Wednesday, October 9, 1991 - North Shore News - 27

The guts and glory of the bicycle

the hoopla surrounding the
world’s greatest bicycle race, The
Tour de France, and the aliens
would warp homeward convinced
they'd witnessed some kind of
mass hysteria brought on by a

compelling mix of history, thumb-
nail biography and klick-by-klick
reportage that illuminates the
heroism and sacrifice as well as
the secret strategies and some-
times less-than-heroic squabbles

that motivate the men who an-
nually pit their legs and hearts in a
titanic struggle against the geogra-
phy of France and the unforgiving
clock.

See Bike page 29

OUR PLATFORM
“LOOKING BETTER”
NORTH PARK MEN’S HAIR
PARK ROYAL NORTH 322-9612

John Moore
BOOK REVIEW

Tour de France. Three Weeks
to Glory, Samuel Abt. Bicycle
Books, $16.95 :

NTERGALACTIC

VISITORS to the North

Shore during the last
three weeks of July might
well form the opinion that
the bicycle is a two-wheeled
contraption used to-get from
one trendy public location
to another for the purpose
of posing about in form-fit-
ting spandex while slurping —
cappuccino-foam.

"Sf. he/shelit landed half a world

away, in France, during the same

three weeks, the close encounter
would. likely go unnoticed amid

“religious pilrimage on a redundant

form of transportation.

Inasense, the aliens would un-
derstand as much about the Tour
as most North Americans have for
the near-century of its existence.

It’s only in the last decade, with
the emergence of riders like Ca-
nadians Alex Stieda and Steve
Bauer and American Greg Le-
Mond, coverage of electronic
media and the resurgent popu-
larity of the bike as an ecologically
safe method of getting around,
that we’ve begun to take note of

~ the lycra-clad maniacs across the

Atlantic pond.

if you realiy want to know why
anyone spends three weeks on a
bicycle, sometimes actually dying
as a result, and why so many peo-

“ple are obsessed by this cross-

country contest, Samuel Abt’s
Tour de France is a pole position
to start.

‘Abt has covered bicycle racing

. for the Herald Tribune and the

New Yerk Times since 1977 and
contributes to Bicycle Guide Mag-
azine, and this behind the scenes
“tour of the Tour” cr 1990 is a

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