As Dan Martin rides half of the Tour de France with two broken vertebrae, John Whitney asks what makes cyclists so hard?
Most look as though a strong breeze would topple them, yet pro cyclists prove themselves time and again as sport’s toughest. Dan Martin’s heroic Tour de France ride to Paris, where he overcame a stage nine crash to still finish sixth overall, is the latest in a long list of against-the-odds rages against the dying of the light, the Irishman possessing the gait of a man three times his age whenever he climbed off each evening. Geraint Thomas cut a similar figure at the2013 Tour. He’d crashed even earlier in the race - the very first stage, in fact, in Corsica - and had to be lifted from his bike by Team Sky soigneurs, such was the impact of his broken pelvis. Against all odds - against even his mother’s wishes - he finished and was no passenger either, still managing to be a key wingman to Chris Froome. Of notorious suffer-lover Tony Martin, his former directeur sportif Brian Holm once said that “with more people like him the Germans would have won at Stalingrad in 1943.”
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der October 2017-Ausgabe von Cycling Plus.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der October 2017-Ausgabe von Cycling Plus.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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Air Apparent - Pollution hasn't gone away. It's still there in every lungful, even if we can't see it in the air or on the news. But there are reasons to breathe easier, thanks to pioneering projects using cycling 'citizen scientists'. Rob Ainsley took part in one...
The toxic effects of pollution have been known about for years. 'Just two things of which you must beware: Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!' sang 1960s satirist Tom Lehrer.Over recent decades, though, pollution has dropped down our list of things to worry about, thanks to ominously capitalised concerns such as Climate Change, AI, Global Conflict, Species Collapse, etc. That doesn't, unfortunately, mean the problem has expired. Air quality often exceeds safe limits, with far-reaching and crippling effects on our health.
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