For those unfamiliar, the Tour de France is the granddaddy of all road cycling races. It was the first tour and is the most storied. The riders, in teams of 9, strap on their helmets and get comfortable on their bikes for a three-week, 2,000-plus mile trip around France. There are 21 stages of an average 100 kilometers each day and two rest days where there is no racing.
There are flat stages that offer the best opportunities for the sprinters to win; there are two time trial stages that pit each rider against the clock…the fastest man wins; there are five mountain stages, divided among the Pyrenees and the Alps. To complete the Tour, all you have to do is finish each stage within the day’s time limit.
But to win the Tour, to climb the top step of the podium on the Champs Elyssees on the last day, to stand on that podium in the yellow jersey of the race’s leader, there are certain things that are necessary.
Of course, you have to put in the hours of training. You need a good bike and need to know something about the aerodynamics of your particular body on that bike. But you also need a team.
Cycling, a little contrary to what you might think, is a team sport.
And watching the team dynamics and the strategy – they don’t call the Tour a “chess game on two wheels” for nothing – has left me thinking about how much the Tour can teach life lessons and, in some ways, be a metaphor for life.What the next post are a few things I’ve noticed in the last three weeks. Some of these are applicable to a lot of sports, but I think this event sheds a particularly narrow light on these universal principles.
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