“I will help Tsutomo help Fabrice win.”
That is largely true. We are competing only to get our team leader, Fabrice, across the twenty-one stages of this Tour in as little time as possible. This cumulative time, the criteria on which the winner of the Tour is judged, is all that matters to us. Our own results are not important. We shade him from the wind, pace him, will give him our own bike if he punctures. These measures have just small effects upon his time, yet this is a sport of fine margins—decided by differences of seconds after days and days of riding—and so small advantages, wrung from our fanatical assistance of our strongest rider, offer our team the best chance of victory. We only think of the ever-rising time it takes Fabrice to make his way through this race, how that time compares to his rivals’, how we may act to lessen it.
The mechanics set up a headquarters around the team bus. Our bikes are mounted on stationary trainers to allow us to warm our legs. We are encouraged to drink a mixture of sugar syrup and caffeine. I spin on a trainer next to Fabrice. He is at ease in these mornings. He smells of Tiger Balm and saddle cream. His eyes are shiningly alert.
“A pedestrian steps off the pavement one day,” he says, “and is run down by a cyclist.”
“Right,” I say.
“ ‘You’re lucky,’ says the cyclist to the pedestrian.”
I nod.
“‘Why am I lucky?’ says the pedestrian. ‘That really hurt.’ ” Fabrice raises a finger, holds the pause. “‘Well,’ says the cyclist, ‘I normally drive a bus.’ ”
I smile.
He laughs himself. “It’s a good one,” he says. “Don’t tell me it’s not a good one.”
The PA system is blaring over by the start line, playing the greatest hits of the Police. Above us, a broadcast helicopter flies around, taking in the city, testing the thin morning sky.
Rafael comes over. The starting paddock is a small village, and Rafael has been walking it like a local notable, greeting journalists, organizers, other directeurs. He takes a moment to watch us. “Raise the tempo,” he says. Fabrice’s expression becomes stern. He shifts his weight to the front of his saddle. The hum of the trainer’s flywheel rises.
I think of Liz saying that she will try to watch us on TV this afternoon. Last year one of the other teams’ riders broke away from the pack and rode ahead of everyone for three hours. He was alone and riding hopelessly into a headwind. The peloton, with all the aerodynamic efficiency of a large group, caught and overtook him easily before the finish. He never really had a chance of winning.
Questioned afterward, he said it was his wife’s birthday. He knew that if he rode off the front she’d get to see him for three hours on her TV screen. Also, his sponsor, a manufacturer of household cleaning products, saw its logo displayed upon his sweat-soaked race kit for most of the day.
* *
When we start, we start slowly. Spectators cheer and blow air horns and we press down on our pedals and roll gradually up to speed. On the road something loosens inside us, because we are no longer dreading anything.
We are people who understand each other. We talk together. Cyclists from other teams often pull alongside Fabrice to ask him about their dreams. Teeth, I am led to understand, are powerful and recurring metaphors.
Tsutomo and I fall back to the support vehicle to collect water bottles for the other riders. Most often, this is what our assistance entails.
We roll through alpine foothills. We are on a highway cleared by gendarmes who now stand to the side of the road watching the crowds.
Our team surrounds Fabrice as we ride. We try to keep him near the front of the pack of riders, ready to chase down any competitors who might sprint off ahead.
Rafael shouts all sorts of technical details through our earpieces: speed, wind direction, projected wattages. He says, “I’m happy. Let’s not fuck this up.”
* *
Cycling is about moving through air. There are technicalities—distinctions like “turbulent” and “laminar flow,” for instance—but really it is that simple. To push alone through the air is so much harder than moving along in the slipstream of another rider. The peloton—the group composed of the majority of riders, moving close together, sharing turns at the front—is much more efficient than any solitary cyclist. Victory in a tour is about staying with the peloton first of all, and then breaking from it to gain time when other factors, such as steep gradients, crosswinds, conflicts, or confusions, temporarily diminish its capability. The role of myself and Tsutomo is to keep Fabrice ensconced safely within the group for most of the race, to leave him enough energy to push ahead when the rest of us falter.
I still remember explaining all of this to Liz for the first time: the pleasure she took in it, and the satisfaction I took in turn in her engagement. She has a biologist’s interest in adaptive strategy, in hidden motives and cooperation. We were in a coffee shop. She listened intently, leaning forward, fiddling with a sugar packet which eventually tore, spilling brown grains of sugar onto the wooden tabletop. “It’s kinship selection,” she said.
“Sorry?” I said.
“An evolutionary concept. You’re like a honeybee, giving up a chance to breed for the queen.”
“Yes?”
“The best strategy for your own reproductive success is to assist another who shares your genes,” she said. “Speaking figuratively.”
“Right.”
“ ‘Genes’ in this case being your team, your sponsors.”
“A maker of chicken nuggets,” I said.
“Exactly,” she said, laughing.
It was flattering to be considered in this way, to have my dedication regarded as something worthy of inquiry. Until I met Liz, I thought of charm as a proactive quality, something one deployed upon others. And yet she is charming in the opposite way, finding interest in the lives of those she meets, drawing out their stories.
Presently, she has turned her earnestness to B. She doesn’t just observe his actions as I do but considers them in the context of his development. She hides a toy and speculates on whether he knows it hidden or considers it destroyed. She builds a narrative of his growth, threads events into a rich story, which, to my discomfort, currently advances forward without me.
* *
Lunches are canvas bags thrust out into the road by team helpers. We catch them as we move past, hook them temporarily over our shoulders, pick out energy gels and rice cakes.
There is an alpine river thundering along beside the highway, a railway on the other side. We roll past the outskirts of a town, past its supermarkets, lumber yards, and warehouses.
We leave the straightness of the highway. We begin to climb more steeply up a thinner, winding road toward some ski towns. Here the crowd is deeper. The spectators are attracted by the gradient: the chance to see us slow, suffer, begin to exhibit our differing capabilities. They have waited, written messages onto the road in whitewash. As the slope steepens, the peloton is less
