Vive le Tour!
From early July mornings till near noon my big screen, hi-def TV remains on, the volume at a low but audible level: helicopter shots of chateaus, dizzying motorcycle footage of harrowing descents, crazed fans waving flags, dressed outrageously, nearly blocking the roadways on the high mountain summits, close-ups of sweaty, pained expressions…and through it all the familiar, comforting voice of Phil Liggett who, at 79, is this year announcing his 51st Tour de France.
I can’t really explain (defend) why I love this sporting event so much, what has made it far and away my favorite sporting event, perhaps even my favorite thing at all to watch on television. But I’ll try.
To begin, I have to go back to my early cycling days, clad in wool cycling kits with my old buddy Greg (who got me started in all of this), riding the country roads of upstate New York, a sight utterly unfamiliar to most of the locals who drove by, gawking, slowing, wondering why we would ever wear such tight-fitting, odd-looking clothing or be riding along miles from nowhere for no identifiable reason. Back then we knew about what was happening in the Tour mostly by what we read—this was pre-cable television, long before any network would give anything but a day or two of summary-coverage to the Tour. To see it all live now—data fields charting the current speeds of the riders, animations and high-tech, 3D video gizmos used to demo team strategy, cuts of pre-race interviews with the top riders, the occasional interlude with grainy black and white footage from the early days, clips of the great Eddy Merckx…—are more than my 18-year-old-self could have ever imagined.
As a relatively serious cyclist myself—though nothing close to the innumerable still far more serious cyclists who these days log tens of thousands of miles on their nearly weightless carbon wonder-bikes—I am also simply in awe of what professional, world-tour cyclists are capable of. My 4-5, 20 or so mile rides a week averaging 180 watts, 17.5 miles an hour (on a good day when I’m really trying for speed) pale so radically in comparison as to make the riders of the Tour seem cycling deities. In today’s race, for example, the main peloton averaged well over 30 miles an hour for the first 60-70 miles of the 100+ mile race, with most riders likely averaging 400+ watts of power over the not even 2 hours it took to cover this ground. Add to this that the riders do this day-in, day-out for 21 stages with only 2 rest days (and 4 high-summit finishes), and these numbers become all the more remarkable. Tour riders burn well over 5000 calories/day. They are tended to by a team of trainers and nutritionists and doctors and cooks who keep tabs of every possible physiological and biological measure in order to get them back on the bike the next morning, and the next, and the next. While there are now plenty of “ultra-runners” and crazy cross country endurance fiascoes challenging athletes to push the absolute bounds of human physical ability, the Tour still stands in my mind as the most impressive demonstration of what the human body can achieve.
But, for me, it’s about far more than just measurable statistics and unfathomable athletic accomplishments.
I love that the Tour provides so many things to consider all at once. First off are the complex “team tactics.” I’ll forego trying to explain them all or to give an exhaustive overview, but suffice it to say that even after watching many Tours—and having a son who was a competitive cyclist and now works in the cycling industry to explain it all to me—the behavior of teams on the road remain at times mysteriously elusive. At its most simple, teams of 8 riders are hoping to have one of their riders win and/or get a good finish in the “general classification” (GC), which is simply the total time of all 21 stages of the race (the ultimate reward the famed yellow jersey). But other “races” are happening within this race. Certain climbs and certain sprints provide points for the first small group of riders to cross these lines—the highest points going to the first to cross. The winner of the polka-dot jersey is the rider who achieves the most climbing points; the winner of the green jersey will acquire the most sprint points by the end of the race. Hence, team tactics will often revolve around these races inside the main race.
In addition to these races for the colored jerseys, some teams just want to win a stage or two—and to win a single stage of the Tour is a huge badge of honor (for yourself, your team, and its sponsors). The sponsors also love when a rider from their team goes out in front on a solo effort, since they know their name will be front and center for a time at least during the 4+ hours of that day’s race.
