it takes shooting cycling photography), you also learn to stay calm and get the shot with crippled machinery. With this book, there was way more pressure in deciding what to leave out than stress over what I had missed.

Cyclismas: Jonathan Vaughters is one of the leading voices in the battle to make the race organisers let the teams have a (greater) share of their profits, specifically linking this argument to the sharing of TV revenues. Let’s take that point to its logical conclusion: photographers, like you, should share a slice of your income with the teams, riders, and races you photograph. Ditto a percentage of your income from writing about them. How much would you be willing to fork over to feed the machine, to keep the wheels going round, to save everyone from having to stick with a system that – we’re told – is broken?

Mark Johnson: When a steel and auto economist and labour organizer named Marvin Miller organized professional baseball players in the mid-1960s, one of the first things he did was renegotiate the raw deal the players had negotiated with a major manufacturer of baseball cards. The players were essentially giving their images away for life and getting very little in return.

While pro cyclists may not be able to negotiate with the ASO yet over TV revenue sharing, it seems to me they would do well to federate themselves and gain control over the use of their images to market products and sell dreams. For example, a cohesive riders league could then go to a manufacturer who wants a rider to endorse their product and say, OK, you can do that, but these are the economic terms, and part of your advertising and production spend is going to go back to the riders’ league and be shared by all the riders. (This sort of careful image management is standard in most sports and entertainment businesses, but not in cycling.)

While it would make life more complicated for photographers like me, I think in the end such a change might benefit everyone by increasing rates all the way around. When negotiating licensing terms with a manufacturer, all the parties would know that part of the photographer’s licensing fee would have to go to the league, and rates would adjust accordingly. Today, anyone can grab a good photo of a rider and flip it over to a manufacturer for peanuts or for free, and that harms working photographers who shoulder significant capital and overhead expenses.

As far as how much I’d be willing to fork over; it would make sense to look at the models other sports use and start there. That’s one of the nice things about cycling being in such a primitive state as a business – as it matures it can learn from the mistakes and successes of other pro sports like F1, soccer, baseball, tennis and golf and hopefully follow the good and avoid the bad.

Argyle Armada, a double-page layout example. (courtesy VeloPress/Mark Johnson)

Cyclismas: Let’s go back to the book. Argyle Armada is a mix of words and images. It’s not quite the conventional coffee table cycling photo album some might take it to be: the words and the pictures work together synergistically. I tried to compare it with other cycling books in the review, but did you have a particular model in mind?

Mark Johnson: What I had in mind was a series of New Yorker–like day-in-the-life chapters that were illustrated by photographs. Because there is so much political, social, and economic import to what Jonathan Vaughters is trying to do with this team, I had no interest in doing a photo-only book with captions.

I adore the crafts of both writing and photography – they both involve the thoughtful and selective application of light and shadow, with degrees of gradiated penumbra between the two. My model was a book that would use both mediums (writing and photography) to illustrate a year with the team with a degree of richness that would be difficult to do with either just narrative or photos alone.

In the end, I am pleased with how well the photos match the narrative. My editor at VeloPress, Ted Constantino, was a big help in deciding which photos go where. As a photographer you become emotionally attached to certain photos for aesthetic or personal reasons. Having an editor like Ted who could say, ‘yes, it’s a pretty photo, and it’s technically spot on, but it doesn’t propel your story, so we should leave it out,’ was exceptionally helpful for me.

Cyclismas: Let’s get back to the team, and to the riders. Two hats for you, and I want you to give me two riders: wearing your professional’s hat, who’s best in front of the camera, or gives the best copy; and, wearing your fan’s hat, who are you rooting for the most?

Mark Johnson: One of the luxuries I had in spending a year with the team is that I did not have to rely on the post-race sound bites. Immediately after an event, the riders are exhausted and can go into media management mode – just say enough to celebrate your team and plug the sponsors for the bristling array of microphones in your face, then get back to a shower and a plate of warm food. It’s completely understandable.

