Origins

After writing about Missy Giove, I got to thinking about how bicycle racers come to be.  

When "The Missile" was flying down mountainsides, downhill racing was a new genre of mountain biking. Before that time--the early-to-mid '90's-- nearly all of the prominent mounatain bikers started off as road racers.  However, she was one of the first mountain bikers who didn't have a significant background on the road. Later in the decade, there would be a "critical mass" of mountain bike racers who spent all or most of their amateur and professional careers as mountain bikers without spending significant time on the road or track. 

Interestingly, by the end of that decade, American dominance of mountain biking would end.  While riders from the US still won more than their share of victories, the best young talent in the sport was coming from Europe--first from France, then from Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Austria and a few other countries.  

One would have thought that the riders from the other side of the Atlantic--where racing culture was, and still is, deeper than it is in the New World-- would have been, if anything, road or track racers before becoming mountain bikers.  And indeed some were.  But those new riders from the Alps, Pyrenees and other mountain areas of Europe also had roots in another sport that is more prominent over there than it is here:  downhill ski racing.  

It makes sense, at least to me:  My own (admittedly limited) experience with both has shown me that downhillers, whether they're on skis or wheels, have to have similar reflexes and moves.  Plus, if you're living in a mountainous area, you simply have more opportunities to do either sport, let alone both.

Now, to a completely different area of cycling: the triathlon.  Of course, it's not strictly a cycling event:  it also involves running and swimming.  Still, one might expect that a large percentage of triathloners to come from the world of bicycle racing.  


I am sure that many do, although I have seen no research to corroborate that. However, from my own admittedly-informal observations, and from knowing several triathloners, I get the impression that most triathloners start off--and identify themselves primarily--as runners. And not many seem to be mainly swimmers 

Promo for mini-triathlon in Marysville, MO, 2012

If what I've seen is indicative of the wider world, I can think of one reason why triathloners might be runners first and foremost .  Of the three triathlon events, running is hardest on the knees and other body parts.  If someone's joints and limbs can stand up to the pounding or jarring that results from hitting the pavement, they can certainly handle cycling and swimming.  Conversely, while swimming is a very intensive physical activity, it places very little stress on the knees. 

So...If some of the best downhill racers were skiers before taking up mountain biking, and the majority of triathloners start off as runners, what were the first bike racers doing before they started spinning their pedals?

What Congestion Pricing Might Prevent

A few days ago, I wrote about congestion pricing and the wonderful effects it's having on people's physical and mental health--not to mention pedestrians' and cyclists' safety--in Center City London and beyond.  It's been proposed here in New York but it's gone over about as well as lead bagels.

The funny thing is that the people who are most vehemently opposed to it are always complaining about parking.  I should think that, if anything, it would make parking easier.  It might even prevent scenes like this:

From XCiteFun

 

The Moveable Feast Of Bicycle Racing

Recently, I mentioned Ernest Hemingway in one of my classes.  Not a single student had heard of him, let alone read any of his works.

I have very mixed feelings about that.  On one hand, I'm appalled that they'd gotten to college without knowing about one of the most famous American writers.  On the other, I'm not so sorry, as I've gone through periods of absolutely loathing him (the man as well as the work) for the all-but-complete absence of credible, let alone substantial, female characters and the testosterone-soaked world he created and image he projected.

Then again, there is an economy and precision in his language that few other writers have equaled--and which, ironically, makes him easy to parody.  And for all that he glorified masculine pursuits, few writers have shown war-weariness from a combatant's point of view as well as he did.  

Whether I've loved or hated him, there is one work of his I always loved:  A Moveable Feast, which was published posthumously.  Even after having lived in Paris and enjoyed a few extended visits in the City of Light, I am still moved by his descriptions of his life there.  Also, I always had the sense that if he ever let his guard down as a writer, he did so in writing that book.

If he was capable of sighing, he did it in that book.  In particular, he expresses regret--and seems almost apologetic--in talking about one topic about which he couldn't write: bicycle racing.

