You heard it in the subject and you’re hearing it again. My man, it is the Tour de France.
WHAT HITS
I have a correction. My most listened to song of 2024 will be Charli XCX’s “Girl, so confusing” featuring Lorde.
A DRIP on the Tour de France
The last time it was this hot I was walking between my apartment and my nanny job in Chicago freaking out about my health. It was 1.7 miles. The trains and buses didn’t align to make it any faster. It wasn’t a bad walk. All of the test results, the surgery estimates, the audio messages of encouragement and concern were processed and presented in these steps. My doctor called on this walk with the most challenging news. I sat on a curb and asked her to explain it a third time. A man came up to me after the call and mouthed, “Are you ok?” like my kidnapper was listening. It was a Bethesda Category IV which meant there was a fair chance it was malignant so I whispered back, “Totally, thank you,” and gave him a thumbs up. After he walked away I pulled out my phone and rewatched Wout van Aert greet Jonas Vingegaard after his historic time trial that had occurred hours prior. Wout grinning and slapping a heaving Jonas who rested his head on his teammate like a found dog. Across the world, something incredible had happened. I rewatched it several times and stood up.
The men’s pro cycling season occurs from February to October and includes 1-day races and 5 to 21 day tours. A tour is one long race with a stage per day. Tours with 21 stages are the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France (TDF), and La Vuelta Espana and occur in that order. All but two races take place in Europe. You’d need to fork over about $500/year in subscription fees to keep up with the entire season. I dated an Italian guy several years ago whose Uncle drove a garbage truck early in the morning near Milan. His daily audio messages with cycling updates would arrive around midnight our time and cost nothing. They were in Italian so I could tell when something big had happened based off his nephew’s reaction. Each day he cursed and celebrated. Each day there was something. This should’ve been a clue. I didn’t pay attention to men’s pro cycling until Season 1 of TDF: Unchained dropped on Netflix four years later. Now, I download Peacock for the tours and keep up with two cycling substacks for the rest of the season. I’m a new fan. And this post will be an amateur presentation of what I understand. In terms of knowledge of the sport, I am the three year old completely enamored with the train, fists clenched, screaming at its arrival. In terms of excitement for the sport, the same. What’s occurring in this Tour feels like a secret everyone needs to know. On a tour-scale, we are in the 5th year of an epic General Classification duel. On the stage-scale, each day’s story is heroic. If you are afraid you’ll never feel as excited as you once were, may I offer you the Tour de France.
The most prestigious award to win in the TDF is the General Classification (GC). It’s awarded to the rider that has the lowest overall time for the entire race, all 21 stages. It’s a big deal to win a stage or one of the other classifications. Lowest overall time wears a yellow jersey, the best climber wears the polka dot jersey, the best young rider wears a white jersey, and the rider with the most points wears the green jersey. These jerseys rotate daily depending on who is in the lead in each classification. Everything is a big deal in the TDF because it’s the TDF. It’s a big deal to win a stage or to spend even one day in a classification jersey. It’s a big deal for the rider, the team, the coach, and the $pon$or.
The teams are named after the Sponsor. Do other sports do this? I don’t know. The team name changes when the sponsor does. This year, Jumbo-Visma became Visma-Lease a Bike. The only American pro cycling team is called EF Education-Easypost. Team names don’t necessarily roll off the tongue.
There are French, Italian, American, etc. teams because that’s who founded them. But the riders are from everywhere. For example, EFE has 46 riders across their men’s and women’s team from 21 different nations that speak 16 different languages. The team chooses a language everyone can understand, usually English or French, and then communicate with it in its simplest form as the team varies in fluency. Coaches say exactly what needs to be said. Conversations between coaches and teammates are sparse but emotional, electric but plain. You can see this in the docuseries during the pre-stage meetings on the bus. Ten exhausted, strung out praying mantis’ looking at a map of a route they have never ridden before listening to the coach explain a plan they must now execute perfectly. There is some sort of four second pump-up speech like, “Come on guys. This is your dream.” One rider replies with, “Alright.” And then they put on a swimsuit, get on a bike, cycle up a mountain faster than they have ever gone in training, and then descend at 80/mph inches from someone doing the same.
Learning about the role of the domestique in cycling rocked my world. Teams typically have one GC rider and five to seven domestiques who work for the benefit of the GC. At it’s most basic, they bring food and water from the team car to the GC. At it’s more sick, they shield them from opponents, put themselves in a breakaway that forces the other teams to chase, make lightning-fast tactical calls as the race plan gets screwed. At it’s most sick, the more accomplished domestiques, or key helpers, will climb in front of the GC for the majority of the race allowing them to draft and save up to 40% in energy expenditure. Then, the GC will attack, pass their wiped out key helper, and beat the other GC they need to beat. It’s not like the GC is bad, they’re the best on the team. But they can’t win without their team. Domestiques receive no glory. We all know Lance Armstrong. For many reasons, sure. But, name one of his key helpers. I can’t. Domestique translates to servant in French. The best of them act accordingly.