However, since I had a year to file my story, I could go back to the riders and interview them a week or a month after an event and collect their more measured thoughts after they had time to process and ponder the race-day drama. And that means, with almost all the riders, they simply told me more than I could have ever expected. For example, Johan Vansummeren a week after Roubaix telling me about his crushing stress riding in with a flat tire.

Christian Vande Velde at the races would have his game face on and not say much to me at all. But when I followed up with him a few weeks after the Tour of Colorado, while he was riding around on a tractor in his back yard, he was genial and loquacious and seemed willing to chat all day about his career, the race in Colorado, and the state of the pro cycling profession.

I think the most eloquent observers on the state of pro cycling were Jonathan Vaughters and Tyler Farrar. The best man for sound bites is Dan Martin – that one has spunk, and seems to have been trained in the Chris Horner school of speak your mind honestly. A base man will forever avoid you. Of course, a half hour with David Millar will set your tape recorder on fire. He’s a forceful, eloquent, thought-provoking man.

As for who I was rooting for with the fan hat on, Sep Vanmarcke, Ramunas Navardauskas and Murilo Fischer come to mind. All three are just delightful, warm-hearted human beings, and young Sep and Ramunas represent pro cycling’s bright future. I had many heart-warming conversations with Murilo in Spanish, since my Portuguese is so miserable. I also think back fondly to a day that he and Dan Martin took me on a bike ride down some of the most scenic, out of the way roads that I would have never, ever found on my own in Girona. The kindness and warmth of these riders also stands in such contrast to their fearsome capacity on the bike.

Dave Zabriskie remains a cipher to this day. Even after speaking to him at length on multiple occasions and watching him for a year, he remains an enigma to me. A charming question mark with a sly and lively sense of humour, but a tough one to crack nonetheless!

Cyclismas: The big thing this year is going to be the team time trial at the World’s, the riders being asked to forget their national colours and don their trade team jerseys again for a day. That’s a race Garmin-Barracuda are targeting. I’ve grown up listening to cycling journalists slagging off TTTs at every opportunity, but this one is shaping up to be a helluva lot of fun.

Mark Johnson: Yes – that is going to be a great race. And the TTT is the only kind of TT that doesn’t look like paint drying when watching it on TV.

Cyclismas: Are there plans for an Argyle Armada II: On Stranger Tides?

Mark Johnson: Not yet on this team – I’ll give them a couple more years before I’d consider circling around again for another book. But, oh man, along with doing a lot of book promotion talks and slide shows, I have magazine articles and race coverage assignments stacked in my queue like planes on the LAX runway. But I’m grateful for the work and happy to have cheques landing in the mailbox!

I had a publisher approach me about doing an Argyle Armada type book on a pro triathlete, and that might be interesting, if there are politics and culture involved. A photographer named Liz Kreutz did a photo book on a year with Lance Armstrong. Something similar on a compelling triathlete but with a substantial written narrative might interest me. And since GreenEdge is linked to something larger, a nation of restless immigrants, that’s a team that might stand up to a book-length treatment like Argyle Armada.

I like to write about people. My dream assignment would be to write a piece on Jonathan Vaughters for The New Yorker. So if any of your readers have contacts at that citadel of high culture and fine writing, please feel free to get in touch with me!

* * * * *

Mark Johnson is the author of Argyle Armada – Behind the Scenes of Pro Cycling Life, published by VeloPress (2012, 207 pages). (Read the review here.)

You can find him online at ArgyleArmadaBook.com and on Twitter, @ArgyleArmada.

Our thanks to Mark Johnson for taking part in this interview.

There’s a scene in Mark Johnson’s Argyle Armada that, for me, just about sums up what’s so cool about Jonathan Vaughters’ Garmin. It’s not a scene that’s unique to Garmin, you’ll see it all the time in this strange sport of ours. And it’s a scene that appears, in modified forms, throughout Argyle Armada, at races in France, in America, in Canada. The repetition of the scene probably helps explain why some people like the team that Doug Ellis bankrolls and which Jonathan Vaughters has built. And helps explain why we like the sport of cycling.

