Let me love you: a personal look at pro cycling spectatorship

In a sport where atheletes and fans try not to care about each other too much, I can do nothing but care.

A cycling crowd coming alive at Strade Biance 2024. Credit: Fabio Ferrari / AP

by Malindy

Cycling spectatorship is an odd beast, something that has both a huge and an absolutely minimal part in the sport. The arguably biggest news out of Rund um Köln, Germany’s oldest one-day race, was how an elderly woman walked onto the street and had the entire breakaway weaving around her, until one rider ended up hitting her walking aid, dragging it a few metres across the street. Nothing, it seems, stops for a cycling race.

This is part of cycling’s appeal, the thing that sets it apart from sports taking place in specially designed stadiums and race tracks, a sport with humble beginnings, which humbly weaves itself through the streets of our everyday lives. It’s a sport that gives fans unprecedented access, and yet, paradoxically, no access at all – these men and women zoom past crows close enough to touch, and touch they do, often with a disregard for riders' personal space that makes me want to hide my eyes. And yet, we know precious little about most cyclists. Most of them never appear on camera, never give an interview, and even the greatest athletes in the sport are never stylised into stars, evident by how Netflix tried, and soundly failed, to replicate the cultural impact of its Formula 1 series Drive to Survive with the cycling equivalent Unchained. There simply is no Daniel Ricciardo of cycling, because in cycling, no amount of showmanship off the bike can make up for the honest work on it. It’s almost frowned upon, in a sport where an athlete drinking deeply from his celebratory champagne and a commentator swearing on live TV make bigger headlines than the racing, as if the real news are those moments of letting go of polite restraint to break the barrier of invisibility. Safe for a few moments, every racer on the bike is almost too fast to see with the naked eye. It’s almost as if that is how we should perceive them in life.

It's startling then, to see that the reality is really just as humble as it appears to be, in a sport where even at World Tour level, the spectators in the VIP box are likely to make considerably more money than the athletes they’re watching. It isn’t a cycling race unless the moderator’s microphone dies while a row of tall, lanky men in jerseys awkwardly stand on stage, unsure whether to leave or stick around until they’ve performed the ritual of raising their hand in greeting once their names are called. At Rund um Köln, the sudden, awkward silence is broken by a baby trying to crawl onto the podium, squealing in protest when their mother puts an end to their journey. One team is late to their own presentation, and their social media content creator jokingly forgoes filming their introduction to grab an early bratwurst instead. To get to the start, every rider has to weave through crowds getting frozen yoghurt, or muffins, or the aforementioned wurst. Nothing stops for a cycling race, least of all lunch or an amateur’s pre-race idea of carboloading.

But compared to these big events, a one-day race, even in countries much more fond of cycling than Germany, feels in essence like a nuisance, the same way marathons do. At Rund um Köln, the elite race often feels like an afterthought, when the entirety of the starting line is full of amateur racers measuring up against each other in the categories between 30 and 100 km in race length. Some of them turn up to catch a glimpse of the professionals, most of them don’t bother. I wonder more than once if any of them even watch cycling races.

It's startling how little anyone cares, with teams trudging up and down the stairs to the podium in their cycling shoes, until, suddenly, people start filing in as the World Tour teams start arriving. These people are interesting, they are the ones fans have seen on TV – Florian Senechal, Sam Welsford, Biniam Girmay. Girmay had two successive crashes in the Giro d’Italia and had to abandon. Now, two weeks later, on the last day of the Giro, while Tadej Pogačar is getting ready to ride victory laps around Rome, Girmay is in Cologne. What looks like a whole delegation of Eritreans has turned up for him, welcoming him like a prince. It feels doubly odd – I’m used to being the only black person at any given cycling race, now, next to these proud Eritreans, I feel like a fraud. Light-skinned, I think as I take a picture with Girmay.