And still cycling aficionados are watching for many other things throughout a day’s race (and commentators are addressing these in their steady stream of chat). If a sprinter loses a “lead out” rider…if a team who currently holds the yellow jersey works to ride at a painfully high tempo so as to discourage attacks…if a polka-dot or green jersey rider and a few team members form an early breakaway in order to try to secure sprint points a dozen miles up the road…if a rider high in the GC manages to get away with several teammates he can draft behind (cutting his overall effort significantly)…. At any given moment in any given race there are countless things happening, though to the uninitiated, you are just watching a bunch of guys pedal their bikes for 4.5 hours, listening to commentators prattle on about incomprehensible things or get overly excited about what on the screen looks like merely a lone cyclist grinding his way up a series of mountain road switchbacks.
But even for those in the know, race behavior is often illogical (though always a lot of fun to watch). In today’s race, all of the “expert” announcers were trying to figure out why one team had come to the front of the peloton and was madly pushing up the pace. They were, as I was, dumbfounded, with one announcer finally concluding—“it seems they just want to ride extra hard today for the hell of it.” At the very end of the race, the 2nd-place GC rider sprinted hard for the last 50 meters or so for no apparent reason since his main rival was safely in the same group and would receive the same time, again baffling the commentator team. He just seemed to be having fun going fast.
Which brings me to perhaps the biggest thing I enjoy about the race. In a sense the bike racing skeptic is correct; it’s remarkable that I can sit and watch it on and off for hour after hour with so little seeming to happen. In all honesty, it’s just this aspect of it I love—the calming mundane steadiness of it, the whir of all the bikes, the shots of lovely small French towns, the looming snow-capped Alps they will face at the end of a stage in the far distance, Phil Liggett’s voice, its cadence and tenor and what you can hear in it—his absolute joy at watching the race unfold one more time after spending the majority of his lifetime announcing it.
I often work with the race on in the background, tilt my eyes upward away from my computer screen when Phil’s excitement level rises “and there he goes…oh my, we certainly didn’t see this coming…you have to just be in awe of what he is accomplishing….” I’ll raise the volume, focus hard for a few minutes until things settle down, and I settle back into my work. Often his voice or that of his fellow commentator, American cyclist Bob Roll, are as excited about what’s happening along the roadways—farmers using straw bales to create large depictions of bikes, the cyclist spinning away on an old bike suspended on chains from the jaws of a backhoe 30 feet in the air as the peloton roars past below him, a chateau built in the 11th century, the history of a mountaintop finish that hasn’t been included in the Tour since the 80s.
Yesterday afternoon, despite a minor leg injury and high heat, I couldn’t resist pulling on my riding shorts and jersey, filling my water bottles and dropping in some electrolyte tabs, pumping up tires, wiping down the chain and adding a few drops of oil, snapping my bike computer in place and heading off. I was self consciously taking it very easy, focusing on the feel of the bike holding me aloft, the high-pitched whir of the rear hub when I coasted down hills, the click of gears responding as I pushed against the brake levers, the feel of wind against my face—delightfully aware that my motion was the result of the work of my own leg muscles, gravity, thin tires spinning on wheels. I rode along for nearly 19 miles, finally rolling back onto my driveway an hour and 13 minutes later, slowed and stopped, straddled my bike and drank down the last few gulps of water aware once again that bicycles are simple, beautiful things, and when you ride them enough, you feel them become an integral part of your own body, dependent on you as much as you are dependent on them.
I’ll end with an anecdote: When my children all still lived here a number of years back, my two boys and I occasionally managed to all get a ride in together. On one memorable ride, my eldest, already a category 3, competitive cyclist, taunted us at times, occasionally sprinting ahead in his own mini-breakaway to demonstrate his power. My youngest, whose legs didn’t yet even fill up his riding shorts, was still a dynamic climber, and he famously beat me up a nearby hill—only to let go of the handlebars and raise his arms (in a mock Tour-de-France style winning gesture) to lose his balance and fall into some roadside poison ivy. We drafted and sprinted for town lines. Practiced riding with shoulders touching, leaning against each other. At one point, my eldest snuck up behind me and managed to hold onto the back of my seat to prevent me from outpacing his little brother on a climb. We had a lot of fun out there on the back roads of my little town just messing around together on bicycles.
The Tour de France gives me something akin to that, day after day—watching men do impossible things on their humble machines—which for all their newfangled, expensive technical wizardry primarily still consist of essentially two wheels, pedals and a chain. They zip along shoulder to shoulder, chatting, laughing, and sometimes just riding fast because they can.
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