This particular scene happens to be set in Belgium. The Garmin-Cervélo boys – Ryder Hesjedal, Christophe Le Mével, Dan Martin, Peter Stetina, and Christian Vande Velde – are out for a pre-ride of the final hundred kilometres of the Liège-Bastogne-Liège course, the Friday before the 2011 La Doyenne rolls off. Behind them in the team-car are directeur sportif Eric van Lancker and wrench-monkey Alex Banyay, Johnson riding along with them and taking it all in.

Van Lancker is pointing out things, the psychogeography of the region: the Côte de Wanne where, traditionally, the peloton gets cut down to size; the Col du Maquisard just outside Spa where a truck once lost its brakes and thrashed a house; a filling station just outside Sprimont, over La Redoute, where he himself broke away for his Liège victory in 1990; the Côte de Stockeau where so many decked it during the 2010 Tour de France. Every inch of the road has some memory attached to it, some ghost image shadowing it.

Up front, the guys are just riding along. All at once, a gang of kids rush out of a yard screaming for a bidon to be tossed to them. Vande Velde duly obliges with a souvenir. Then, on a climb near the end of their ride, there’s a small kid riding along on the pavement. The wee runt can’t even be a teenager yet but he’s decked out in full racing kit. And when he sees the Garvélo boys pass, the competitive juices kick in: he bunny-hops his little racing bike onto the road and gives chase to the pros in front.

Christophe Le Mével looks around and shouts encouragement at the kid – ‘Allez, allez!‘ – and the kid digs in. Then, after a few hundred metres, he falters and falls back. Rather than just riding on, Le Mével sits up and waits for the kid to ride up to him. Placing himself on the kid’s outside the Frenchman puts his hand on the lad’s back and takes him to the top of the climb. There he pulls a bidon from its cage and hands it over. Johnson’s back in the team car, doesn’t hear if any words are exchanged, but the sentiment is clear: ‘Chapeau you little brat, you deserve it.’ Then the Garvélos get back to the business of preparing for Sunday and the kid is left to ride on alone.

Which is that little kid’s biggest souvenir of that day, the bidon given to him or the memory of Le Mével’s hand on his back?

Argyle Armada is a look behind the scenes of pro cycling life, through the lens of a freelance writer and photographer who’s worked with the Garmin team since 2007. That Johnson is a photographer might make you think that Argyle Armada is another coffee-table photo album, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Before getting into the book itself, let’s try and look at it in the context of other cycling books.

One could look to some of the books written about Lance Armstrong – here, particularly Daniel Coyle’s Lance Armstrong’s War or Bill Strickland’s Tour de Lance – which, through the privileged access the authors were given over the course of a particular season, ended up being partly about the team as well as the rider. Or one could look at something like Jeff Connor’s Wide-Eyed and Legless, which is fully about one team, but just for one race, there the ANC-Halfords squad in the 1987 Tour de France. For me, the book that has most in common with Argyle Armada is Richard Moore’s Sky’s the Limit, the story of Team Sky’s début season, 2010.

But, whereas Moore’s book was words with a few images inserted in the middle, Johnson’s tells its story through words and pictures. Most of the photographs are illustrative: you can flick through it as a coffee-table photo album and a few of the pictures will jump out at you and make you pause. But, as you work through the text, you realise that the images are really there to add depth to what Johnson is saying. The words and images work together synergistically.

Argyle Armada, a double-page layout example. Source: VeloPress/Mark Johnson

Generally having avoided coffee table photo albums in the past (for no particular reason) I asked Johnson himself what model he had in mind when putting the book together:

What I had in mind was a series of New Yorker–like day-in-the-life chapters that were illustrated by photographs. Because there is so much political, social, and economic import to what Jonathan Vaughters is trying to do with this team, I had no interest in doing a photo-only book with captions.”

