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| The start of the very first Tour de France. |
In my high school mind alternative was good, and biking was alternative. Then along came the Festina Affair in '98 (the Festina Affair is a bit complicated but the gist is that the entire Festina team was kicked out of the Tour de France for systematic doping and a couple of other teams were kicked out or left in protest - things were messy in professional road racing for months after. It makes me sick re-reading about it now). There seemed to be doping scandals everywhere, including many American riders. Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis, to name two prominent ones. Maybe this wasn't the alternative I was looking for. By the time Lance Armstong's doping came to light I was thoroughly bored by all this and had stopped even paying attention to professional road biking...the only reason that I was aware of it was because it was a big story and everyone even remotely interested in silent sports had it shoved down their throat. Mountain biking is a little less scandal-ridden but not enough to hold my attention. Cycling is an incredibly popular sport in Europe (not alternative at all like in America) and though it took me a while to realize, many of the top racers were kinda like those 'cool' kids in high school.
I've never stopped loving biking though.
Over the years I've almost completely lost interest in racing (and not just because I suck at it). But I've taken to keeping updated on races like the Tour Divide, the Iditarod Trail Invitational, or the Trans Am Bike Race, and - new this year - the American Trail Race. Epic stories are what draw me to these races: pushing a loaded bike through knee deep snow for hundreds of miles (ITI) or riding a few hundred miles a day through mountains, catching a few hours of sleep and doing it all again the next day (TD). Don't get me wrong: I have zero interest in ever doing these races but at least they hold my interest. And at the end of these races is the finish line, maybe a few fans, and that's it. No podium, no prize money, no throngs of fans, no big-time media attention, no pretty girl to kiss you while you spray everyone with champagne.
I have no idea how it happened but the other day I got looking into the old Tours de France, like before WWII (it started on 1903 and skipped the war years - fun fact: the very first stage of the first TdF stage was 467 km/290 mi long and took almost 18 hours). Occasionally over the years I have seen pictures of these old ones, and heard a story or two (you know the classic ones: the guys sharing a cig or drinking wine while riding). Maybe it was because I was too distracted by the modern day Tour and all it's glitz (when I first started following it) or maybe I was so appalled by all the doping scandals (later, in college and beyond) that I didn't really get into the old Tours.
The same epic-ness that draws me to the ITI, Tour Divide, etc. showed up in those old Tours. And as I looked at old pictures of riders going up steep mountain passes on dirt or gravel roads without gears (often pushing) this correlation dawned on me. It has been hiding behind all the flashiness of the modern Tour. But things used to be very different: I read about the 1913 Tour de France when Eugene Christophe's fork broke and he had to walk 10K to fix it and then continued on and finished the stage nearly 4 hours down. The stage was 326 km long (203 miles) - and the racers had 4 major mountain passes to climb. And many of the roads up the passes were dirt or gravel. And, since derailleurs weren't reliable (and were banned by the race anyway) they did it all on single speed bikes (The TdF organization first allowed derailleurs in 1937). Oh, and there were strictly enforced rules barring outside help so when his fork broke Christophe had to forge himself a new one at a blacksmith's shop - and the kicker is he got a time penalty for having someone work the bellows for him. Nowadays he'd just get a whole new bike from the team/neutral support vehicle and be on his way and probably have won that year (he still finished seventh [a remedial Tour de France lesson in case it's needed: each rider is timed each stage and then at the end the aggregated time is added up and the lowest time wins. So you can never win an individual stage but win the race general classification]). Christophe broke his fork again at the tour in 1919 but he "only" had to walk about 2 km to a town where he fixed it himself at the blacksmith shop - losing two hours. Then in 1922 his fork broke again (you've probably guessed it already but fork strength wasn't the strong suit of bicycles in those days). He never did win the Tour de France - maybe he deserved to, but we wouldn't be talking about him today if nothing had gone wrong and he'd won. Because of his misfortune he's a bit of a legend. If things had gone smoothly and he'd won chances are slim that anyone would even know his name outside of a handful of Tour de France fanatics.
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| During a stage of the first Tour de France |
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According to theracingbicycle.com:
"With up to three gear cogs on the rear freewheel, a gear change could be affected by dismounting the bike, loosening the wingnuts, sliding the rear wheel in the frame dropout to release the chain tension, placing the chain on the new cog, repositioning the rear wheel to gain proper chain tension, remembering to retighten the wingnuts before remounting once more." |
In 2016 Chris Froome broke his bike, (after a run in with a motorcycle, which had slammed on the brakes as fans were blocking the road) discarded the bike (which is against the rules) and started running until a support vehicle could get to him through the thick crowds 45 seconds later. They gave him a new bike and off he went. He wasn't happy with how it was working so they gave him another. He finished the stage 1 min 21 secs down and lost his yellow leader's jersey. An hour later the race officials reconsidered and gave the lead back to him. Chances are slim that much of anyone will remember this in 100+ years.
The longest Tour de France was in 1926 at 5745 km (3570 mi) covered. The longest stage in that race was 433 km (269 mi) and took 17 hrs 11 min 14 secs. Contrast that with the 2016 Tour de France at 3,529 km (2,193 mi) long. The longest stage was 223.5 km and took 5 hrs 59 min 54 secs. To be fair the old Tours had a rest day every other day - often several rest days between stages. The first tour had 4 rest days before the last stage (which was 471 km/293 mi long and took over 18 hrs).
The Trans Am Bike Race is self supported (no team cars nobody to give massages and meals or even shelter over your head. You're on your own). The clock starts when you leave Astoria, WA and stops 4300 miles later when you get to Yorktown, VA. It's basically one big time trial. The 2016 winner was a woman (I think that's so cool), Lael Wilcox, who did it in 18 days 10 mins. That's an average of 239 miles a day for the better part of 3 weeks. Once, during college spring break, I went with a small group of guys to Austin, TX where the main thing we did was ride our bikes - between 80 and 100 miles a day for a whopping six days. I might try that again sometime but it'd take some pretty slick convincing. Well, now that I think about it the riding we did in Austin was on the road and often in traffic. I hate riding in traffic - so I actually probably would take a bike vacation (where the primary thing was riding) if it were mountain biking or bikepacking. Anyway, back to Austin: by the end of that I was tired, sick of riding, and wanted to go home. That's why races like the Tour Divide and the Trans Am Bike Race sound so abhorrent (in terms of doing them myself). But, oddly enough and in a way I can't explain, they're still interesting.
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| See if you can spot the differences in this picture vs. the picture above from an early Tour mountain top. |
The point is not that today's pro bike racers are a bunch of weenies. The 2016 TdF may have "only" been 2,193 miles but I'd have to be a special kind of stupid to argue that that's not a helluva long way - especially when you throw in a couple of mountain ranges and do it in less than a month. It's not that things are worse today, just different. For me it's not so much the race as how it's packaged. It's kinda like NASCAR, a circus, (come see the freaks!) and a bike somehow had a child. NASCAR and circuses aren't really my thing and so - hard as the modern TdF may be - it doesn't really hold my interest.
It comes down to, I think, money. People like fast, people will pay for fast. Epic schmepic, who's going to watch a dude on his single speed crank his bike down a gravel, mud, road for over 10 hours (to get the answer to that ask a single speed Trans-Iowa rider)? Now we've got a very fast, intense, high-stakes, drugged, popular race that has lost touch with the things that drew fans to it over a century ago. How much longer can this go on until it collapses under it's own weight?
