Nooooo. I thought I had finally found the holy grail, cycling fiction (nay, romance!) that gets the cycling facts correct. The dedication is to Wouter Weylandt(!), there’s a glossary of French terms and race classifications, and four pages in she’s name-dropping Garmin-Sharp and Fausto Coppi. My expectations, below sea level, started to gain elevation.
Energy gels taste like “chemical fruit with the consistency of semen.” (lol.) Her Italian cyclist knows English, French, German, Spanish, and “enough Flemish to insult Belgian riders—it’s important to insult them so they understand.” (Ha! Accurate to message boards I’ve been on.) Pillow talk is Contador, Pantani, and Big Mig. 10/10, no notes. 👌
And then. And then.
I’m honestly baffled as to how an author could research enough to get the above details correct, yet have it go so wrong. By chapter 5, I was side-eyeing a couple things. By chapter 14, my rant-notes were getting extensive. By chapter 21, I had so many WTFs that I wrote myself the note to “walk it off, Jamie, walk it off”… and then I did, taking a few laps around the room to cool down.
She fundamentally misunderstands the most basic race dynamics, not to mention the types of disciplines involved in cycling, in a way that negates the emotional impact of the story. She wants me to think Luca is struggling to prove himself while tossing off asides about him winning the biggest races in the world like it’s no big deal. She wants me to feel these big feelings about things that could never happen to Luca’s career. She forgoes the very real struggles and dangers of being a pro cyclist in favor of nonsensical melodrama.
In a weird way, I’m less annoyed when a writer is phoning it in. To put this much effort into a well-researched book while botching the most obvious, basic fundamentals of the sport is orders of magnitude more disappointing. And if it had less real-life touchstones, then I could handwave more of the errors as a reality-adjacent fantasy.
I’ve established with previous attempts at cycling fiction and romance that what a cycling fan wants is to be entertained and to nitpick. There was so much of the latter it ruined the former, and by the time she had botched the Giro beyond recognition (my beloved Giro!!) and had the antagonist DIE OF A BROKEN COLLARBONE, I could not. I was rooting against the couple out of spite and nothing could redeem it.
For the brave or the foolish, I’ve copied my raw notes below, with a few addendums. I made it to the end, so allow me to indulge in the pleasure of WTF-ing all over the place with my 20 years of nutso cycling fan bonafides.
Raw notes ⚭
“Are those the Garmin-Sharp guys?” as they train in Colorado (ok, so we’re doing this! 2013 nostalgia here we come #danmartinletsgoooo)
“I call to see if you’re okay after the ride.”
No, okay was not the first thought that sprang to mind. “Hit by a truck”, “pounded by hammers”, or “face first into the wall” were all more accurate than “okay.”
“I’ll live.”
^^ hahahaha
He wins the white jersey at Flèche Wallone… noooo. Flèche is a one-day race, no jerseys awarded. And Chris says this while trying to prove his cycling cred and that he’s not one of those fans who only follow the TDF 🙃
Whoa, fatal impact—now I see why it’s dedicated to Weylandt. That was well done, harrowing and emotional
Driedaagse van West Vlaanderen! (aka Three Days of West Flanders, which morphed into Dwars door West-Vlaanderen, aka Tour of West Flanders, then ceased to exist after 2018. Not to be confused with Dwars door Vlaanderen, aka Tour of Flanders, a different event altogether and still a key part of Flemish Cycling Week!)
WTF are these race numbers??? Me, reading this whole chapter thinking that Luca’s on a continental team and thus his career is much worse off than I thought 🤦🏻♀️
All due respect to Driedaagse van West Vlaanderen, but there is NO WAY a stacked startlist with the World Champ, Olympic time trial champ,1 and GC guys are at this little 2.2 race2
(It’s so easy to fact check too! Here’s
the startlist for 2013: it’s all classics riders and sprinters—namely Cav—prepping for Tirreno)
“So what if it was a second tier stage race? That only meant more national and regional teams mixed in with all the top level pros.” Chris is reallllly not arguing his case for having any cycling cred here
Throwing shade at the brown kit of La Mondiale—ahh, the hallowed cycling tradition 🤣
Day two of Driedaagse: winning breakaway goes at 12k, Luca the climber winning a reduced sprint of eight or so guys… with a one second gap on the Herelbeke circuit 🙃
Day three is another last minute breakaway with a sprint against “the olympian” 🙃
(No, this would not happen.)
Obligatory carbon fiber erection joke lol
Casually namedropping Fabian (Cancellara), Jens (Voigt), and Damiano (Caruso? or Cunego?)
