The Human Race


Wherein Our Heroine Mines the Tour for Material Yet Again.
Generally, I don't find time trials make for terribly interesting TV viewing. Single racers or teams go out at pre-determined intervals and usually they pedal like hell for the finish, racing only the clock and not other racers. Aside from the commentator letting you know how the latest guy is faring against the split times of prior riders, there is little context and therefore little excitement from the whole deal. The people who cover skiing have fixed this to some extent - they have a system that allows them to digitally "ghost" in a prior run from another skier, making it look as if there are two skiers on the mountain racing one another (and sometimes occupying the same space). You can compare form and see where one skier shaved a second (or fraction) off of his time. It might be an interesting bit of tech to use with bike racing. I do understand that time trials round out a big race like the Tour de France, but as a viewer? Ehh...

Yesterday was a bit different.

First of all, the time trial was 15.5 kilometers, straight up a mountain. Second of all, the course was lined with approximately one million fans, some of whom crowded close enough to the top cyclists to make it look as if they were parting a vast human ocean in front of their fore wheels (post-race, it was noted that a volatile combination of booze, sunshine and one million people packed onto the side of a mountain made for some dangerous cycling). Third, Lance Armstrong actually passed Ivan Basso, the rider who had been launched onto the trial course two minutes before.

But here was the most amazing thing for me, and it had little to nothing to do with cycling: the fans packing the roads up the mountain for the individual time trial were from a multitude of different nations. The frantically waving flags lining the vertiginous climb up to the village of L'Alpe D'Huez looked like an unusually boisterous United Nations General Assembly. The really significant bit, though, was that all the flags were waving for all the riders - Norwegian flags flapped at Italian riders. The French flapped their standard eagerly at Americans. Every flag was used to cheer for every nationality. In amongst the crazy bacchanal there were, of course, insults and the perennial doping allegations against Armstrong, but from a TV-viewer's standpoint, the scene seemed to be largely one of benign goodwill to all of the racers.

Is this the beginning of a utopian vision of the future: human machines powering up a mountain, drawing formerly fractious countries together in common cause? Don't be silly. But it was nice to see.
Posted: Thursday - July 22, 2004 at 07:20 AM         | |

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