"Here's a note of some interest before you go on to read the brilliant op-ed in today's NYTimes. The new Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary added the word""peloton.""
And now... I hope and trust some of you will get the play on words that is the title. -Rosenthal
No Remembrance of the Things They Passed
By VIKEN BERBERIAN
ARSEILLE, France
When the Tour de France begins its centenary on Saturday, nearly 200 cyclists will embark on a most idiosyncratic race, one that hovers between tradition and transcendence, between solitude and community. But as the equipment and the training get better and better, one wonders if this will finally be the year when speed and solitude win, and riders, in the pursuit of velocity, completely seal themselves off from the world.
Of course it has been a while since riders actually had time to take in the legendary mountain passes of the Izoard and Galibier, the salt marshes of the Vendée, the gritty Old Port of Marseille. How could they? Each year, they go faster and faster. During the first Tour, in 1903, Maurice Garin led the pack at an average speed of 15.6 miles per hour. A century later, Lance Armstrong, favored to win his fifth consecutive Tour this year, logs an average speed of more than 25 miles an hour. If velocity equals distance divided by time, each compressed second leaves a blurred image of the idyllic landscape around them.
Still, speed isn't everything. Part of the Tour's charm is that it has historically indulged the idiosyncratic. In the 1906 race, on the road to Nice, René Pottier allowed himself a little eccentricity. Ahead of his competitors by more than an hour, he stopped at a roadside cafe for a bottle of vin de pays. (Lucky in wine and bicycles, he was unlucky in love. Nearly six months after winning the Tour, this great romantic committed suicide on learning that his wife was cheating on him.)
After completing the eighth stage in the 1914 Tour, the gourmand rider Ernest Paul decided to ignore conventional training advice to feast on oysters in the pell-mell of the Old Port of Marseille in July. Later that night his sins weighed heavily on him, and he came down with a case of food poisoning. Despite his doctor's predictions of imminent death, Paul mounted his bike the next morning and managed to come in 12th in the Tour.
It is hard to think of a rider today who would have stopped as Hugo Koblet did in the 1951 Tour to take out a sweat-soaked sponge and a comb from his jersey and groom himself before arriving first at the finish line for the day's stage. Where is the rider who could take over Koblet's role as the ""pédaleur de charme""? The spectators will tell you he flew by at supersonic speed and they barely caught a glimpse of him.
Decades ago, riders spent time interacting with their French audience. During the 1968 Tour, Raymond Riyotte allowed spectators to give him a nudge during a climb. He would goad them on by asking their names, promising to send them photos, engaging them in vigorous conversation.
This is not to say that these interactions were uniformly polite. Henri Desgragne, architect of the Tour, fired a pistol during an early race to disperse a crowd of truncheon-wielding thugs near Saint-Étienne who were beating on the leading riders. Belgium's human velociraptor, Eddy Merckx, would have probably secured his sixth victory in the 1975 Tour were it not for an unlikely adversary: during a climb, Merckx took a punch to the gut from a French fan — in the name of la patrie. The 70's, after all, were the years of Belgian hegemony — Belgium has won 18 Tours in all, compared with 36 for France and seven for the United States — and one of the things the French hate the most is the predictable ennui of domination (unless it is their own).
It seems unlikely that there would be such an encounter today. Nearly 12,000 police officers patrolled the race last year, about 60 per ri"
Here's a truly great piece of bike writing
"I have to disagree with you, Richard. I thought the article was pretentious and poorly written. It gives the impression that the riders are entirely cut off from the spectators nowadays. The truth is that the fans can get closer to the athletes here than in almost any sport. Filip Bondy of the Daily News made the comparison a few weeks ago between the tennis players who demand complete silence and the cyclists who have people standing or running beside them at a distance of a few feet, shouting and waving almost in their faces.
To make a few specific criticisms:
--""...one wonders if this will finally be the year when speed and solitude win, and riders, in the pursuit of velocity, completely seal themselves off from the world."" Who on earth wonders whether this will be the case, whatever it means?
--""Of course it has been a while since riders actually had time to take in the legendary mountain passes...During the first Tour, in 1903, Maurice Garin led the pack at an average speed of 15.6 miles per hour..."" In 1903, most roads weren't paved, stages were much longer than today, the racers were riding bikes with one gear, and each man was responsible for all his own support. Those men weren’t sightseers, they were incredibly tough warriors.
--""Each year, they go faster and faster."" Not true. In fact, the 1963 Tour was raced at a higher average speed than that of 1983.
--""If velocity equals distance divided by time, each compressed second leaves a blurred image of the idyllic landscape around them."" Let’s see, if velocity--no, I won’t try to comprehend this. It’s just nonsense.
--""René Pottier allowed himself a little eccentricity..."" At that time and even many years later, drinking wine or beer during stages was quite common, nothing eccentric or ""idiosyncratic"" about it.
