“Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart”. This isn’t a line from a poem about the amount of work a rider puts into making the Tour de France ruining the romance of it, but it could be. The race did predate WB Yeats’ Easter, 1916 by over a decade, but that poem is about rather less trivial matters than a bike race.
Still, too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. The sacrifices that the 184 riders at this year’s Tour made just to get to the start line are innumerable, and would seem alien to most of the fans watching the bike race. As the race gets faster and harder, more is needed just to get to the base level for the whole peloton, not just for those who are aiming for the yellow jersey.
