Evolution is a slow, gradual process, punctuated by sudden change. For the first 80 years of our sport, riders rode contra la montre on their regular road bikes. For certain, the bikes were carefully cleaned and tuned to remove all possible resistance, but these were their standard, daily machines. Then, in a span of barely ten years came the…
Category: Anatomy of a Photo
This photo of Phil Anderson’s genuine surprise at the gap between himself and the guy who won at losing reminds me of a story my dad tells of a crewmate from his boat at Laga. My dad was the stroke in a boatful of guys who went on to the compete in several World Championships…
A mechanical of any kind thrusts a professional cyclist into a kind of paradoxical isolation; swarmed by cars and motorcycles, yet they are often left alone to find their way back to the peloton by their own strength. But this isn’t their first rodeo, and these aren’t cowboys. Put it in the Big Ring, set the…
The Rules, of course, are a sort of reference guide for those of us who may need a little bit of help making sure we act and look Fantastic at all times, whether on or near the bike. However much they are steeped in the history of our sport, they are by their very nature…
I know the feeling, Laurent. Sometimes I just want to give the cross winds a big, “Fuck You”, too.
It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: the shoes say an awful lot about the rider. More than they’d like them to in retrospect, I’m guessing. Here we have the Prophet, looking mighty dapper, congratulating the unexpected victor in the form of Charley Mottet in the Grand Prix of his own name. A first…
If we were meant to fly, Merckx would have given us wings. But he did give us two wheels and Physics. The first allows us to feel like we’re flying, and the second gives us the propensity to fall over and, as such, crashing – or the fear of crashing – is the constant companion…
Today’s stage of the Giro finished on a steep dirt road. But when we talk about dirt roads – even the ones in of the Strade Bianchi – we are still generally talking about well-maintained roads. Leafing through CycleSport this morning after the stage, I noticed this shot of the Croix de Fer. Before jumping instinctively…
I’m not quire sure which climb this is, but I’m certain the race is Liége-Bastogne-Liége and I’m guessing the climb La Redoute. On the surface, we have the end of a bygone era; when the big names contested not only the cobblestones of Roubaix and Flanders, but also the Côtes of Wallonia. The looks on these…
Jeff in PetroMetro submitted this piece to us quite some time back, and we decided to hold off on publishing it until we got a little closer to the Giro, due to the story’s relation to the Giro. We knew it wouldn’t be the first time someone has written about it, but that’s never stopped…
A lot has been made lately of the fact that riders today are lacking a little bit of the V. It’s not so much a criticism of how they conduct themselves during a race (although that has also been called into question lately), but in their general demeanor towards their life as a cyclist. It doesn’t…
Perusing the Velominati Archives of Cycling Photos Liberated from the Interwebs (VACPLI), I stumbled across this little gem. I’m sure they are lovely people on the inside, but this photo showcases one of the most unflattering examples of spectators we find along the roadside of the Great Races. I’m not sure how you can be…
The above photo was liberated from a Dutch website which appears to be dedicated solely to a book about Dutch and Belgian riders both old and new. I can’t read a lick of Dutch, in fact, I’m not even 100-% sure it’s a Dutch site (based on the “.nl” though I’m pretty sure). The website…
I’m not particularly fond of this photo, but it certainly tells you a thing or two about Le Blaireau. A man more comfortable speaking with his appendages than with words, he was patron of the last peloton that truly represented the working class sport that cycling originally was; one where riders escaped a tough life of manual labor…
In honor of the first Australian to win KBK it seems appropriate to give a Chapeau to our mates down under. Congrats to perhaps the greatest up and coming cycling nation on earth and to Chris Sutton for a show of strength in what was a free-for-all to the finish in Kuurne today. Lest our…
Whenever I send out an Out of Office reminder at work, I take special care to indicate where I’ll be, which is always Awesomeville. It amazes me how few questions this raises, but I chalk it up to it being a foregone conclusion. Imagine my surprise, then, when upon my return from Maui someone asked me where, precisely,…
All I can do is quote @michael: $27,250 for this POS. Don’t know if it’s worth an article or just a post, but for that price, I’d like my really cheap saddle set back properly. The beautiful thing for us is that an Anatomy of a Photo piece can almost be the same as a…
Sitting at the top of Haleakala, I thought of this photo with the staunch realization that there are no words to describe the agony of exhaustion, except Graham Watson’s caption in Visions of Cycling: Paul Sherwen’s mother cried when she saw this picture of her son, taken after the finish of the 1983 Paris-Roubaix
One of my favorite pass times is to chuck a cycling term into Google’s Image Search, set the filter to Large, and see what turns up. It is incredible how much porn you have to sift through, by the way. I would really think words like “shaved” and “hardman” would be innocent enough, but take…
With the “widely anticipated” unveiling of both Leopard-Trek’s and Garmin-Cervelo’s new kits we thought it would be interesting to look back into the archives to see how it used to be done. Nowadays, the new team and kit presentations are done with much fanfare, limousines, black-tie events, and sometimes even strippers. But back in the…