WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT EH?

Cyclists. Unnecessarily tight clothing. Difficult to get past in your car.

That’s about as much as I knew about those who choose to cycle mile after mile on their beloved weekends. But that’s because I didn’t understand the sport at all. And not understanding something invariably means it means nothing.

So I began Tim Krabbé’s much acclaimed cycling classic The Rider with some hesitation. I’d enjoyed The Vanishing, but a book about cycling? Please.

A hundred and fifty short pages later, I was thinking about getting some tight shorts myself while browsing through lightweight bike frames online. Through the story of a single mountain race (the Tour du Mont Aigoual) and all its little nuances - the strategy, the relationships, the climbs, the descents, the flats - seen through the eyes of a rider, and interspersed with intriguing anecdotes plucked from the annals of cycling history, Krabbé perfectly describes what is, in fact, a wonderfully rich and complex sport. The structure of a single race lends itself ideally to a narrative such as this, and with his story - based on fact, with a few details elaborated - we experience the slightly disturbing tactical ingenuity required to succeed, all played out on a unique canvas of peer-to-peer etiquette.

But besides all that, what makes cycling all the more extraordinary is the sheer will of the riders who partake. Surely there are few places where determination is made more explicit than on a mountain climb, four hours into the race, aboard two wheels and a saddle - in a pair of tight shorts...

Don’t be put off, though. Here’s Krabbé two kilometres in:

“A faux plat going down, the race picks up right away. I spin along in low gear. My lungs unfold, the air of the canyon blows through my hair, the smell of balsam from other legs spatters off their spokes and into my nostrils. I slide in among the wheels, back and forth, in the continuously shifting braid of the peloton. I’m home again. I started on this sport fifteen years too late.”

A stunning encapsulation of what we’re all missing...

Get the book at Rapha’s website.