OUTDOOR SPORTS
Professional road bicycle racing

Is this really a sport? Yes, it is, with annual revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars, backed by a huge recreational cycling market (2,000 companies selling $6 billion a year in the U.S. alone) and millions of rabid fans. There are tens of thousands of athletes riding major, minor and recreational events, all over the world. Most Americans hear about the Tour de France in July, but the major-league cycling season begins in January with races in Australia and Malaysia, and ends in November in Europe.

Pro cycling is over 100 years old and is an internecine labyrinth of interests. Teams, sponsors, riders, races, doping controllers, national federations; someone is always aggrieved. The major league is the International Cycling Union's World Tour calendar. It used to be called the ProTour, but the organizations that own the tours of France, Italy and Spain got in a snit and blew that one up, so the ICU is trying again. There are 18 major-league teams having "Pro" licenses. These can have budgets as high as $30 million or as low as $10 million, employ 30-ish riders, have a lot of stuff (buses, cars, trailers) and large staffs of managers, coaches, mechanics, masseurs, press attaches and the like. A team is owned by an independent company, which is 100 percent supported by sponsors, from the team name right down through every detail. Thus the competition is very intense — with no success, there is no visibility, no sponsor, no team. No TV money for the teams, either; that goes to the race owners (there are appearance fees, at least). While top riders will make salaries in the $2-3 million range, with lots of endorsement income, the minimum salary is under $50,000. These are hardnosed working-class guys. Only the rarest, most incredible riders have long records of success. You almost never win, but when you do, you're the king of the world. Thus the temptation to dope is huge; riders have no effective union or any other protections American pros take for granted; that's also a factor Cycling has worked hard, and fairly successfully, against it.

Bike racing is glorious, dramatic, unforgiving and very, very hard. Professional bike racers are genetically gifted with very efficient oxygen uptake and a freakish ability to recover from repeated hard efforts, not to mention brutal crashes at 35 mph right onto the asphalt with other guys riding right over them. They are insanely disciplined and able to endure unimaginable amounts of pain for ridiculously long periods of time. They train 20,000 miles a year and eat like a bird. There are three basic types of rider: the climber, the roller and the sprinter. Climbing is all about the power-to-weight ratio, rolling is about producing high power for long periods, and sprinting is about absolute power (try getting your bike up to 45 mph!). Races have varying demands, and teamwork really matters; the basic strategy is you callously spend your rollers to get your climbers or sprinters into position to fly at the end of a long day. But it is also like baseball: you put your best team out on the field on a given day and see what happens.

So the next time that group of guys in spandex pisses you off, give a thought to their world — and get up with me at 5:30 in the morning every day in July to watch the Tour de France.