One of the things that all of those English teachers never mentioned while they were ramming The Snows of Kilimanjaro and A Clean, Well-Lighted Place down the throats of my generation was that, while in Paris, he became a big fan of bicycle racing and that he was an active cyclist through much of his life.  A friend of his, Mike Ward, introduced him to it after giving up betting on horse racing because, he said, he'd found something better in bicycle racing. 

 

Hemingway similarly became enamored of two-wheeled pursuits after turning his attentions away from the trotters.  Given that he wrote stories about hunting and fishing, which he also loved, it's no surprise that he would want to write about bike racing.  But, as he recounts in A Moveable Feast:

"I have started many stories about bicycle racing but have never written one that is as good as the races are both on the indoor tracks and the roads."

 He gives one possible reason why he couldn't write a story he liked about racing:

"French is the only language it has ever been written in properly and the terms are all in French and that is what makes it hard to write."  

Still, he is glad to have been introduced to the sport:

"Mike was right about it, there is no need to bet. But that comes at another time in Paris."

 Maybe it's time for me to read him again.

 

A Sign In Late Spring

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there was a time when I actually regarded Coca-Cola as an energy drink.  I'm sure some cyclists still do.  In fact, some might regard it as a performance-enhancing drug.

Like nearly every cyclist in the developed world, I've seen innumerable Coke ads on billboards, storefronts and even painted on the sides of buildings.  But I've never seen one quite like this:

It's a still from Late Spring (Banshu), a 1949 film directed by Yasujiro Ozu.  Based on Kazuo Hirotsu's novel Father and Daughter (Chichi to musume), it belongs to a genre of Japanese film called shomingeki, which deals with the ordinary daily lives of modern working- and middle-class Japanese people.  This genre flourished during the immediate postwar period, in spite (or, some say, because) of the heavy censorship imposed by Allied occupying forces.  
Such films usually focused on families, featured simple plots and were shot with static cameras.  This genre might be compared, in some ways, to the Italian neo-realist films of the same period (such as Rome, Open City and The Bicycle Thief) and the French New Wave that brought us the likes of Le Quatre Cent Coups (The 400 Blows) a decade later.

There's a certain irony to seeing a Coca-Cola road sign in a film that's supposed to--at least on the surface--celebrate an idealized version of Japanese family life.  Then again, some have seen it as one of the ways Ozu subverted the censorship of the time. 

Hmm...Coca-Cola presented as a threat to traditional authority in order to subvert the censorship imposed by an occupier.  It's a bit much to wrap my head around.  Maybe it's easier to think of Coke as an energy drink--or even a performance-enhancing drug!

A Cycling Catalogue Becomes A Software Company

I may not ever need their services.  But if I do, I'll be sure to call them, just because of their name.

I'm talking about an outfit called Cycling '74. Their home page describes them as "a full kit of creative tools for sound, graphics, music and interactivity in a visual environment."

Hmm...It sounds like a few bicycle races I've been to. 

Headquartered in San Francisco (where else?), Cycling '74 was founded in 1997 by David Zicarelli to serve as the distributor for his various collections of software. 

According to the company's website, he took the name from a 1974 bicycle catalogue that contained many of the images used on the company's original website.

He could have done much worse:  1974 was an interesting year in cycling.  It was probably the apex of the Bike Boom in America.  Eddy Mercx won the last of his five Tour de France titles.  The World Championships were held for the first time in North America--in Montreal, to be exact.  And SunTour, Campagnolo and other component makers would make significant changes to their lineups.

Most important, I think, is that the iconic images of the Bike Boom--the bikes, the riders and the rides--seem to come from that year, or thereabouts.  When people think of a "Bike Boom bike", images of that year's  Fuji S-10S, Raleigh Grand Prix or Super Course, Motobecane Mirage and Schwinn LeTour, among others, come to mind.