On Cycling

I am an ardent sports fan. Even though the only sport that I play is basketball, I enjoy watching almost every other sport, be it live in a stadium or on TV. I followed live football, hockey, and Olympics since I was a little kid, before I started to develop interest in tennis, rugby and Formula 1 during the later stage of my 20-year-old life. One of the reasons for this penchant is, well, like most other men, it just occurs to you naturally for no real reason. Another reason, perhaps more convincing is I see that sports is so closely linked to life, that every action you put on the floor in any sporting event is a perfect metaphor of how you lead your actual life. You also learn so much through sports; wins and losses, teamwork, discipline, hard work, etc.

Anyway, the real reason for this entry is that not so long ago another sport managed to catch my attention, one that I never thought I would be interested in; cycling. Okay, don’t give me that look. The thing is, I read Lance Armstrong autobiography, It’s Not About the Bike not so long ago, and it was through that book that my interest in cycling started to germinate. It was really a good book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. The story he has to tell not only resembles the life of him as a sportsman, but rather as a person as a whole, battling cancer that almost robbed his life. In any case, being a seven-time winner of Le Tour de France, the world’s largest cycle race, he could not avoid telling something about cycling could he? And you reader cannot avoid but to read it, and in my case, like it. You see, I used to have the same idea as most of you when the word cycling springs up to mind; boring when you take it from a spectator’s point of view, and arduous, tiring for the poor cyclists. You work so hard for four, five hours under hot, scorching sun in the case of road race but the result will only be decided by the few extra pushes you make in the final few metres before you cross the finish line. How often you see a winner edging his opponent in the second place only by a tyre’s length?

Nevertheless, people say you will not love something until you start to learn about it. Tak kenal maka tak cinta. Only after I gained some knowledge about cycling that I started to appreciate it, and soon learn like it. And yes, there are myriads of knowledge about this backbreaking sport that you simply cannot learn by being a mere observer, especially when you watch it on TV only for a couple of minutes and you start to grumble. For instance, the cyclists’ activities in the peloton (the large group of riders you often see in road race, believe me they do not just cycle), the role of each cyclist in a team (generally everyone needs to help the best cyclist in the team), the communications made between cyclists and team coordinators during a race, the different sort of strategies that you just cannot see with bare eyes and so on and so forth. For me the best part of cycling that I learnt is the hard work put in by each cyclist be it during the race itself or in preparing for it. Rain or shine, come whatever seasons, professional riders push their bikes and train first thing in the morning for every single day, whereby each training session lasts for hours. Suffice to say, this alone allows me to look at cycling from a whole new perspective, and propels me to have a little more respect for those riders.

Anyhow, all those knowledge that I gained was actually about to turn in vain, until here comes Le Tour de France. I knew that it was coming, but influenced by natural ignorance despite now having a deeper understanding of the sport I chose not to pay too much attention to it at first. It all changed two or three nights ago when I decided to switch on the TV, and there I was, sitting permanently for the next two-and-a-half hour, keeping my eye on every single action of the race until it finished. I have not quite stopped watching since then on, and I do not see myself doing it anytime before the tour is finished. As I have already mentioned, it is just so refreshing to look at this sport from a different angle, with an extra bit of knowledge, and again, you just cannot stop admiring the incredible efforts of each rider during the race. To add to the excitement of the race, the scenery at each different stage of the tour is just breathtaking. In fact I enjoy the scenery as much as the race. I would go as far as to say that France now sits on my list of countries that I wish to visit now that I begin to see it closely through cycling. Hopefully this will someday become a reality, and I would make sure that my visit will coincide with Le Tour de France so I would be able to see it live.