I used to be a fairly enthusiastic pro cycling fan. I even covered the Grand Tours for NBC Universal for a few years (by “covered” I mean I watched them on TV and blogged about them), though after an exhaustive search I can no longer find any evidence of those blogs online. So maybe the Internet isn’t forever after all–though this image lives on, go figure:
[From here.]
In recent years, however, I’ve mostly stopped following it. It’s not like I rage-quit or anything, and I’ll still glance at result or watch a little bit if I’m in front of the TV at a fortuitous time, but I don’t really go out of my way to watch it either. I remember when it seemed incredible that you could just turn on OLN and watch the entire Tour de France from your couch instead of reading Samuel Abt articles the day after or watching a VHS from World Cycling Productions long after the fact, and so I’d make sure not to miss even a second:
[Via that site where they auction stuff.]
Today you can stream all sorts of races at your convenience, yet now that my dreams have finally come true I can’t even be bothered to do it anymore.
So why not? I guess part of it is that I don’t have the free time I once did; 20 years ago I could go race in the morning, watch a Tour stage, and then go mountain biking in the afternoon. That is no longer the case:
So if I’ve got a couple hours during which I can either ride a bike myself or watch someone else doing it, obviously I’m going to choose the former option 100% of the time.
Yet oddly I do now find myself watching “normal” American sports, which until recently was something I never did–it was a point of pride with me–but turns out to actually be enjoyable, go figure. I think one reason for this is simply that “normal” sports are so woven into our culture that it’s highly convenient to pay attention to them when you feel like it. (The games are often on when you’re eating dinner, they’re never more than a few time zones away, etc.) But I wonder if another reason is that professional cycling has just gotten really weird.
Okay, that’s not fair–obviously pro cycling has always been really weird:
It’s probably more accurate to say I’ve gotten old and the weirdness isn’t the same weirdness I’m familiar with. Consider the bikes:
Clearly, watching pro cycling for the bikes is silly and kind of like watching tennis for the rackets, but at the same time if you love bikes and you love cycling obviously dorking out on the machines is part of it. As someone who still enjoys race bikes I’m sure I’d love riding one of these things. Nevertheless, for better or worse, like the rock fan stuck in the ’90s who won’t listen to anything after the second Alice In Chains record or whatever, there’s a point at which I stop getting excited about the bikes and no longer try to keep up with them. To me, this was the last relevant Colnago:
[Also from that auction site.]
Now between the aero kits and the bikes with the disc brakes and the hidden cables (or no cables at all) and all that other stuff it just kind of creeps me out. The whole sport’s just too smooth now, like when Uncle Leo lost his eyebrows:
Then there’s the performance-enhancing. Obviously pro cyclists always went about that in a weird way, but in the old days it was at least the sort of furtive and desperate weird you associate with drug use. Downing some pot belge, Floyd standing guard at the bathroom door of the US Postal bus while Lance shot up a bloodbag or whatever… Now they just do it all futuristically, like people who vape:
I mean listen to all this stuff:
Being out of it as I am, gene doping was a new one to me, and I had to look it up:
So instead of taking EPO you take a gene that makes your body make more EPO:
Meanwhile, in its ever-increasing weirdness, cycling continues to grapple with ever-weirder non-issues like “sustainability:”
It’s a sport where everyone rides bikes, yet sustainability is a larger issue than inserting DNA up your ass?*
*[I have no idea how or where they’re inserting the DNA, but I’m going to assume it’s all done anally until told otherwise.]
Maybe the real problem with cycling as a sport is just that you have to think about it too much. And at this point in my life, the last thing I want to have to do is think.