En route to Paris earlier in the week, I started reading Paul Fournel’s ‘Need for the Bike’, a collection of short stories and anecdotes articulating why the bicycle captivates as it does. In truth I was beset by travel fatigue, exhausted by my own cost-cutting measures and means intended to enable my trip in the first place, so the reading fell short in progress. Yet what struck me was its depiction of the bike as a ‘tool of natural speed’, a means of maximising human efficiency with non-human contribution. It seemed apt therefore that the first cycling event of Paris would be the Time Trials, exertions of the body to take natural speed to places uncomfortable for all but the very best.
Only after the whole event did the weather improve, otherwise remaining as foul as during Friday’s opening ceremony. Helicopter camera operators’ expectations were surely dampened, though what ensued on the ground was seeming goodwill among spectators. Those gathered combined the diehards, the fair-weathered and the curious, excited at the sight of one of few free live events happening on a weekend. On the corner of the Place de la Bastille, my own eyes were nearly blinded by a frequently protruding umbrella, its owner willing to gesture me inside its span but unwilling to raise his arm so as to fit my head upright. The first few women who went down the start ramp and passed us were sufficient enough for him however, before he slowly shuffled off to a less damp corner of the city. Past the July column each rider rode, heading east across the city before looping back past us, and the Opera Bastille, for the final five kilometres of suffering. Most riders passed with a grimace, a couple appeared to smile or at least acknowledge the rarity of such an event, and their own participation in it.
To be a spectator in such a situation is strange, you are neither of tangible benefit for the athletes dialled into their own world of pain, nor deriving much satisfaction from just standing on a roadside internally questioning every decision that led you as far as standing in the pouring rain, invariably, in shorts. Yet there is proximity, to be stood barely two metres from World Champions, underdogs, home favourites and cult idols. Mieke Kröger’s cheers were elevated as she rode past for the first time, Audrey Cordon-Ragot and Juliette Labous were similarly welcomed to this special sporting homecoming. Information was shared between us across different apps, languages and sides of the road, everyone trying to decipher which favourite had crashed, who was actually fastest, why was one rider not appearing in the steady convoy within their 90-second interval. Only afterwards did it all, almost, become clear. Grace Brown’s swansong would write itself; no outside interference needed.
Once the men had gotten underway, early cheers for sole French entrant Kévin Vauquelin were quickly tempered by a slide out across the road for Søren Wærenskjold, the initial shocked ‘oh’ quickly repeated once the Norwegian had brought himself to a stop against a traffic light post, crushing black and yellow road markers in the process. For my friend who I had convinced to join me, this was a shock; a demonstrable illustration of the madness of this whole endeavour. These machines were made for a wind tunnel, not puddles and slippery white paint. The riders were trained to push, not slide uncontrollably towards an unfortunate end. So-called ‘marginal gains’ in that instant appeared futile, wiped out by the misfortune of the Parisian weather. Further adding to the point was the view expressed beforehand that only bad luck would prevent someone other than Remco Evenepoel, Filippo Ganna and Josh Tarling taking the win, backed up by all three sweeping the podium in the early stages, only for a puncture for the Welshman to push him out in favour of Wout van Aert. Still, dozens of kilometres decided by second appears too fine a margin for anyone to sleep comfortably at night, not least those whose pursuit of each gain left their bodies cut up and bruised.
In lieu of perfect information, on the side of the road you strive for perfect feeling, the willingness to make your voice hoarse, to lean and throw arms in adoration towards the people beyond the barriers and otherwise beyond you. In that moment you don’t know they have crashed on their elbow, that both they and their mechanic have fallen on the slippery tarmac. They are distant events from the split-second rush of a rider whirring past you, at a natural speed beyond your own. Yet in between each moment, still I was scrambling for information, at a time when network connectivity nearly snapped under the weight of people constantly pressing refresh. Maybe I wanted to know for my own sanity what and who was coming next, maybe I hadn’t decided what sort of roadside dispatch I wanted to write and was trying to load my mind with facts ready to reel off. The answer doesn’t really matter.
Before Evenepoel had even finished the crowds around had begun to disperse, scattering into the city in anticipation of a Saturday night at Paris’ busiest time of year. Instead we stood now under a tree in the square awaiting confirmation of what all the evidence suggested, that the reigning maillot blanc had just ticked the final blank box of his time trial career without anguish or setback. Where Brown’s race was a perfect goodbye, Evenepoel’s was a final stamp of authority, an acknowledgement he had nothing more to prove in the discipline, that his ultimate ambition of Grand Tour mountain conditioning could proceed unimpeded by time trial engine tuning. For unlike most other sports in Paris, the Olympics are not a culmination, a be all and end all of record and reputation. For the riders today, their horizons largely lay ahead, not least to the road race next weekend, where natural speed counts for far less than tactical nous.
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