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Rocky and Rwanda | The New Yorker

newyorker.com · 865 words · saved by 1 readers

Did you see that crash in the Tour de France the other day? A car, carrying a French television team, sideswiped Juan Antonio Flecha, an Argentine-born Spanish rider, knocking him into the Dutch star Johnny Hoogerland, who was catapulted through the air and became ensnared in a barbed wire fence. It’s a wonder Flecha and Hoogerland survived, much less climbed right back onto their pedals and finished the stage. Hoogerland’s left leg was striped with deep, bloody lacerations. He bandaged it as he rode, trying to make up lost time, and only after he’d crossed the finish line checked to see if he needed stitches. He did: thirty-three of them. In most sports, either you win or you lose, but in cycling, nice as it is to win, what really matters is refusing defeat. You might go down—you almost certainly will go down at some point—but you don’t drop out. Bike racing is about being undeterrable and undistractible. In the video of the Flecha-Hoogerland wreck, the flying bodies get your attentio

Save this story Save this story Did you see that crash in the Tour de France the other day? A car, carrying a French television team, sideswiped Juan Antonio Flecha, an Argentine-born Spanish rider, knocking him into the Dutch star Johnny Hoogerland, who was catapulted through the air and became ensnared in a barbed wire fence. It’s a wonder Flecha and Hoogerland survived, much less climbed right back onto their pedals and finished the stage. Hoogerland’s left leg was striped with deep, bloody lacerations. He bandaged it as he rode, trying to make up lost time, and only after he’d crossed the

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