I didn't see any of them and haven't got a lot to say about them. My enthusiasm draining a little; in tune with the falling temperatures outside. I'm cycling less too and so are they. The worlds are ahead and there will be plenty to write about in the days ahead. My enthusiasm isn't helped by the ongoing drama encircling Team Sky and Bradley Wiggins. I've more to say about it, but I have no desire to do so just now.
In place of cycling I've been reading more again and just this past month I've taken to Ernest Hemingway. I can't quite believe it took so many years. The first story I went to was actually an audio book. A memoir called A Moveable Feast, published after his death about his early years in Paris. It's no secret that Hemingway was a big fan of cycling and wrote about it in several of his books. That said, I wasn't aware the subject would come up in A Moveable Feast, but I wasn't surprised either. It's only a couple of paragraphs but in it he describes his memories of watching the sport in Paris, on the track. It's a fascinating yet all too brief look at cycling in those times. His descriptions are wonderful. In no time he makes you feel as though you are there and gives you a longing to go immediately to a big track event yourself.
In the book Hemingway was spending time at horse racing tracks when a friend tells him to try track cycling. That you don't have to bet on it for, "anything you have to bet on to get a kick isn't worth seeing."
Here's what Hemingway then has to say:
I have started many stories about bicycle racing but have never written one that is as good as the races are both on the indoor and outdoor tracks and on the roads. But I will get the Velodrome d'Hiver with the smoky light of the afternoon and the high-banked wooden track and the whirring sound the tires made on the wood as the riders passed, the effort and the tactics as the riders climbed and plunged, each one a part of his machine; I will get the magic of the demi-fond, the noise of the motors with their rollers set out behind them that the entraineurs rode, wearing their heavy crash helments and leaning backward in their ponderous leather suits, to shelter the riders who followed them from the air resistance, the riders in their lighter crash helments bent low over their handlebars their legs turning the huge gear sprockets and the small front wheels touching the roller behind the machine that gave them shelter to ride in, and the duels that were more exciting than anything, the put-puting of the motorcycles and the riders elbow to elbow and wheel to wheel up and down and around at deadly speed until one man could not hold the pace and broke away and the solid wall of air that he had been sheltered against hit him.
There was so many kinds of racing. The straight sprints raced in heats or in match races where the two riders would balance for long seconds on their machines for the advantage of making the other rider take the lead and then the slow circling and the final plunge into the driving purity of speed. There were the programs of the team races of two hours, with a series of pure sprints in their heats to fill the afternoon, the lonely absolute speed events of one man racing an hour against the clock, the terribly dangerous and beautiful races of one hundred kilometres on the big banked wooden five-hundred-meter bowl of the Stade Buffalo, the outdoor stadium of Montrouge where they raced behind big motorcycles, Linart, the great Belgian champion that they called "the Sioux" for his profile, dropping his head to suck up cherry brandy from a rubber tube that connected with a hot water bottle under his racing shirt when he needed it toward the end as he increased his savage speed, and the championships of France behind the big motors of the six-hundred-and-sixty-meter cement track of the Parc du Prince near Auteuil, the wickedest track of all where we saw that great rider Ganay fall and heard his skull crumple under the crash helmet as you crack an hard-boiled egg against a stone to peel it on a picnic. I must write the strange world of the six-day races and the marvels of the road-racing in the mountains. French is the only language it has ever been written in properly and the terms are all French and that is what makes it hard to write. Mike was right about it, there is no need to bet. But that comes at another time in Paris.
A Moveable Feast by Ernest HemingwayHow interesting that he mentions that French is the only language it has ever been written in properly. That the terms are all French. You can see what he means even though there has been excellent writing on the sport in English in recent times. The terms, in many regards, are still French. I plod along here in English, but still use words like peloton, bidon and chapeau.
After listening to this book I went on two read two more of his novels. It's a shame Hemingway didn't feel he could take on a story based around cycling. It would have been good. That said, one of the two books I read, The Sun Also Rises, has another short section about cycling. I'll get that one soon.
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Rider of the week
Four race and four different winners. I've gone with Arnaud Démare. The Frenchman was first at Binche-Chimay-Binche and second in Paris-Tours finishing his season well after starting the year strong with that Milan-San Remo victory.
