Floyd's Hip

Note the apostrophe. These can be tricky, in part because of the difficult case of its and it's. My students just can't seem to get that one down. In any case, I'm not declaring that Floyd is hip. That has already been well documented, given his penchant for Skynryd and ZZ Top, his moustache, etc. I'm talking about the hip of Floyd. Back in January of 2003, Floyd hit a patch of gravel on his way back from a training session, fell hard and broke his hip. He had surgery immediately and was able to recover in time to ride the Tour in 2003. But apparently all is not as well as it appeared. Turns out he's got the same degenerative condition that derailed the brilliant career of Bo Jackson. He's scheduled for hip replacement surgery right after the Tour. Perhaps this will give him some extra motivation to go for it all this year. Although his team and doctors are making optimistic claims about a full recovery, the future has to be a big question mark, especially in light of Jackson's inability to recover. But there's reason to be optimistic, I suppose. His trainer, Allan Lim, puts it this way: "He will come back and be much, much stronger than he is now. People haven't seen more than 80 percent of Floyd." Interesting that we haven't heard any of this come up before. Remember that Floyd doesn't have much use for excuses. But now that it looks like he has a chance to win the Tour de France, the media is on the hunt for material. And the Lance Armstrong formula has proved to be near flawless. Though this story is hardly of that magnitude, everybody seems to love a good tale about overcoming the medical odds. No doubt these stories tell us more about ourselves than Floyd. At any rate, check out the story by Samuel Abt as well as the longer profile by Daniel Coyle, which includes this great quote from Dave Zabriskie: ‘‘There aren’t many guys in the peloton’’ — the main pack of riders in a road bicycle race — ‘‘who are willing to tell Lance to go screw himself,’’ says David Zabriskie, a top American who rides for the Danish CSC team. ‘‘Floyd just didn’t care.’’ Today is a rest day at the Tour, so Floyd held a news conference to address the matter. See the report from VeloNews. It even has an X-Ray, which will no doubt get Penner excited.