Why Everyone Should Watch Cycling

Cycling is not an easy sport to get into as a fan. Unlike most team sports—and you learn quickly that cycling is a team sport—you cannot simply watch a team try to move an object into a goal, and unlike most races, you are not only focused on who crosses the finish line first. In a stage race like the Tour de France, which begins this year on July 4 and consists of 21 days of racing, what happens in a single stage may have no relevance for the overall victor of the competition, who is known as the general classification winner and wears the iconic yellow jersey. There are races within races, sprints, mountain stages, breakaways, pelotons, and grupettos. Becoming a cycling fan, like becoming part of anything, is a process of learning a strange set of codes and rituals that, over time, become familiar and meaningful.