Graceful. Gliding. Effortless. Precise. Powerful. Poetic. Beautiful. See, these were words going through my head. I was watching the Olympics. Hurdlers, actually. A special breed, the hurdler. They are like no other. Don’t categorize them with track and field athletes. No, they belong in a special grouping of adventure-seeking sportsmen. Like hunters who wrestle bears. Motorcyclists who jump through rings of burning gas. Snowboarders who race avalanches down mountainsides. You know, idiots. But in a good, thrill-seeking, “hey-look-my-pants-are-on-fire” kind of way.
Hooked on the Tour de France … and its fanatics
I’ve never been interested in racing a bike. The seats look like shoehorns, I’m not a fan of the hats, you spend the whole time hunched over as if your back has snapped midway up and those bike shorts would make my legs look like half-filled sausage casings. I’m all about the glamour. But I am absolutely hooked on the Tour de France. This happens every year —a sport I normally care nothing about lures me in with the promise of horrendous crashes, nail-biting finishes and this weird desire of mine to see a top racer inhale a bee at high speed. (So far, no luck.) It is a fascinating race, full of tactics and strategy, not just mindless pedaling. Riders have to be thinking about all manner of things like, “do my legs look like half-filled sausage casings?” or “I wonder how bad it would hurt if my bike seat broke off and I didn’t realize it.”