French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France

221 Pages·2012·2.27 MB·English

by  Tim Moore

French Revolutions
Tim Moore’s writing has appeared in the Daily Telegraph, the Observer,
the Sunday Times and Esquire. He lives in west London with his wife and
their three children.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Frost on My Moustache:
The Arctic Exploits of a Lord and a Loafer

Continental Drifter:
Taking the Low Road with the First Grand Tourist

Published by Yellow Press 2001

4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3

Copyright © Tim Moore 2001

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author of this work

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First published in Great Britain in 2001 by
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To Tom Simpson
Acknowledgements

Thanks to Rachel Cugnoni, Paul Ruddle, Martin Warren, Simon O’Brien,
Matthew Lantos, Richard Hallett, procycling, Pyrenean Pursuits, Thordis
Olafsdottir and my family. Not forgetting the Tour de France press office,
without whom none of this would have been difficult.

Prologue

Parasailing, pot-holing, the luge: even those sporting activities that appear to
require no skill invariably demand an abundance of human qualities that I might
only hope to acquire if the Wizard of Oz was in a particularly generous mood.
But we can all ride a bike. We have all known what it is to grind agonisingly up
a steep hill and freewheel madly down the other side. In its unique dual capacity
as mode of transport and childhood accessory, the bicycle has played a formative
role in all our lives.
But thinking back, I find that my cycling memories are imbued less with a
nostalgic sepia glow than a stark fluorescent glare of fear and failure. Reading
the back cover of Rough Ride, the autobiography of former Irish professional
cyclist Paul Kimmage, I feel profoundly chastened. Describing a portentous first
ride at the age of 6, Kimmage fondly recalls his father immediately removing the
stabilisers before plonking his son on the saddle and pushing him off across the
car park in front of their Dublin flat. ‘I wobbled, but basically had no trouble and
was delighted with myself.’ Replace ‘trouble’ with ‘balance’, and ‘delighted with
myself’ with ‘repeatedly injured’, and you have the encapsulation of my own
debut.
I lived in the tricycle age for far too long, squeaking about Walpole Park on a
maroon three-wheeler, its capacious tin boot flamboyantly emblazoned with a
royal coat of arms my father had mysteriously acquired from somewhere. It may
be that in this fashion I appeared a ghastly little ponce. After all, I hadn’t learned
to ride without that shaming third wheel until I was almost 8, being pushed again
and again across our back garden on a hand-me-down girl’s bike by an
increasingly frustrated mother. I was not a natural. I lacked the reckless bravado
that propelled other boys to pedal across Ealing Common with their arms
ostentatiously aloft, or, worse, nonchalantly folded.