Tour de France, Deconstructed

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This spring we examine the brutal, punishing beauty of a certain French bike race, one inspired by men who seem to thrive on a divine combination of willpower, rabies and ecstasy. Slipping deeper into metaphor, this grueling battle is channeled by adoring spectators who’ve come to see what happens at the howling edge of obsession, when ambition begins to peel the paint off reasonable limitations. On the wheel, as in life, saints and sinners are commingled in the peloton. They share a common drive.

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Metal / Mental / Mettle

The bicycle is an instrument. At first the player’s progression is simple; the magic of gearing aids sudden leaps of leverage over gravity. The precision of a finely engineered, perfectly-tuned bike harmonizes and fuses with the rider, and sends him into the wilderness. The inevitable maturation of fun stokes desire for challenges; maybe a commitment to pain if you possess the determination. You, versus You. After enough exposure to ego-devouring tests of fortitude, the resolute ones volunteer for self-sacrifice on local pro-am circuits that tear unqualified bodies apart. This is where contenders who display an inquisitive yet machine-like thought process are separated from hobbyists, prideful divas and the genetically maladroit. A rider’s transformation is solidified. A few ran hot, picked up sponsors and sought the higher calling. For them nothing will come easy.

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A rider’s Tour de France preparation launches conceptually, imaginably, in the depths of winter, as they sleep. The initial struggle of training is internal, and provides spark to dormant legs. In being paid to focus on one goal, in upholding the heritage of the Tour, the supreme striver might distinguish himself via cruel tutelage, extending a bid to lord over the compulsory or obvious by delving into the esoteric and intangible. To sample a theoretical flavor of the total effort the Tour requires, neuro-acrobatics designed to decipher its peerless unpredictability are vouchsafed, and repeatedly stress-tested in a mental hologram of scenarios. The verve is slyly harvested and preserved here. While the anticipatory stress is low and the world tour schedule temporarily barren, they go about deconstructing instincts in REM, images fluttering across the backs of eyelids—perchance to deep-cycle through limitless iterations governing the sophistication of speed, endurance, shrewd mathematical expenditures of energy and the nuances of wolf pack formation. A sublime insight beckons to aerodynamics and the ghostly sensation of muscle gliding efficiently over sinew. These moments are uncanny and impossible to prove. Doubts and shadows dart through trees and go clambering over the Matterhorn in the wee hours of the murky subconscious.

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Night operations such as these are essential because even though he is “the chosen one” in an elite sporting community, he will have to fend for himself. A million hands may clap a deafening thunder fit for kings on the sidelines, but the sound decays into strange and detached sonic ribbons—beyond their grasp, the rider rides alone against the wind. After the alarm clock goes off he belongs to a gang, but spends most of his day sparring against the Self in wakeful meditation. There is the wheel, always spinning, sending back to a primordial Gaia principle or two, augmenting the hive mind of enchanted masochists who dream of the Tour de France.

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Tour de France is a spirit. It is not enough to merely win, but to win with style and grace, echoing the respect of your hundred sworn enemies and an ambivalent nest of snapping baby birds known as “your eight other teammates.” They hunger and watch for signs of weakness. To reach that podium there will be invisible, allegorical bludgeoning and strangling amongst comrades. To have worn the yellow jersey for just one day is an honor that no one ever forgets. Finishing all stages in the fastest combined time brings reverence, esteem and apotheosis to the lone rider, the head of the spear, royalties due with interests backed by plutocrats who were lunching off-season in Davos and Sochi.

From the depths of torture, a rider develops the power move; the fame, another torture; the expectations—yet another. Keeps the wheel spinning round…every champion is himself a monument, though all who roll their bones through Paris on that fateful final day place a proverbial brick in the Arc de Triomphe.

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Rogue Riders, Systemic Mischief and the Chi of Icarus

Suspicions plague the Tour de France and rightfully so as it is rife with scandal, its back catalog littered with the ignominy of the busted and the shameless. Nearly two-thirds of top-10 finishers in the Tour between 1998 and 2014 used performance-enhancing drugs, but it goes much deeper than this. In tracing a hundred-plus laps around France to the race’s halcyon inception (minus the war years when it was canceled), its organizers have devised a stout rule book that copes with misdeeds, and builds a diaphanous sort-of jail for transgressors. In the lunacy of a three-week juggernaut, said book shall be burned to an ashen hue long before the champagne bottles are uncorked. Some will be ostracized; others might have habitually gotten away with it all their lives.