The pictures used in Argyle Armada are an important part of the package, and you’ll find selections from them on the book’s website, ArgyleArmadaBook.com. But, as well as painting pictures with light and shade, Johnson – who has a Ph.D. in English literature from Boston University – also paints pictures with words. Take some of these images: orange-shirted fans on a rock promontory peering into a valley’s profundity; fans cheering a rider up a climb and looking like thousands of agitated cilia urging a blue egg up a nine-mile trench of humanity; ossified sticks protruding from the muck and a scudding mist giving the place the feeling of a primordial graveyard; a ridge sprinkled with the confetti of fans’ camping tents; weak sunlight inscribing a rim of light around a pain-wracked visage; lurid light tracing the cheekbones of a gendarme; riders sibilating down serpentine descents. My own use of the English language may tend toward the more base end of the spectrum but there is something pleasing in seeing cycling described in such language.

Argyle Armada, a double-page layout example. Source: VeloPress/Mark Johnson

An obvious antecedent to Argyle Armada that I should mention is the series of articles Paul Kimmage wrote for the Sunday Times about the team’s 2006 Tour and which can be found in the most recent (2007) edition of his Rough Ride. Kimmage himself crops up a few times in Argyle Armada. At the Tour, Johnson bumps into him and Kimmage explains how and why he has to stop himself from returning to the Garmin bus, force himself to talk to others: “Why I like these people is that they are decent human beings. They are all good people, and I cannot say that about a lot of others.”

Oddly, that inability to say the same of others as he can of Garmin does not endear Kimmage to everyone in the Garvélo team. Andrew Talansky tells Johnson that, while it’s great that his team gives the Irish journalist hope, he personally believes that “somebody like him has no place in the sport of cycling and doesn’t deserve to write about it.” Oddly, I actually like Talansky for having that opinion. I disagree with him, that should go without saying, but that Talansky can and does say it – that I like and admire. And, as Johnson found from different riders on different topics, while they all sing from the same hymn sheet on doping, on other issues – from race radios through to internal team politics – they have and express their own opinions. They’re a tightly knit team but they’re also individuals.

The picture of the team painted by Johnson is broader than that drawn by Kimmage in 2006, not just through his use of photographs but also by his looking beyond the Tour de France. Argyle Armada isn’t a full account of Garvélo’s 2011 season, but does cover a large chunk of it. Johnson was with the team at their January/February winter training camp in Girona, then met up with them again for the cobbled Classics (the Ronde van Vlaanderen, Scheldprijs and Paris-Roubaix), and then again in the Ardennes (the Amstel Gold, the Flèche-Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège). From there it was westward ho and a trip to the Tour of California, followed by a trip back across the Atlantic for the Tour de France. After that came the USA Pro Cycling Classic and the latter part of the Vuelta a España, whose opening clashing with the Colorado race necessitated Johnson missing the first part of the Spanish Grand Tour. Johnson also had to skip out before the end of the Vuelta in order to wrap up his road season in Canada, with Serge Arsenault’s two contributions to the World Tour calendar (the GP Cycliste de Québec and the GP Cycliste de Montréal). Johnson then rounded out the season with the preparation for the 2012 team’s coming out party in Boulder in November.

Having pointed out that Johnson has been a freelancer with the Slipstream outfit for some time now I should probably disclose my own interests – prejudices – here. Not whether I blagged a review copy of the book (ask William Fotheringham, Geoff Drake, Nicolas Roche, or David Millar if they think that affects how I read a book) but that I am a fan of Jonathan Vaughters and a fan of his Garmin team. Some of that, I will openly admit, is purely parochial: Dan Martin rides for them and, like most cycling fans, I too can fly the flag for my own countrymen. Mostly, though, I’m a fan because I want to believe in what Vaughters is trying to do: clean up our sport, ethically and structurally. And because Garmin are fun.

Do you have to be a fan of the team to like Argyle Armada? I don’t think so. Part of my reason for saying that is because when Johnson is talking about individual Garvélo riders and the races he witnessed, he’s telling human-interest stories, universal stories. The other part is that, while Garvélo are the lens through which Johnson looked at the 2011 cycling season, the book isn’t really about them. It is, as its subtitle claims, a behind-the-scenes look at the pro-cycling life.

