21 Cycling Climbs Part Two - Flipbook - Page 35
Col du Tourmalet
Steinés had persistently tried to persuade his
editor to go deeper into the mountains.
In search of a landscape and terrain difficult
enough to require a super-human effort, just
to finish the day’s stage.
He found what he was looking for on the
Tourmalet.
These early signs of sadomasochistic
tendencies in cycling route planning
continue to this day.
Steinés understood how tales of human
endurance served up to a public hungry for
heroes at their comfortable breakfast tables,
could be used to build the reputations of
champions and the Tour.
Tabloid journalism was alive and well in 1910.
That’s not to say cyclists were somehow
victims in all of this. Show me a mountain,
and I’ll show you any number of riders willing
to race up it just for the hell of it.
It’s what we do, it’s who we are.
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