If I was to ask you what the hardest sporting event in the world was, the Tour de France might not immediately spring to mind.
The Tour de France, or Le Tour as it's known in French, is a cycling event. Yes, bicycles. Cycling is not a popular sport in the United States, so it might surprise our American readers that the Tour de France is the 2nd most watched sporting event globally, behind the FIFA World Cup, with an estimated 2.5 billion annual television viewers.
And it's not just the viewership that is massive. The event itself is massive. It's a 23-day event, that covers thousands of kilometers of riding, through mountains and valleys, rain or shine.
It's almost impossible to fully explain the logistics required to put on this event that takes place mainly in France, but sometimes also ventures into neighboring countries. For an easy to follow overview of what is required to organize the Tour, check out this article here.
If you have ever happened to accidentally come across coverage of the Tour, you would probably watch it for a minute, see a bunch of guys riding their bikes and think, "Well this is boring," and turn the channel.
As some people have remarked, it's just pedal, pedal, pedal.
And when it comes down to it, it is.
It's 200 guys on bicycles riding for 5-7 hours a day, for 21 days.
But when you really start to understand the sport, there is so much more involved. It's a team sport, which is hard for most new cycling fans to understand.
This isn't an article about the sport of cycling, so I won't go into the details. If you are interested in learning more about the sport and the tactics, here's a good article that describes the team aspect of the sport.
July in our house means a few things: it's going to be hot; the 4th of July; Brad's birthday; and the Tour de France.
My history as a Tour de France fan began about 17 years ago. It was 2001. Brad had started cycling and so he decided to watch the Tour that summer. It's a 23-day event, that's broadcast for 3-4 hours every morning and then replayed three more times each day. I was home with a young baby, so inevitably I spent a lot of time with a baby in my lap, hanging out with him while he was watching it.
That first summer I didn't get it. I asked Brad a lot of (probably annoying) questions.
But by the end, I was able to grasp the monumental effort that went into what riders were doing. The only way I can think to try and describe the physical effort that the cyclists endure is to have people imagine that they wake up each morning for 21 days and run a marathon. Sometimes that marathon is on flat roads. But sometimes it's up the side of a mountain. And sometimes it's through tiny villages on roads that are hundreds of years old made out of cobblestones.
And if that wasn't enough, there's a good chance that you will injure yourself multiple times. Bicycle crashes happen regularly, and the riders often get seriously injured. It is a daily occurrence that riders are so seriously injured that have to withdraw from the race.
The early 2000s was the golden Tour era of Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Team. Most of you have probably heard of Lance Armstrong, and you may have some awareness of the scandal that followed him. Again, I don't want to get sidetracked into all of that. I only brought it up because it was a very exciting time to start watching cycling. And it was also when most American fans of the sport became enthusiasts.
For the first time, in a sport that has been historically dominated by Europeans, there was an American-sponsored team with an American champion. It was thrilling.
But the thing that really made me appreciate the sport was realizing it's not just a bunch of guys riding their bicycles. It's a grueling mental and physical test of endurance. After seeing my first group crash (it's called a shunt in the peloton), they're often riding at speeds of 20-30 miles an hour. Crashing is brutal. I couldn't believe that these guys were scraping themselves off the ground, their uniforms ripped, their skin bleeding, and then getting back on their bikes.
Because if they don't get back on their bikes, they're out of the race.
Once they're back on their bikes, injured riders will visit their team car (a car with their coach that follows the riders) or a race doctor (also following the peloton in a car) and, while coasting on their bikes and gripping a car travelling 20-30 miles an hour, they get patched up. They do whatever they need to do to finish the day's race. (Daily races are known as stages.)
Sometimes after the stage is done, it will be announced that a rider's injuries have caused him to pull out of the race. Sometimes you find out that a rider has broken bones that he rode with for hours, because the will of these athletes is so strong that they push through the pain, hoping that the injuries aren't as bad as they feel.
There are racers who choose to continue the race, broken bones and all. This year, there was a young rider who broke his shoulder on the first day. But he finished the race. I think he finished in last place—but he finished.
The Tour riders will ride for weeks through the pain because they've trained for years simply to complete the event of their lifetime.
And that's when I fell in love with the sport.
Because it feels like a metaphor for life in so many ways.
You pedal, day after day, you push through the hard times, and you survive. To anyone who might spot me on any given day, my life looks boring. I drink my coffee, I do my grocery shopping, I feed my pets. I pedal.
And when I fall, I scrape myself off the ground, usually more mentally bloodied than physically, and I get back on my bike. I don't stop. I keep going. And there are times when life does feel like I'm trying to pedal up the side of a steep mountain. It feels as if I'm working the hardest I've ever worked, but I'm still moving slowly. But there are also times that feel like the descent on the other side of the climb. I feel as if I'm flying.
But, regardless of circumstance, I don't stop pedaling. I pedal, pedal, pedal—and then wake up the next day and do it all over again.
And there are days when I wake up and see the stretch of road that needs to be covered that day, and it feels impossible. But if I just get up and start pedaling, I get there. Foot by foot, I cover the distance.
So that's how I see the Tour de France. The riders are warriors. And for the month of July we get to watch them fight their own limits to make it to the finish. At the end of the three weeks, they are haggard. You can see the toll the race has taken on them. Physically they are sunburned and weather beaten. Most riders will have lost weight and have patched up injuries. But the ones who finish know they have accomplished something monumental.
And that's how I want to feel at the end of my own days, years, and life. I want to feel as if I've accomplished what I set out to do. I want to know that I pushed myself to my limits and survived.
I want to know I kept pedaling as long as I could.
I asked my mom about her favorite sport:
I know you're a big tennis fan, is there something about the game that inspires you in your own day-to-day life?
Two things come to mind. (Great question, by the way!) The first one may not be obvious. Tennis is an international sport. It's one of the reasons I love it so much. There are players from countries all over the world, even tiny ones I have to find on a map. But when they're on the court together, it doesn't matter where they're from. They're united in their love of this sport.
And when the match is over, they often don't just shake hands at the net. Women who were opponents just seconds ago often kiss in that European fashion—a peck on each cheek. Both men and women often give each other heartfelt hugs. The winner often gives the loser encouraging words.
This inspires me in my day-to-day life to remember that I'm part of the family of humans everywhere on this planet. The problems I have that I think are so important are, in the big picture of how most people struggle in this world, nothing I should be complaining about.
The second thing that inspires me about tennis is that, unlike almost every other sport, players are on their own on the court. There's no coaching. (The woman's tour has started to allow some on-court coaching so long as the player and the coach agree to wear a microphone—it's clearly for the benefit of the TV audience. But at the major tournaments, there's no coaching for men or for women.)
Because there's no coaching, the best players are those who are able to assess what's going on in a match if they're losing and, right then and there, on their own (because they can't consult their coach), change their game plan. I've seen it time and time again: players losing because they're unable or unwilling to change the strategy that they and their coach came up with before the match began (e.g. to hit from the baseline, come to the net, etc.).
The greatest players—Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal—are those who, when they're losing change their game plan to suit the circumstances on the court. And that's a great life lesson for me. When one of my "life strategies" isn't working, I'm learning through tennis to make a change, even if I'm more comfortable with my original strategy. Change can feel risky but, in my experience, that ability to adapt to the circumstances we find ourselves in is a key to success and happiness in life.
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