Dancing on the pedals halfway up my neighbourhood Alp d’Huez — my cheap imitation of a killer French Alp climb — I think: this is fun. Body leaking sweat like a wet sponge, heart pounding with the intensity of a deeply intimate moment, lungs crying for oxygen, legs pleading secession, I think: this is fun.The pleasure in road cycling lies in the pain. Cyclists are self-confessed masochists, driven by pursuits most would call absurd, dropping words like “suffering” with nonchalance. Like this guy with a regular job who decided to ride 300 km a week. The day unavailable, no problem — he turned the wheels between 3 and 6 in the morning (or, is that night?). All for pleasure.When it comes to stretching the limits of pleasure and pain in the sport of cycling, the ‘Tour de France’ is the marker. First staged in 1903 as a loop on wheels around France, its essence hasn’t changed. This year, riders will cover 3,657 km in 21 days. When the race moved to the Pyrenees in 1910, so brutal were some of the mountain stages that it moved cyclists, riding in the days of gearless bikes and unpaved roads, to call the organisers “assassins”. Today, the roads are slick, bikes are technological marvels, the support systems better, but that spirit of pushing boundaries lingers.Catch a team time trial to see teamwork — nine riders taking turns to pull a human train the fastest it can go. Or, an individual time trial, called the ‘race of truth’. Just a rider against the clock, trying to find sweet harmony between his bike, his body and the road. Or, the end of a mountain stage. Five hours on the saddle, 225 km on the wheels, yet forced to find the reserves to race up one more back-breaking climb for meaning and glory. Or, the crowds and characters that line up the picturesque route — in towns and villages, alongside mountains, on Champs Elysees — for a glance of this streaming cavalcade of colours and stories.No one tells those stories with more feeling and eloquence than Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, arguably, the best commentary tandem in all of sports. Liggett passionately rolling out metaphors like “with a smile as wide as the Pacific Ocean” or “now, watch him dip into his suitcase of courage”; Sherwen, the voice of reason and the insider, keeping it together. The first time I saw and heard it all four years ago, I came away a lifelong fan of ‘The Tour’ — and rediscovered a love for the bike that had got left behind amid the pleasures and pains of growing up.
