Last drinks, gentlemen...
Bicycle racing is a strange beast. Some races are over before they’re even a third completed, any mystery of a victor negated by methodical displays of team riding and tactical strangulation of opponents. Other races are so hard to pick that to even attempt to is committing VSP suicide; yet still we pick. For three weeks out of the year, racing in France can be pretty predictable, yet for one day of the year it’s the most exciting time on the calendar. We don’t know who’s going to win that race until the end. Sure there are favorites, but those favorites can’t just sit there and control proceedings for six hours, let alone for three weeks. That’s the beauty of Spring Classic racing.
This hill, if you can call it a hill, more like a false flat, a little ramp, a gentle bump, is likely the final opportunity for he not wanting to contest a sprint, to get away and solo in, if any previous attacks on the cobbles haven’t stuck… this is the puncheur’s, the rouleur’s, last chance saloon. The better sprinter will wait until the very last moment to pounce upon his weakened prey, like a dentist on the savannah.
I don’t know who these two 80s studs are, actually, but I would hazard a guess that Monsieur Yellow is probably the lesser sprinter, especially if the knotted guns of M 101 are any indicator. Maybe the attack stuck, and M Yellow got to cruise to the line without stress, and blew kisses to the adoring masses, soaking it all in. Maybe 101 hung on for grim life on the last kilometres of the nondescript, straight road and came around late, winning by millimetres.
I really don’t know. And that’s how I like my racing.
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This is the most literary, poetic, and fucking rhetorical thread I have ever seen anywhere, just on the basis of two similes:
Had this read "like a dentist on the serengeti," the assonance within the simile would have made me squirm like a little girl being given her first pony. The timing of it is perfect, though.
Obviously, it's all thematic juxtaposition here. Two great, utterly different, films having their figurative heads knocked together. First rate.
I feel like a cigarette.
@frank
Maybe if he kept his levers in compliance he wouldn't collect boxes of frites.
@RobSandy
Pain leads to suffering. Suffering leads to getting stronger. Getting stronger leads to being able to have more beer. Or something like that.
@Owen
Thanks Yoda. Beer Yoda.
I rode the last few hundred metres back to my house with a carrier bag containing pie and chips hanging from my handlebars, and 3 bottles of Doom Bar stuffed down the front of my bibs.
I take recovery very seriously.
Wrong photo but great article. The hill you write about may be the last chance to launch an attack but it was not the hardest "climb" of the route for me. That title belongs to the bridge over highway A27, just after the double hit of Le Carrefour de l'Arbre straight into the Gruson sectors of Páve. Windswept, pissing wet from the rain and trying to eat a very dry waffle (I was so fucked by this point I was struggling to get my bidons back into the cages) when i was overtaken just before the bridge by my riding buddy. Trying to hold his wheel up and over that bridge nearly pushed me over the edge.
Their goddamn shiny black shorts make me dream of riding tomorrow ahead of the race...so much classier than the Skittles colors of today's kits. I'm thinking of you, Astana.
@RobSandy
One should always take recovery seriously. Luckily many craft breweries are putting out quality beer in cans such that the risk of having a shower beer is much diminished.
@Ron
Better than Lotto-Jumbo kit this year. I'm sort of amazed ASO let them start in yellow kits. The Lotto kit from a couple years ago was boss, and now this.
@Owen
Lotto-Jumbo is the new name for Rabobank/Blanco/Belkin, so they don't necessarily have the best form when it comes to kit design.
I'd dare say the team you're referring to is Lotto Belisol, which is now Lotto Soudal & still have a pretty sweet kit, with rule compliant black shorts.
Yep, it's easily the pick of the current peloton.