Liking Garmin, though, does add an extra edge to Argyle Armada. This was the year that the little team that could, the team that traded on their ethically-clean image more than their palmarès, grew up. Not just in the way they added lustre to their palmarès with Paris-Roubaix, stage wins, and leaders’ jerseys in all three Grand Tours and the rest. But in the way they shed their skin, lost some of their sheen.

Johan Vansummeren wears the crushed embers of the Hell of the North as he celebrates his victory in the Queen of the Classics. Source: Mark Johnson

From the dismissal of Matt White at the start of the season through to the folding of the women’s team at the end of the year, 2011 was the year Garvélo really felt the wrath of fans who began to see the team’s innocence disappear before their eyes. Add in the arguments over race radios, boycotts, breakaway leagues, the decisions made about withholding departing riders from certain races in order to stop them taking points across to others, and the Argyle armada began to look like a lot of the other teams out there: merciless, rapacious pirates. It all added up to the team losing some of their USP. Having to grow up. (At the same time, the team still maintains their own quirky, child-like charm: borrowing a fire-red Porsche during the Tour of California, sticking a roof rack on it and using it as the team car for the day is the sort of fun Vaughters and his bunch of lost boys bring to the peloton, and long may they continue to do so.)

The business of pro cycling filters throughout Argyle Armada and is, for me, something that makes Argyle Armada an important book for all who are curious about what is going on behind the scenes in cycling. Johnson himself tries to express no particular opinion, tries to get others to say what needs saying. Like most of us, he does agree that our sport needs to change, but he’s not using Argyle Armada to prescribe what that change should be. On one particular area he does let his own feelings filter through: the need for someone to come in, grab the sport by the scruff of the neck, and drag it kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.

On this topic Johnson is particularly influenced by something that happened in baseball half a century ago. A lot of the time when we talk about the business of pro cycling we end up talking about other sports, looking to other sports – as they too look to one and other – to see what works and is worth borrowing from. Back when Hein Verbruggen was first throwing his weight around in the FICP he wanted to model cycling on tennis’ ATP Tour. Thus was born the World Cup, the successor to the Super Prestige Pernod trophy and the precursor to the ProTour and today’s WorldTour (the difference between the ProTour and the WorldTour is the same as the difference between Windscale and Sellafield: none). Today, rather than looking to tennis, many people want to model cycling on Formula 1. Baseball though is growing in popularity as the sport to look to.

Here I’ll again turn back to Richard Moore’s Sky’s the Limit and note his use of Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, a book referenced to him by Team Sky supremo and über-statto Dave Brailsford. Moneyball told the story of how Billy Beane took a little team of sluggers and challenged the big boys by turning to objective, empirical data when selecting new recruits for his team. More importantly the story of Moneyball was how an insider successfully brought outsider thinking into his sport. Moneyball does feature in Argyle Armada – the Brad Pitt film rather than the Michael Lewis book – but the baseball story Johnson most turns to is that of Marvin Miller.

Back in the 1960s Miller, who was a big shot in the United Steelworkers Union, threw his weight behind baseball and organised a players union, through which the men in the funny pyjamas were able to negotiate a slice of TV revenues and other image rights. This question of unionisation – and the need for a Marvin Miller to step forward in cycling – is something Johnson talks to various riders about. (The riders today do have a union, the CPA, but that’s about as useless as a eunuch in a brothel, and for the same reason: it lacks balls.) Each time, Johnson gets the same answer: not going to happen. None of the riders seem happy about this, but they are realists. Others can too easily play divide and conquer when it comes to the peloton. As Dan Martin tells Johnson, within the peloton “there’s always someone trying to get one over on someone else.”