This is a new way for me to feel ill-fitting, when normally, I almost relish in how badly I seem to fit wherever I go. If cycling is the humble person’s sport, it should be for me, the second-generation working class black kid. But when people say humble, they are referring to cycling’s humble beginnings, as well as the fact that compared to any other sport, the glitz of Formula One, the gruesome spectacle of boxing, this is a humble sport, easy enough to understand, (mostly) devoid of entry fees for spectators, and, at least on the surface, dependent on raw physical and mental capabilities. Compared to a kart or a fencing kit, everyone can pick up a bike. But the divide is and always has been so much bigger, when a sport is as Euro-centric as this, and when even there, some people never see themselves represented. As so often in my life, I find women in cycling relegated, and black women? Forget it. It’s often evident that cycling would love to be a grander affair than it is, with its grand opening night for the Giro and the ad sales machine that is the Tour caravan. 

These things are so obviously not meant for the public that it’s no wonder how for most people, a cycling race isn’t about the cycling itself. A race is likely the worst place to watch the race itself – if you’re somewhere with a screen, you’ll get the picture but not the commentary, and if you’re out on the road, you’re likely sitting out with your phone, often waiting for an official broadcast to start. People are often so busy getting drunk that by the time the peloton rolls past, most of them have likely forgotten a race is on, if they ever knew it to begin with.

In Cologne, the real attraction is the amateur race, an opportunity to show off a bit, away from STRAVA KOMs or BikeGrid scores. Some people likely take it as a super serious opportunity to compete, but it feels like most just want to show they can go the distance. Every German classic has a competition like this, as do most classics I’ve attended, as well as races for children. Mayors talk about the importance of cycling for the climate. It’s the Skoda retailer’s big day.

Perhaps the most working-class about cycling is how both the spectators and the athletes often do their utmost to seem absolutely disinterested in each other. These athletes don’t talk about their private lives, they hardly make political statements, likely in order to never attract the potential ire of any sponsor. Good for them, to not have to bow to the public’s insatiable appetite for personal stories, and yet. The things we know about artists in any other medium, even just in part, makes us understand their art better, and I would love that from cyclists, too. There is little to become attached to, so I do the only thing I know how to do – I don’t fit in, loudly and obnoxiously. I turn up with garish signs that showcase, I cheer, I whoop, I turn up in my favourite cyclist’s DMs, a 35 year-old domestique who treats me with equal indulgence and careful distance, as if I’m an overexcited puppy and he’s, frankly, allergic.

Rick Zabel, a grown man, took this home with him. Credit: me, unfortunately.

I do this, not so much for attention, as I do it to get what the sport can’t give me. What we tried to do with this Substack blog, essentially, bridge the gap between the professional, frigid attitude of this sport and our strong love for it. It’s probably also an occupational hazard – the writer, always emotional, always curious. But it works, the great Kate Wagner has taught us this – if you’re honest with your love for something and want to understand it, you will gain love. I’ve never been interested in a sport before, never fell in love as shockingly and completely, and now I am here, loving in the only way I know how – loudly. So much about cycling, about sports, really, even in a post Drive to Survive era, is about competition and results, and I am, and have always been, about people. I try to find ways to tell these people that I appreciate their efforts and always try to put them in context against their circumstances, their thoughts and their desires. I don’t know if I will achieve this, especially since I don’t have a career in cycling. 

But I’ve seen the love, even among all the carefully feigned nonchalance. Every fan who starts running  up next to a cyclist loves. The people near the finish line love. At a lot of races, people may not or sporadically care, but when they care, when they love, those moments are something to remember. these moments may be difficult to hold on to, but over the many times I have hung around for hours in hopes of seeing the peloton, there was someone with me. It’s easy to feel cynical when you compare this to other sports, but we all love. Seeing the peloton pass through your local area feels like a spectacle of nature, with the way people suddenly fall silent at the noise of a bunch of chains rattling. Even if cycling is an excuse to sit outside with your family, it becomes part of the fabric of your life that way. All I want is to show the athletes a little appreciation for that, because they are right there, humble and mostly embarrassed in the face of adoration. Despite the feeling of not fitting in, the disinterest, the oddly timid demeanour of the sport and its athletes, I have turned up, loudly. 

Ready or not, I’m here to love you.