Road cycling history on PelotonTales blog

There is nothing extraordinary in the fact, that cycling history is the main topic of PelotonTales blog, when its author is also a researcher (an independent scholar) of historical fiction (more precisely, the ficitonal representation of the past).

Indeed, seeing the past as endless source of fascinating stories is my daily routine, which I naturally transfer also into my other projects, like PelotonTales. For humans, life is understandable in form of stories. Just think about it! Even the random pictures created by our brains while sleeping (a.k.a dreams) we tend to remember as coherent, compact stories.

Nowadays, in the era of social media, there is a general habit of looking at black&white picture with a slightly odd nostalgia. It's strange, because sometimes those pictures were taken way before we were born, thus being nostalgic is rather an illusion. But the overall sentiment is that we love to watch old pictures, and are curious about the stories behind them.

Similarities and differences

It is always the same thing with the past: we're seeking to discover, to absorb in our soul and mind the similarities and the differences between now and then in the same time. When it comes to historical fiction, it seems obvious: there are some basic human feelings and some basic types of human interactions, that has been always defined people's everyday life in any time ("similarities"), but there are different circumstances (different social structure, different level of technological advancement, etc) in different time periods, which give a different frame to those basic human stuff (hence this is the "differences" part). Finding the balance between them in a story set in the past is always one of the most pivotal questions of the historical fiction genre.

But the dichotomy of similatiries and differences works also in the context of road cycling history. As you might have already spotted, I sometimes like to emphasise in my post, that many of the

road cycling races were  professional sport events since the birth of bicycle,

only the word "professional" evokes different associations in us nowadays.

If you're diving deep into the buttomless rabit hole of old cycling images shared on internet, you surely find some strage, or even inapprotiate moments. For example, it always looks strange for our 21st-centurian eyes an image about cyclists reparing their own bicycles.

Even more weird is to see, when riders are drinking alcohol during the race or smoking, as the famous smoking cyclists picture, which is also one of the most popular vintage cycling images, shows us.

Epic moments and great heroes

Road cycling history is also media history. It's a well known fact, that the idea of creating a multiple stage race like the Tour de France based on the eagerness to increase selling numbers of newspapers. Following the events of a cycling race with the help of the newspaper reports, feeling the need to buy the next edition on the next day to learn about the story of the next stage created the uniqe style of writing about road cycling, which always contains a bit (at least a little bit, but mostly very much) exageration.

In the world of road cyling everything is epic.

Beyond the obvious, that athletes were making heroic efforts in the heydays to ride 300 (or even more) km, sitting half-day-long (or even longer) in the saddle, there is always a sense of being epic.

Epic moments also create great heroes. Sometimes tragic, but mostly celebrated ones. PelotonTales pays attention to the heroes of this sport. Also to great rivalries. Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali,  Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor, Eddy  Merckx,  Bernard Hinault. And all the others.

PelotonTales focuses on cycling history

What is considered historical? And when does the past begin? These are the most usual questions when you're working with stories from the past or set in the past.

From the practical point of view of writing a blog, the question sounds more like: on what time period the project does focus exacly? The most evident answer would be, that the blog includes the time period of the black and white photographies. Indeed, as more and more photos in colour exist, the time period seems less and less interesting. (Just think about the mechanism of the "illusiory nostalgia" I mentioned before.)

There is a period, which almost completely missed out from this blog: the 1990s and the 2000s.

Although I myself started following road cycling races in the 1990s,  from a wider perspective, these two decades seem to be the lowest point in cycling history for many reasons, and I rather would  like not to write abouth them.

New golden era creates new cycling history

But we don't really have to rely on those time period, if we want to talk about something more contemporary, do we? Because delightful developments are happening in the world of road cycling races since the last few years.

There is a new golden generation, that gives (almost) every race historical importance.

PelotonTales pays attention also to their achievents.