Sepp Kuss isn’t featured once in Season 2 and very little in Season 1 but he’s in nearly every frame with Jonas. He cycled all three grand tours last year (unreal, very few do this). He served as key helper for Primo Roglic who won the Giro in May, key for Vingegaard who won the TDF in June, and then turned around and unexpectedly won the Vuelta himself in September, beating out his two team leaders. Vingegaard came in second. Roglic in third. Climbers and sprinters serve as domestiques but go for stage wins as well. Wout, mentioned earlier, is a sprinter and domestique for Visma. In Season 1, you’ll see him sacrifice stage wins to support the GC.
I hesitate to draw any sort of metaphor for life from cycling, as I will go overboard and ruin something I am trying to keep strictly itself. There are underdogs, whom I’ve always rooted for. And then there are domestiques. Someone who fights for the thing without reward. Is it out of love for the team. For the leader. Or is it something else. Are you are courageous enough to give your best for nothing. Are you awake enough to engage in challenge only for its experience. I haven’t cracked the lesson yet.
When you keep up with the TDF, you witness cyclists mentally and physically deteriorate. It’s a mind game like I haven’t seen demonstrated in other sport. They have to push their body to its edge while keeping their head in line. They do this for up to 6 hours a day (races vary from 13 to 130 miles) for three weeks straight. They wear an earpiece and can hear the coach car. A strong team sticks with the plan but has the knowledge and skill level to adapt. A stage starts, the plan fails, and a rider starts a new plan. It’s as complicated as a game of chess. You know in Dune II when Paul Atredies drinks the kool-aid and can finally sort through all the visions of the future he’s having and tells his mom in that eerie voice, “But I do see a way. There is a narrow way through.” A lot of the post-race interviews with the rider who won the stage or made the risky choice that their teammates had to support are similar in sentiment but sound more like, “My legs were there. My mind was there. So I went.”
Here’s the duel. Tadej Pogačar is a bull. He is arguably the greatest rider of all time. He is charismatic and funny. You’d want him at your party. He takes it seriously but after races he chats and jokes around. When he won the Tour in 2020 and 2021, he won three different jerseys classifications which hasn’t been done for four decades. Jonas Vingegaard is tree. Visma recruited him based off a climb posted on Strava. He fights against something we can’t see when he competes. He is kind and quiet. He won over the world when he waited for Pogačar to catch up after a crash during the Tour in 2022 instead of using the crash to his advantage. His first tour was the Vuelta in 2020. He took 2nd in the TDF in 2021 and then won it in 2022 and 2023.
They were neck and neck last year until they weren’t. Pogačar lost a mind game in one of the last stages but then turned around and fought the next day. Pogačar is favored to win this year. He’s already won the Giro de Italia, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and Volta. Vingegaard had a crash in April which resulted in a collapsed lung, broken collar bone, and several broken ribs. UAE, Pogacar’s team, has been firing on all cylinders since the season began. Visma’s had awful luck between crashes and sickness. Both sides of the duel have something to prove.
The TV series is much different than keeping up with the Tour in real time. Watching Season 2 this year I kept thinking, but this isn’t how it happened. There are so many details they missed. They briefly show Wout hug Jonas after the time trial but not enough to make you stand and remember even love that isn’t yours is strong enough to pull you up. It feels like they force a dramatic or ego-driven story out of a day that had an honest story already. Am I guilty of the same. When I look back a year ago do I squeeze more meaning from the time than necessary. Do I regret or yearn for difference simply for the drama of it. If I can no longer recall the entire thing is it worth examining only the pieces that hurt enough to remember.
I don’t know. The lesson I have learned from the domestique is wordless and, if pressed, would choose to remain silent. It would likely step past me with a nod and carry onward.
It started Saturday. The first stage was unreal. PostNL came out of nowhere. Roman Bardet, who is retiring this year, took first with the help of his teammate Frank van den Broek in a perfectly executed plan that was rooted in everything the sport stands for. Look at this finish. Listen to these coaches. Tomorrow is the third stage of the Tour de France. Pogačar has the yellow jersey. Jonas is riding his wheel.
WHAT’S UP, MATEJ?
Matej is my favorite cyclist because of this interview after winning Stage 19 of the TDF last year. He’s asked what the victory means to him, the same question we ask any athlete after a win. Usually, a brief, predictable response. Matej is exhausted and emotional, aware of the complexity of life and open to explaining it exactly how it’s coming to him. It’s a vivid breakdown of imposter syndrome and what it feels like to try at anything. Gino Mäder, who Matej references, died 2 weeks before the Tour de France last year after suffering a horrific crash in the Tour de Suisse.
See you in two weeks when the Tour will still be happening. Are you kidding me.
i learned a lot and now
i do wanna watch 🚴🚴♀️🚴♂️