Can’t live with cycling, can’t live without it

Saturday was the first day of the Tour de France. As they have done for six years now, the Jet Fuel Coffee shop set up a TV to air the race each morning. My wife suggested we head up for a coffee to watch the finish of the stage and get in on the action and excitement at the shop.

To be honest though, I have been in something of a dark place when it comes to cycling. The doping admissions by Lance Armstrong, and more close to home and perhaps more acutely those of Michael Barry, affected me deeply. It wasn’t so much the doping that hit me, but really the lying and duplicity that went hand in hand with it. For a while I was too busy to think about it, and didn’t realize how much it had affected me. But for the past month, I have had more time on my hands and the revelations have made me question my dedication to the sport, and what the duplicity of my competitors means for us in a broader societal sense.

Then came Saturday, the first stage of the 100th Tour de France. I woke up, went to my computer and started streaming the stage. Being a sprinter’s stage, it wasn’t exciting or action packed. And yet I watched and enjoyed it; the majesty and beauty of the peloton are not easily shrugged off, nor is the sheer physical ability of the riders competing. My wife and I arrived at the coffee shop for the final 40 km. I told her about the tactics, who was doing what and why, and how we would probably see the race unfold. We talked about the sprinters, the GC riders, and how they and their teams would each be riding in the finale.

Come the final 20 km, as the peloton turned off the highway onto the smaller rural road toward the finish, the café was on edge, waiting to see who would start the dash for the line. Then a team bus got caught under the finish barrier, with the peloton strung out at 8 km to go! And still the riders were coming at full speed. We were all glued to the TV, someone shouting “get the bus out of the way!” as if they would hear across the ocean in France.

I realized, after having enjoyed watching the stage, that cycling for me is like the women in the saying: can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em. While watching the stage, I wasn’t thinking about doping, liars and cheats. I was thinking about how beautiful the sport of cycling is. The imagery and fusion of man and machine has captured my imagination since I first saw the Tour on TV in 1988 when Steve Bauer was defending the yellow jersey. Feeling that pleasure again was refreshing: a relief from the depression caused by Armstrong et al. There are 20 stages to go and I’ll enjoy my summer that much more watching them.