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Along the crooked path, savant-level venality and the Tour de France have enmeshed and malformed themselves against standards and best practices. This exclusive sporting class enables biologically altered warriors, having first made them students in the subtle gradation of artificial enhancement. As competitors bettered themselves through chemistry, cynical fans began waving “Tour de Doping” protest banners, and they were not mistaken. A rider could appear edgy yet still avoid giving off the impression of being whacked out of cognizance, instead saving that precious cerebral energy to mount sneaky campaigns. The impetus to cheat seemed to abhor a vacuum, and regularly exploded into contagious outbursts that only start to look like major events in hindsight. In this upper echelon they possess the V0₂ max of a bottlenose dolphin and become massively talented at the subterfuge of drug-taking. The science of tamper-proof devices and laboratory processes are hacked with Pentagon-level acumen. Think tanks are convened, heretofore poisonous avenues of ambition are tabled for discussion, and all barriers to cheating are analyzed for miniscule advantages. There is a man who knows nobody will like him if his bespoke “formula x” is discovered, but he no longer wonders about the consequences.

In the rich century-old history of tweaking on the Tour, Colombian cyclist Luis Herrera’s remarks on the matter may be unsurpassed:

“When I saw riders with fat asses climbing cols

like airplanes (at the Tour de France),

I understood what was happening.”

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On the ascent, cutting swiftly through thin air, they could capture an unsanctioned distillation of their most lethal maneuvers. In the sprint, inept test devices failed to detect the microdosing animal who just won the photo finish by two centimeters. In a beautiful delusion they could embody a living refinement of the ancient berserker mentality by understanding what it’s like to embrace—even delight in—temptation, gambling big, and banishment. An impressive scroll of monkeyshines unfurls back to the dawn of the race, and the doping scandals can now be measured in generations…being “clean” feels more like it is in the periphery, and to be avoided, when everyone is unapologetically absorbed in the prevalent abuse of the rules. Illegal methods and man-made substances are engaged to steal marginal gains. Using chemicals and/or a refreshing supply of spare plasma, doping-induced masculine revelries come with enormous side effects. In boosting the number of red blood cells in the bloodstream, the doping evidence trail shows where and how the blood was drawn, stored and furtively reinjected down the road. Oxygenation turbines makes things crisp, surreal even, and feel like a bucket of ice water on a sweltering day. It makes a rider fearless except for the pervasive terror of failure and abandonment.

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Perplexing varieties of adulterants spur lab rats of the velodrome onward, and get reformulated for slow-release smoldering as the Tour’s endless assault clocks past 2,200 miles: nitroglycerine to improve breathing, narcotic supplements planting dynamite under drained bodies, muscle-tightening strychnine, ether-soaked handkerchiefs to deaden the pain in their legs, cocaine and amphetamines, steroids, corticoids, pemoline, Reactivan, amineptine, bronchodilators Clenbuterol and Bromantan, the diuretic masking agent xipamide, steroid masking agent probenecid, Synacthen, Ritalin, ephedrine, nandrolone, phentermine, benzoylecgonine, DHEA, testosterone and synthetic growth hormones to train longer with less rest. This is a partial list; the full list goes on and on. All manner of pills and uncharted liquids have officially been found. In post-disgrace interviews, contrite riders said resistance to their odious charms seemed futile.

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By the 1990s, a fuller spectrum of drugs became detectable and anti-doping agencies began to gain traction. Over time there’s a ladder of one-upping between the good and bad guys as the game progresses. Growing adept at staying one step ahead of investigators, the Tour elite were maximizing the efficacy of blood-doping transfusions by using erythropoietin (EPO), a drug to increase red-cell production in anemia sufferers. Once the doping agencies caught on to EPO, some riders deftly switched over to obtaining derivative products such as Aranesp, a genetically-engineered recombinant EPO. You would not be surprised if they told you veterinary drugs were scavenged to elicit equine reactions (magnified into a smaller body); somewhere in their subversive clinic shades of the Josef Mengele vibe reverberated. Trafficking networks were interrogated and lives ruined. The team at some point made a pact to manipulate their very bone marrow, dared cycling federations to record hematocrit levels, and perhaps prayed against addiction and medical misadventure as a means to a superb end.

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These are the worst-kept secrets of the Tour, and the germ of a thousand confessions. To catch your prey, you must stay on target and hunt like no other cheetah in the Serengeti gene pool, even if it ruins your health. There are no candy-asses in this environment, reputations are made or drained where seconds are split to the thousandths, and the live-or-die moment is often decided by less than the length of a wheel. These days, equipment tampering may be grafted to the existing bio-tampering strategy—rumors have it that some cyclists have gone so far as to install micro-scaled, sound-dampened motors inside their frames to gain one more nearly-imperceptible advantage. Race inspectors will tell tales of how they began to divine gyroscopic anomaly through opaque surfaces. After the project ends, engineers and mechanics in the pit crew keep their oath by finding out if they can sell their stealth techniques to DARPA.