--""Lucky in wine...this great romantic..."" Huh???
--""It is hard to think of a rider today who would have stopped as Hugo Koblet did in the 1951 Tour to take out a sweat-soaked sponge and a comb from his jersey and groom himself before arriving first at the finish line for the day's stage."" I don’t believe this. I’m sure he didn’t comb his hair till he crossed the line. Koblet was no fool.
--""The spectators will tell you he flew by at supersonic speed and they barely caught a glimpse of him."" Really? They will?
--""During the 1968 Tour, Raymond Riyotte..."" That’s certainly an odd looking French name. It’s misspelled, and should be ""Riotte.""
--""Belgium's human velociraptor, Eddy Merckx..."" Who else but this brilliant writer would think of comparing Eddy to a dinosaur? (By the way, I had to look the word up on the Internet; it isn’t in my dictionary.)
--""The 70's, after all, were the years of Belgian hegemony..."" Five Tours were won by Belgians, four by the French in the ‘70’s.
--""It seems unlikely that there would be such an encounter today. Nearly 12,000 police officers patrolled the race last year, about 60 per rider."" The question is how many policemen per spectator. And statistics like this don’t mean much. Spectators are allowed to get very close to the riders, and physical contact isn’t impossible. Do you remember when Wladimir Belli was thrown out of the Giro two years ago for punching a spectator?
--""Protected from the spectators' eyes by their teammates in the peloton, they communicate only with their managers, via radio."" Any contender will be riding ahead of the peloton at some point in the Tour, in full view (and sometimes close reach) of the spectators.
--""In 'Mythologies,' Roland Barthes summed up the Tour by four movements: to manage, to pursue, to break away, and to resign."" Very illuminating, I’m sure, to people who enjoy this kind of critical rubbish.
--""The most poetic of these is the breakaway, he said, for it embodies marvelous contradictions. The inevitable frenetic sprint, the exuberant desire to escape to solitude, is nearly always ineffectual: other riders i"
And thank you for both the critical eye and the writing skill to dissect this worthless POS.
Alas...Some people are so damn pedantic.
I however,enjoyed both the op-ed and the clever Proust reference.
Ah – diversity of literary opinions. Expressed without hostility or vulgarity. I must check – yes, the NYCC board. How refreshing.
RR, I think the excerpt is well-written, evocative and informative. Me likes it! The Barthes reference caps it off for me. Thank-you !
MS, well, see above ;-)
Rgds, JP
No doubt, JP, when you saw my name in the Author line, you expected a foul-mouthed tirade. But as you see, I am full of surprises. I can even be civil, when I make a strong effort.
JP, you thought the article was well-written and informative? Well, who am I to disagree with a person of your taste and erudition? I feel uncomfortable if your opinion (no doubt very well founded) contradicts mine.
Regards,
MS
"Out of curiosity, I looked up Viken Berberian's novel The Cyclist on Amazon.com. Here's the beginning of the editorial review:
""In his debut novel, Viken Berberian offers a rich and vital portrayal of a prospective Middle Eastern terrorist. The Cyclist explores the background and motivations of its unnamed narrator, a Lebanese terrorist-in-training given the task of detonating a bomb (delivered on his bicycle) at a luxury hotel outside of Beirut. Much of the novel's first half takes place in a hospital, wherein the narrator, seriously injured after a collision on his bicycle, shares details of his past and ruminates on his extreme political sentiments and love of food and bicycling. As the day of his planned sacrifice draws near, new obligations arise and he gradually realizes the possible ramifications of his proposed retaliatory strike. Berberian skillfully constructs a humanizing account of a man who is a witness to acts of cruelty, who is driven by fear, anger, and hope of retribution.""
On the Amazon page, you can view the first few pages. The book begins like a helmet tract:
""You should always wear a helmet when riding a bicycle. The helmet should fit snugly. The chin strap should hold firmly against the throat. The buckle should be fastened securely. Consider this: last year there were 11 bike accidents in Iceland, 371 in France and 97 in England. I have no statistics from Holland, but surely, if I had been riding my bicycle on its flat land, I would have been spared my tragedy.""
Now, here's a Lebanese terrorist going to blow up a hotel and kill hundreds of people (and probably himself), and, of course armed with the latest statistics, he opens his narrative with a humanitarian plea to wear helmets.
And there were only 97 bike accidents in England in one year? I guess he means fatalities?
Well, if a man has written a novel called The Cyclist, he must be an authority on the subject; the kind of authority that writes guest op-ed columns in the Times!"
I didn't think much of Berberian's op-ed but Samuel Abt's daily Tour coverage in the NYT is pure enjoyment. He has a sense of the history and spirit of the Tour and writes in a smart, funny, quirky style.
