Where Is His Rival?

I'm now waiting for a rival.

That sounds like something Muhammad Ali could have said at the peak of his career.  Or, perhaps, Eddy Mercx, Bernard Hinault or Martina Navritilova.  I think we could also add Serena Williams, Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky to the list of athletes who were in a class by themselves when they were at the top of their game.

The man who uttered it, though, may have had even more of a right to make such a claim. In February 2012, he rode 24.250 kilometers (15.1 miles) in an hour, on a track.  That might not seem remarkable, much less like a record of any sort, until you realize that the ride was accomplished by a man who had turned 100 a few months earlier.

Robert Marchand thus set a record for track cyclists 100 years or older.  Two years later, he bested that mark with 26.927 kilometers (16.73 miles) in an hour.

If he was looking for a rival then, he would have an even more difficult time finding one on 4 January 2017. That day, an hour of pedaling the Velodrome National, just outside of Paris, added up to 22.547 kilometers (14.01 miles).  That would set one-hour track record for the 105-and-over age group, a category created specifically for him.

Now tell me, who is going to rival that?

What's really interesting about Robert Marchand's feats, though, is that he isn't a "career" cyclist.  He had racing aspirations in his youth, but a coach advised him to give them up because, he said, his size (1.52 meters, or 5 feet and 52 kilograms, or 115 pounds) would hold him back.

Robert Marchand was born in the northern French city of Amiens on 26 November 1911.  After decades of working in Venezuela and Canada, he returned to France in the 1960s.  At age 68, he dedicated himself to his youthful passion of cycling.

Before setting his track his track records, he took some long-distance rides, including a trek from Paris to Moscow in 1992.  

In addition to the track records I previously mentioned, he also holds the record for someone over the age of 100 riding 100 kilometers.  When he turned 106, his doctors advised him to stop training for records.  But he continued to ride, at least 20 minutes every day.  In February 2018, he completed a 4000 meter race in the same stadium where he set his over-105 record.  And he celebrated his 107th birthday with a 20 kilometer ride.  

He finally transitioned to indoor riding, due to hearing loss, after he turned 108.  He continued, however, to ride every day until a week before his death on Saturday, age 109.

Even if he hadn't set records for his age group, I think one would have to look very, very long and very, very far to find a rival for Robert Marchand.  

True Upward Mobilty

You've heard about the snail who was insecure about himself.

He bought a "Z" car and changed the "Z" to an "S."

Now, whenever he drives by, people gush, "Oh!  Look at the S-Car go!"

What would that snail have done with a bicycle? 

What's Going On

Had I been anywhere near Washington, DC yesterday, I would have taken a ride on the Marvin Gaye Trail.

Would there have been a better way to celebrate his album, "What's Going On" on the 50th anniversary of its release?

The title song, and other tracks, were time capsules of the mood of the time--and among its most innovative works.  

Those songs were written from the point of view of a Vietnam War veteran.   It's hard not to think that he could have written it, almost verbatim, from the consciousness of someone returning from Iraq or Afghanistan.  

So much was going on then, as now.  The Summer of Love and Woodstock expressed hope that the world could change for the better; Marvin Gaye's song--as well as others released the same year (Think, of John Lennon's "Imagine," for example) said that things must change.  They remind me, in a way, of W.H. Auden's September 1, 1939, in particular its penultimate stanza:

    All I have is a voice 

    To undo the folded lie, 

    The romantic lie in the brain    

    Of the sensual man-in-the street

    And the lie of Authority

    Whose buildings grope the sky:

    There is no such thing as the State 

    And no one exists alone;

   Hunger allows no choice 

   To the citizen or the police; 

   We must love one another or die.

Interestingly, Marvin Gaye's album saw the light of day just as the North American Bike Boom was gathering steam.  Although many people purchased bikes they rode once or twice, more than a few were motivated to buy and ride by the knowledge that an economy and society in which people drive cars everywhere and burn fossil fuels to do everything else was not sustainable: The inevitable results would be environmental degradation (Now we know environmental destruction is an all-too-real possiblity!), inequality and all manner of other injustices--and war.  

What's going on now?  What would Marvin Gaye make of it?  Would he take a ride on the trail named for him?

I always suspected that Marvin was one of us!