Guillaume Martin, philosopher rider of the Cofidis, he wrote another book. The first was titled “Socrates a velò,” that is, Socrates on a bicycle. The other, the second, he called “The Society of the Peloton”, that is, the group company. The ideas it offers are many, but through a couple of them we try to read what is happening in cycling, launched around 2022 with the rush to take back what Covid has taken away.
The group and the champion
A rider once joked about his placing at the back of the pack and said that to give greatness to the first ones, the scenario is also needed composed of those who come after.
"We cannot live without others," Martin writes, "biologically, sociologically, or economically. It remains to be seen how to collaborate with them without forgetting ourselves, how to withdraw from the game without damaging the group without which we would not exist. The champion needs a group to assert his ambitions. It emanates from it and is part of it and yet tries to distinguish itself from it, to escape it."
It seems instead that the same anxiety that was mentioned at the beginning has also taken hold of the managers' reasoning, which should be more far-sighted. In recent days, Gasparotto he exposed the problem with great clarity.
«I have to tell my riders about practical experiences that cost me – he said – I had time to fix it, they didn't.You have to make the best of every situation, because today the margin for error is really small."
Today we invest in looking for the first ones, rummaging among the juniors, letting the others stopIt's true that professionalism is made up of the elite of the world movement, but In the name of what are those who were part of it yesterday, and are out of it today? I didn't go to Rome alone to dieRome was not built in a single day.
Dumoulin and Roglic
The connection with the next passage in Martin's book is immediate at this point. «We live in a world that exaggerates small differences – writes the Frenchman – which expands them. Today I have become the leader of a team and as such I enjoy a radically different status from that of the riders I barely dominated in the amateur categories."
They come to mind Dumoulin and Roglic, two riders who often challenged each other before becoming teammatesUntil his crash in the 2019 Giro, the score was all on the Dutchman's side. Then came the blackout and the other's emergence. In an interview published on Cyclingnews, One of Jumbo Visma's technicians says the Dutchman is still a Grand Tour rider and as such could return to the Tour de France in 2022.
No one who knows Dumoulin has ever doubted it. The difference between the two was the head.Yet, despite returning to the top with an Olympic medal in the time trial, the intervention of the coach was necessary. Cycling had already moved on.
An unusual bulimia
And in the end it is still Martin's book that provides a clear reading of what riders experience today. However, we start from the assumption that everyone has a perception of the era in which they move and that the weight of history is a difficult load to bearIt's like this in every area: from the harshness of school that's thrown in the children's faces, to that of work.
«I'm amazed – writes Martin – at the Twitter profiles that praise cycling from the past. It's easy to suggest that we contemporary cyclists are lazy compared to our glorious predecessors.In the route of the next Giro just revealed, no stage exceeds 200 kilometers. I don't think we're any less courageous than the guys who did 400.On the one hand, it all depends on the intensity. On the other, Our life is a constant commitment and to the mileage of endurance is added every detail of everyday lifeWe don't climb Alpe d'Huez at full speed, just as we don't do 400 kilometers. When we reach the foot of a climb, our heart is already at 180 beats and we know that we will spend half an hour at an intensity that Henri Cornet or Maurice Garin have not experiencedWe cannot project ourselves into the bodies of another era."
This fast cycling devours them, making some undoubtedly rich and abandoning others. Accepting it without getting in the way is the best way to increase speedMartin apparently isn't asking himself who benefits from all this: perhaps it would be useful to ask himself this question and find an answer.
Daily life doesn't allow for much recuperation, and aside from the week's vacation, there's no room for anything else. Sometimes we hear about careers being shortened due to early commitments. Dumoulin's career was also at risk of ending due to this anxiety to fill, exploit, produce, and repay the investments that at times it takes on the appearance of an unusual bulimiaAfter a few months off, his talent has returned to shine.