Baseball is also the sport turned to by Jonathan Vaughters to explain what cycling needs to do, and not do. He himself uses a similar approach to Moneyball‘s Billy Beane when selecting new recruits for the team, but he also looks beyond the stats to find riders who are going to fit in with the ethos of his team: not just the clean living approach to cycling, but the fun-loving side of a project he’s been building since his 5280 and TIAA-CREF days. “What I’m looking for,” he tells Johnson, “is smart guys that may be a little bit goofy, because a lot of times intelligence goes hand in hand with goofiness, especially with bike riders.” The use of stats aside, what’s most important about baseball for Vaughters is the shared history and thinking that sport has with cycling.

Baseball and cycling are – give or take a few years – of similar vintage: both sports were created in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Back in the days of Bobby Walthour and Major Taylor the two sports challenged one and other for the hearts and minds of American sports fans. Cycling initially held the upper hand but, after the NCA broke away from the LAW, baseball pulled ahead. Then, in the 1920s, baseball suffered from the fallout of the Black Sox scandal and lost some popularity, allowing cycling, particularly the Six Day races in Madison Square Garden, to again came to the fore. Baseball, though, immediately learned a lesson that it took the Festina scandal to teach cycling: an outsider, Commissioner Landis, was brought in to put some stick about and make sure that history could not repeat itself. Since then baseball has gone from strength to strength (even when faced with its own doping demons).

The important lesson about baseball, for Vaughters, is how it has managed to move forward and stay still at the same time: despite all the professionalism that has been brought to the sport, all the Marv Millers and Billy Beanes who have pushed baseball forward, it has managed to cling fast to tradition. It is, Vaughters tells Johnson, “still a very quaint, old-fashioned sport. Yet it’s correctly managed.” Players, teams, broadcasters have all been able to grow rich off of baseball’s ability to professionalise itself, while the game itself is, more or less, unchanged. (Fans of baseball might want to argue some of that point, highlight how fans have been fucked over by their sport, but that’s a discussion for another day.)

Is Vaughters cycling’s Marvin Miller? I’m not sure that Johnson is saying he is, and I’m not sure if Vaughters himself sees that as the role he wants to fulfil. Yes, as he tells Johnson, he wants to be the catalyst for change, the man who lit the blue touch paper, but to be the man who brings about that change? Well, with Vaughters you never really know what he’s thinking, do you? Johnson, through his selection of interviewees, does throw up some other names that ought be considered in the Marv Miller role. Doug Ellis, Garmin’s sugar daddy – the biggest littlest team’s version of BMC’s Andy Rihs, RadioShack-Nissan’s Flavio Becca, Sky’s Rupert Murdoch – is one obvious candidate, a man who hides quietly in the shadows, the unseen hand guiding many of the pieces on cycling’s chessboard. Or there’s a race organiser like Serge Arsenault, one of Johnson’s best interviewees. I’d love to tell you more about him here, but he, too, is a subject for another day. Or you could just go and read Johnson’s book yourself and learn a bit more about him.

There are things I would have liked more of in Argyle Armada: more space for the women’s team and the junior team and how they fit into the overall Slipstream structure and ethos; more on the tensions between Jonathan Vaughters and Thor Hushovd; a more complete look at the team’s season. But these weaknesses I understand and have to excuse. The book wasn’t about the women or the kids, it was about the ProTour team. No one anywhere else has really got under the skin of the tensions between Vaughters and Hushovd. The book was never meant to be a complete picture of one team’s season, but rather a look at the sport itself, through moments in one team’s season.

That last point is what is most important about Argyle Armada. Since Festina we’ve managed to get the media to pay more and more attention to doping, forced change to happen within the sport. Now it’s time for the spotlight to shift to the business of professional cycling, time to understand more about how our sport works, understand what does work and what needs to be changed. Argyle Armada is a valuable contribution toward the shifting of that spotlight. Whether you’re a fan of the little team that could – and, in 2011, did – or you just want to understand the politics that are reshaping our sport, Johnson’s is a book you really should read.

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Mark Johnson’s Argyle Armada – Behind the Scenes of the Pro Cycling Life is published by VeloPress (2012, 207 pages).

Next up: an interview with Mark Johnson.