[wouterjanl]

> To appreciate the peculiar beauty of cycling you need to understand what it is.

In the middle of nowhere, festoons are hanging over the streets of a small village. It's a long forgotten village, except for today, when for around 10 seconds, it becomes the stage of a show in which the nation's biggest hero's and antihero's participate.

The noise of the television helicopter coming closer is the sign for the butcher and the baker and their customers to leave their shops and head for the street. Here they line up next to the village's grandads and grandmothers, who are firmly holding the hands of their grandkids, equally excited, eagerly awaiting the caravane of sponsor cars and police bikes that signal the head of the race.

There is nothing quite like the vivid brush of colors of the jerseys of a peloton rustling by at 60 km/hour. The whoosh of two hundred times two 25mm rubber tubes rolling over asfalt, a peloton displacing itself through air as one giant organism, the sound of shifting gears, the shriek of someone hitting the brakes, a shout perhaps to warn for a pothole or the odd street furniture. A sunray hitting the large sunglasses covering most of the faces of the riders, the rest of which give away a familiar mix of concentration and nervousness. The same questions racing through the minds of all the riders. "Did I train enough?" "How much will I be able to suffer today?"

Vamos!! Alé alé! Cries from the spectators at the side of the road, transcending any language, the grandma and the grandkid equally loud. Support, not for a particular team, less for a particular rider. Encouragement that is as much destined for the champion, feeling the pressure, chasing a new record, as for the anonymous rider who tries to make him or herself believe that if everything falls into place, it is possible for him or her to sneak away and grab an upset victory. It has happened.

A rider at the back of the bunch, looking for distraction, his legs hurting more than they ought to, spots a kid at the side of the road and throws his bottle at her feet. Rare will be the moments in her life that she will feel equally much at the center of the world.

Ah, the beauty of cycling. Maybe I misunderstand what it really is.

[motohagiography]

beautiful indeed. I loved the Tour for many years and rode in group rides. my favorite parts were the team time trial and the breakaway of the sprinters from the rest of the peloton. Armstrong's cheating itself wasn't so much the issue that took the romance away from it, but the pathetic way he conducted himself afterwards. Seeking redemption was so american and overbearing, and somehow he even managed to make cancer seem cloying, it tainted the ambiguity of the sport more than every other perennial doping scandal. It was too much to shrug off.

[Micand]

This is very excellent.

[busyant]

Beautifully written.

[russfink]

Beautiful!

[lnx01]

*heroes