Further Viewing

There are hundreds of race videos that capture (especially) the colour, speed and heroism of events such as the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and other classics like Paris-Roubaix. And of course then there are thousands of YouTube videos as well. Plus there's TV coverage of the 2013 Tour coming up...

For a start, go to YouTube and search for 'An Ordinary Cyclist' to watch Fabian Cancellara as he descends Stage 7 from Barcelona to Andorra in the Pyrenees in the 2009 Tour De France. This is the 80+ km/h descent down Port del Comte as he races to catch up with the peloton, accompanied by Mozart's Symphony No 25 in G Minor played by Sir Neville Marriner and The Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Heart-stopping and free! Then have a look at some of the following.

Le Vélo de Ghislain Lambert
Directed by Philippe Harel, 2001
In the mid 1970s, Ghislain Lambert is a Belgian racing cyclist born the same day as Eddy Merckx but with much less talent. He wants to become a champion and manages to join a ‘professional’ team as a lowly domestique. Secure in his dream of victory and sporting glory, Ghislain waits his turn impatiently and eventually, inevitably, resorts to 'le dopage'. A comic but also in the end moving tribute to ‘les petits rouleurs’ – the little riders.

Breaking Away
Directed by Peter Yates, 1979
A great coming-of-age movie with a cycling twist. Best friends Dave, Mike, Cyril and Moocher graduate from high school in the college town of Bloomington, Indiana. Although Dave has no job and doesn't know what to do with his life, he is a bicycle racer. He pretends to be Italian, much to the chagrin of his parents, and meets an IU co-ed to whom he passes himself off as an Italian exchange student. He races with and gets run off the road by the Italian cycling team, but then beats the college’s best in a track race, to the delight of his father. Dave finally enrols at the university himself, where he meets a newly arrived French student. Soon, he is extolling the superiority of French cyclists and culture, and the film ends with him greeting his father in French instead of Italian.

Boy
Directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, 2012
This Internet-only short film stars Timothy Spall as a man whose son has been killed while cycling on a country road. It won a British Airways Great Britons Initiative prize associated with the London Olympics. It’s a quiet, touching film that incorporates the London 2012 Games in a wonderful way. See if you can watch it without a lump in your throat, or even a tear or two. Good score too.
http://youtu.be/yHkOIFyC26E

A Sunday in Hell
Directed by Jørgen Leth, 1976
Stunning documentary about the 1976 Paris-Roubaix race, one of the cycling calendar's legendary and toughest fixtures, some of which takes place on bicycle, body and soul-destroying sections of cobbles – the dreaded 'pavé'. Leth captures the drama, heartbreak and torturous conditions backed by an atmospheric score. Most of road-racing's 1970s elite are competing in the race, which was first run in 1896. The final scenes in the famous showers at the Roubaix velodrome are particularly gritty, as are the stills of some of the riders.

Belleville Rendez-Vous
Directed by Sylvain Chomet, 2003
A charming and engrossing French cartoon comedy with no dialogue. Champion, a young orphan boy, brought up by his grandmother to race in the Tour de France, is kidnapped partway through the race. Granny and her dog enlist the help of a trio of old-time entertainers to track him down. Incredibly inventive and far more bonkers than it sounds.

Höllentour (Hell on Wheels)
Directed by Pepe Danquart, Werner Schweizer, 2004
This documentary follows the fortunes – and misfortunes – of the T-Mobile team as they struggle to compete in the 2003 Tour. It focuses on the relationship between sprinter Erik Zabel and teammate Rolf Aldag. The moments where Zabel talks frankly about how he can't compete with his rivals any more are heart-breaking – he looks and sounds like an also-ran rather than the man who won the Tour green jersey for six consecutive years from 1996 to 2001. And there is another scene where Rolf Aldag is in bed, holding his red and white polka-dot King of the Mountains jersey in bed, saying that each dot on it is a year off his life....