A sport resistant to media coverage

Cahiers du Cyclisme, January 2011 edition 

Cycling is unique as a mediasport not in that it’s a sport entirely devised by the media, but in that it’s a mediasport whose entire structure is wholly resistant to media coverage. 

Cycling was initially consumed not as sport but as literary spectacle, something you could see in person but only ever understand through the written word. The Tour de France’s conception was as serialised story in a newspaper, a grand narrative captivating its readers. Perhaps it’s for this reason the pre-war records are dismissed as fanciful, relating to a type of sport few modern fans recognise, the tales too tall to believe, the winning margins too vast to comprehend as competition. In this sense, we can argue cycling existed as mediasport before it existed as sport. 

Sports changed, as did the way in which audiences consumed them. Here in France, it was the broadcast of the finish of the Tour de France in 1948, live from the Parc des Princes, that captured public imagination, convinced the public of the uses of television. The equivalent event In the UK was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II–what better reason to be grateful for Robespierre’s Terror? 

But a curse came with the advent of television coverage. While other sports adapted comfortably to the new conditions, cycling suddenly seemed archaic, a lumbering dinosaur reliant on writers to explain it. The technical complications of filming a point-to-point race over several hundred kilometres were difficult to overcome, and the likes of football, easily filmed in stadia and with a more broadcast-friendly time schedule, soon overtook cycling in popularity. It is no coincidence the Parc des Princes shortly stopped being a velodrome and became a football stadium. 

When the technology was finally tamed, harnessed to provide fans with the coverage they so desired, the sport had changed. Merckx may have been a giant of the sport, his palmares may have overshadowed even the greatest champions such as Coppi and Bartali many times over, but to many fans witnessing Merckx’s exploits, Coppi remained the greatest. How can this be? Perhaps it’s because the Golden Age of cycling to which Coppi belonged is almost entirely imagined, constructed from reports based more on hyperbole than fact, written by authors who, without the benefit of being omnipresent, resorted to grandiose depictions of events they couldn’t possibly have witnessed, Homeric epics of giants defeating giants, triumphing even over nature herself. 

When viewers turned on the television and witnessed the ineffectiveness of Merckx’s rivals, how could the reality compare to the romance they’d been fed for over half a century? When viewers tuned in and Merckx was already leading, would lead until the finish, how could they enthuse, how could they engage in a battle already won, a battle that would continue without event for hours more? 

Cycling slowly came to terms with its media, and learned how to charm once more. Giants were born, each new generation of heroes bringing with them an iconic technology or aesthetic. And then finally came a period of excess in which the modernist pursuit of advancement was able to continue unabated; a devastating quest for technological and chemical improvement that pushed the sport far beyond its previous limits. 

We had dismissed the Romance period, and when the fans began to reject its excess as untrue to the spirit of sport, the Reality period drew to a close too. What followed is the curious position we find ourselves today, locked in Hyperreality, cross-referencing every success with how believable it appears. 

If the period of Reality had concluded with the taming of its champions, then the period of Hyperreality has set them free. Lavish cyborgs capable of racing over a magnificent terrain that would bring any viewer at home to his knees. But the triumph of man over nature is a particularly modernist ideal; what we witness here is its postmodernist cousin: the fans wait not for the peloton to destroy the mountain, but for the mountain to destroy the peloton, to tear it apart and awaken the race; we await in anticipation of a victor who doesn’t conquer nature but merely survives it better than his competitors, a victory so real it couldn’t happen except in hyperreality. 

Politically, the sport has become locked in a bitter struggle for its own “reality”, a struggle for believable champions, men who would reject the excesses of the previous era–the most “real” era of all, recall–and embrace their own vulnerabilities. We find ourselves in a cycle of purges and renewal, trapped in an interminable search for “real” competitors to cheer. 

When the hyperreality breaks down, cycling brings its own Terror. We cleanse ourselves of our villains and pronounce the sport real again. We consider ourselves in a period of renewal, but it’s a renewal that never comes, merely a temporary injunction against the next crack in the veneer. 

Part of what makes controlling the discourse in late-hyperreality so difficult is the ubiquity of coverage, a cacophony of voices, from fans, media, competitors, and Lord knows who else. Cycling is everywhere, and consumed in every way. 

Unlike their historic counterparts, the modern authors are omnipresent: they are the cameras on the road and in the sky, and the television screens, and the voices you hear, and okay, let’s be generous to this old man, perhaps the writers still. 

Discourse may be difficult to control, but surely the ubiquity of ways in which to consume implies that technologically, at least, the sport may have finally come to terms with the media? Perhaps, but there remain problems even on a simple level.  

For instance, the 180 rule continues to baffle producers, who can’t be expected to have their motorcycle cameras positioned so the direction of travel is always the same, but who absolutely should understand it’s unhelpful to display a course profile that reads from the start at the left to the finish at the right and then to immediately display the current race situation with the leftmost group of riders now inexplicably the closest to the finish. Is it any wonder casual viewers wonder what’s going on when the only visual cues they’re given defy all logic? 

Perhaps that’s the biggest slip in the veneer yet, these minute indications that cycling hasn’t tamed its media, that still neither understands the other. Because where we find ourselves today is locked in an endless war between various factions: the fans, the media, the teams, the governing body, and so on. Like in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the allies and enemies may change, but the war continues, continues onward unabated with no end in sight, a perpetual deadlock of warring interests that gives and takes but otherwise stands rigid. 

It poses two final, exciting questions: How will we consume the sport in its next phase? And what will be left to consume?