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Behold the archetype of a drug-addled, vainglorious Tour de France deceiver—let us marvel at the culmination of his labors! Such cunning, and there he goes now, in all his splendor…the song “Never Catch Me Ridin’ Dirty” plays from the chase car as he booms up a 17% maximum gradient. He is beyond the reach of ordinary logic. Having made the team, in pining to be Alpha among alphas, he has pondered the moral abyss, and tossed in a shoe. Guided by scumbag tactics and a streak of good evasive luck, somebody in the cabal ran the actuarial odds of getting pinched and answers cemented around the general idea of “fuck you, Doping Control.” They will police themselves instead.

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The Icarus complex is a strong force of prana, forging a relationship with fire, high ambition and ascensionism. Thus, its sufferers on tour are prone to pendulous emotional swings between ecstatic highs and depressive lows, and must redouble their efforts to calibrate the middle ground. You have to compliment them for their bewildering, iron wills. They’re not the first to feel this way about their lot in life. They live like Icarus, and in the narrative of Icarus their rise is defined by hubris, which then faces skepticism, staggering setbacks, and humiliation. In the Tour de France, as in life, our mad bids for immortality are met with Icarus-style endings as a warning to those who try to rise above their condition. Crushed beneath the wheel…

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Obsession and the Morality of Lance

A ragtag pack of tainted recreational conquerors with their dusty spokes and spandex, corrupted and ethics-free, can seem like society itself. They go by in blurs and smoke, owning what is cool and mighty. They see no purpose for the abatement of cheating until the etiquette is legislated…nothing is strictly off-limits or codified until outside enforcement intervenes. Either that or the calamitous hangover of non-therapeutic drawbacks gets too ominous. What began relatively benignly with cigarettes, wine and hashish in the early days of the Tour eventually escalated into blood-play and a coercive experimental orchestra of the periodic table of the elements, as conducted by Earth’s top chemists—black market, grayscale market, legit market…mattered not.

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Purity of obsession is a gift Lance Armstrong had in spades. Inside he drew a dark sketch of courage and inventiveness. He sprang into action with a calculated yet child-like recklessness. On a molecular level, he rode for the cohort of Merck, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, Amgen, DuPont, Dow and the French underground economy to multiple wins. His inner circle tightened as sponsorship headed further “under the skin.” Beyond that he’s staring at a grocery list of fixations that feed the very soul of any over-achieving athlete, pulsating back and forth behind the temples.

Touched by death and metastases, with the gods sparing a solitary testicle, Lance rode as if lashed by some evolved vector of rabies and Benzedrine. One-nutted, yea, but by his moxie and post-cancerous wits he emitted the testosterone-fueled power of three fully engorged nuts according to most scientific standards. He mastered rapid adaptation and healing, the stoic ability to shed pain and accelerate through it, even if it meant figuratively biting through his own nerve endings.

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Once ignited, never defeated. Who will ever forget how a legend climaxed, and how we stood in awe, before we stood in disgust?

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The Poetic Futility of the Breakaway

Statistically 90% of all Tour de France breakaways have failed. In describing a breakaway we are recounting an art form focused on the appeal of a man with his heart on his sleeve, lacking impudent control as he attempts to pull off an attacking coup. Why did he do it? Why bother being an escapee from the herd, and trigger a tactical pursuit by gnashing wolves? Because if you are not a specialist climber or sprinter, a contender for overall victory or a member of a team that has one, then a long-distance raid for a stage win offers your only chance of Tour de France success. And it can make a huge difference to the life of the average domestique or support rider. They will enjoy publicity for their sponsors—TV airtime which can prove crucial for the survival of smaller teams.

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Can an irrational instinct be pinpointed? Is there a politics of unconscious lizard-brained twitch fibers running amok against conscious choices? Sure—if it hasn’t already been elected and mapped out by committee the night before. A breakaway can be rooted in magnificence or bitter frustration; it’s hard to isolate the origins. A stringent soloist’s test is administered to see if they’ll get dropped, and to seek financial reward. As Jens Voigt once said:

“Knowing when I can get away in a break is experience but also instinct.

I sometimes have a vision before it happens.

I see it in my mind when I will attack—I go ‘yes, that is the

moment’ and I feel nothing can go wrong.”

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Breakaways oblige a hint of specious motivation to quicken off the peloton early in the stage, or to lose them in the mountains. The size of the break matters, as well as who is in it—others will be deciding whether it will be allowed to continue. Any rider threatening the general classification (or any other jerseys) will not be allowed to get clear, and will almost assuredly be subsumed by the horde. The peloton turns into hunters, and the hunted men undoubtedly know when the game is up even if they never throw in the towel.

