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I used to be a fairly enthusiastic pro cycling fan. I even covered the Grand Tours for NBC Universal for a few years (by “covered” I mean I watched them on TV and blogged about them), though after an exhaustive search I can no longer find any evidence of those blogs online. So maybe the Internet isn’t forever after all–though this image lives on, go figure:
[From here.]
In recent years, however, I’ve mostly stopped following it. It’s not like I rage-quit or anything, and I’ll still glance at result or watch a little bit if I’m in front of the TV at a fortuitous time, but I don’t really go out of my way to watch it either. I remember when it seemed incredible that you could just turn on OLN and watch the entire Tour de France from your couch instead of reading Samuel Abt articles the day after or watching a VHS from World Cycling Productions long after the fact, and so I’d make sure not to miss even a second:
[Via that site where they auction stuff.]
Today you can stream all sorts of races at your convenience, yet now that my dreams have finally come true I can’t even be bothered to do it anymore.
So why not? I guess part of it is that I don’t have the free time I once did; 20 years ago I could go race in the morning, watch a Tour stage, and then go mountain biking in the afternoon. That is no longer the case:
If I’ve got a couple of hours during which I can either ride a bike myself or watch someone else doing it, obviously I’m going to choose the former option 100% of the time.
Yet oddly I do now find myself watching “normal” American sports, which until recently was something I never did–it was a point of pride with me–but turns out to actually be enjoyable, go figure. I think one reason for this is simply that “normal” sports are so woven into our culture that it’s highly convenient to pay attention to them when you feel like it. (The games are often on when you’re eating dinner, they’re never more than a few time zones away, etc.) But I wonder if another reason is that professional cycling has just gotten really weird.
Okay, that’s not fair–obviously pro cycling has always been really weird:
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