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Losing the breakaway can be the noblest of defeats. If you have ever seen the end of a Tour stage you know what happens to most breakaway attempts, and it is not pretty. In the midst of their explosion, there is a frailty and a transfer of sands in the hourglass. First, the escapees work themselves to the bone as if piloted by an evil delirium, embarking to a desolate place where devils offer not a single wisp of slipstream in the wild asphalt yonder. For this fruitless expenditure, the vast majority will receive a drubbing with no outward reward for their extra effort. With the peloton looming like a pack of wolves behind a desperate deer, the snows begin to deepen around the hoof—a friendless madman or small group of hyperventilating scouts who have been clear all day are chased and summarily eaten by the fast-moving main field, often in the last kilometer.

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Glory Itself sits upon a Wheel

Glory worthy of the Norse god Odin, who relentlessly pursued wisdom, awaits the battered, happily-haggard winner of the Tour de France. Who had the courage, the guile and the tenacity to reach the pinnacle of the sport? It’s always the same question, year after year. Layer upon layer, over the cyclical course of a century or more, the good work of each champion has laid the groundwork for their usurpers. This wheel constantly feeds back into itself. Concentric cycles within cycles…

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Support riders, domestiques and other also-rans receive authentic byproducts of another’s glory, and it whets their hopes for the next season. They spent three arduous weeks enhancing the groupthink, learning and earning. For rookie domestiques (affectionately, a.k.a., “little bitches”) comes indoctrination into the royal fraternal order of Ass-Kissing—it is a compliment and an honor to trundle about with protein and electrolytes because of how they got there, and where they want to be next. Dues paid, failures accounted for, even if the Peter Principal calls “last stop” upon them, even if they ultimately got lapped by some younger, newer form of lightning. Those who never graduated from domestique to lead rider will still wistfully recall the Tour until the day they croak, and how it trumped all the obscure stages they won in Boise and Sedona. They will return to their home towns as genuinely rad, having whiffed at the apex and inhaled the rarefied air of Tour veterans. Luckily there are more virtues beyond what is glamorous than what is in it, because those are what measure the vast majority of semi-anonymous peloton journeymen.

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The Greatest Race in the World

What began with a deranged publicity stunt planned by sixty cyclists in 1903 is now a worldwide phenomenon and icon of French life. The Tour doesn’t make any sense; it’s a crazy race. The size, prestige and scope of this contest has no parallel. Flat sprints link undulating hills that wend toward Diebenkorn-esque heartlands…past their stirring rustic gaze lie dozens of torturous climbs that cut tiny, saw-toothed alpine silhouettes on the horizon. The Tour rewards quiet misery and unseen feats of silent psychosis in sacred haunts like Mont Ventoux or the mythical Alpe d’Huez. Riders have died in these locations.

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In the midst of risk, hustle, filth and the inexorable forces that spur ultra-long distance cyclists along, not one rider pretends to be the master of it. The most respected and formidable among them never looks invincible. They often cross the finish line with a poker face that masks a ragged, telomere-stunting, lifespan-reducing effort. The spice of variety and the vagaries of the unforeseen means anyone can win this race. On rare occasions a rickety 39-year-old gnarler will play spoiler or snatch a stage win from the hijinks of youth before being fitted for his dentures and coffin, having reached such a decrepit age by Tour standards. Petite Colombians seize high-altitude Pyrenees stages from the unaware; you can faintly hear a Mayan flute playing as they’re taking flight up the mountain like human hummingbirds. Hors catégorie!!! 1000 BPMs. Next day, who knew—the sprint is stolen by a frightening Teutonic cyborg. The chicane and checkered stripe? He will see to it they are stained with blood and chunks of flesh; this is a recurring theme at the Tour, and a role currently played by none other than “The Gorilla” (André Greipel). On Tuesday, an anorexic-looking Frenchman rides a sudden atomic dynamo of patriotic inspiration as if summoned from the heavens, and shocks everyone. Indeed they’ve gone far, lasted longer, and made the lock-jawed crazy face that the whole world saw as they grimaced in agony. Dark horses abound.

Among these giant-killing specialists lurks the all-arounder, obsessed beyond reason, a GC tiger who pays near-cinematic tribute to scaring the shit out of the rest of them. Look where he is—he wears the Maillot Jaune. The others are banging their heads together trying to get there. “Anytime now,” they say to themselves. But, more likely—never. Brave attitudes raise efficiency percentages, sharpen the senses, and get people over hills. Down to the final drop of emergency reserves, a form of blind love derives from torment and they’re not going to the hospital even if you stab them. These are among the purest and deepest feelings shared by all cyclists in the Tour de France.

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