Driedaagse De Panne-Koksijde! (another deep cut, and a 2.HC race, not to be confused with the earlier Driedaagse)
“The Berendries rises sixty-five meters over less than a kilometer, averaging 7.2% and the steepest section is 14%. That’s going to be some pull, and it’s the second time the riders will see it today.” The announcer offered words of doom—even the Super-Jamestown route didn’t have anything over a 14% grade. Luca and the others would be going the next thing to straight up.
^^ Ok, um, NO. She acts like this is rampas inhumanas at the Vuelta! Berendries is a b-roll berg in the Ardennes, which would hurt the legs for sure but it’s not a climb for climbers, and hardly a deterrent for most sprinters. Stage 1 of the 2013 Driedaagse De Panne-Koksijde did 3 laps that included the Berendries, and it was won in a sprint by a sprinter/all-rounder without a climber in sight
Invoking Johnny Hoogerland and the barbed wire heard round the world (although she says Hoogerland hit by the car, and actually it was Flecha hit by the car, then Hoogerland sent flying by the chain reaction… but that’s close enough)
Luca has his lead “whittled down to a minute”—this is not the TDF!!3
The other stars backing out on the last day bc they’re poor losers 🙄
Bahahaha NO. Again, the big stars would not be there in the first place, but these are athletes who
won’t abandon with a broken tibia. That’s not how cycling works anyway, one crash or puncture for the leader and it’s all over. Pogacǎr had a 10 min lead at this year’s Giro and was still worried about losing it on the last day.
“If he was racing, and he took Paris-Roubaix in a brutal group sprint, there would be a single line to announce the real story afterwards.” !!!!!
Winning Roubaix no big deal???! In a GROUP SPRINT no less?? WTF
Wins Flèche Wallonne!!! Ardennes and cobbles are different types of classics for different types of riders!
If he can do that, ON TOP OF WINNING ROUBAIX, he wouldn’t be proving he can be the star instead of domestique, he’d be a once in a generation legend!!!!!
(It is more correct for a GC guy to win Flèche though, instead of Roubaix)
I think she thinks more stages = level of importance?? So one-day races aren’t a big deal?
Aww, Davis Phinney! Also name-dropping Wiggins, Spartacus, Nibali
She’s good at naming her teams—we’ve got Mondiale, Euskatel-Euskadi, Argos-Shimano, Lampre, Cannondale, and Team Sky, all IRL teams, and she adds Antano-Clark, Kastibank, and Duclos-Wurth, which blends right in (there was actually an
Astana-Würth and Liberty Seguros–Würth team circa 2006)
Luca, a climber, in a breakaway (!!!) with 2.5 min (!!!!!) on stage 1 circuit (!!!!!!) in Naples 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
Check
the stage 1 circuit in Naples in the IRL 2013 Giro: won by Cav (A SPRINTER) in a flat group sprint
Over 15 KOM points on a hill in the city 🤦🏻♀️
Bobke and Phil commentating the Giro??? hahahaha I remember watching this Giro—I was learning Dutch so I could pirate the stream from Sporza bc
the USA is notoriously bad about covering any race that’s not the Tour de France[^4]
Chris is in Italy—how would he even be streaming that coverage anyway instead of Eurosport or RAI??
Luca and his super-domestique winning one-two, hand in hand, on the opening fucking SPRINT STAGE
Gets pseudo-arrested immediately after winning the sprint for doping suspicion !!!! 🤦🏻♀️
Walk it off Jamie, walk it off
(I mean yeah, he’s on something nuclear if a climber is winning sprints from a breakaway, but an Italian cyclist in Italy getting publicly humiliated… this is just drama for the sake of drama, and it’s stupid)
Ok this is partly just recreating the 2013 Giro: Naples, TTT on day 2, then Sorrento, Matera, Pescara, Saltera, Firenze
Luca winning or finishing in the top 5 on next 5 stages 🤦🏻♀️
Let me be clear: sprint stages and mountain stages are basically a different sport
Sprinters and climbers are different
types of cyclists with completely different physiques
She’s popping Luca in all these different scenarios like he could win a sprint or a breakaway or a TT or a climb and that’s bananas! It violates the laws of physics!
Wanting to prevent a Zoncolan stage (at least the Mont Crostis part) and talking about throwing tacks down—not cool, Chris! Not cool!
“Berto, Brad, Vincenzo e Damiano” worried
Name on the back of his jersey? But cyclists don’t have names on the back of their jerseys. Or is this like that time
Team Sky tried it but got in trouble with the UCI?
Bruyneel—but this is during/after his scandal??!
Luca caught in 50 man pileup, Chris (A SPECTATOR!) goes rogue to pace him up the mountain
what the actual fuck am I reading
Rolf dies ok nope
DIED FROM A BROKEN COLLARBONE
Visiting the memorial at il Santuario della Madonna del Ghisallo—this part is touching, but I’m so salty I can’t appreciate it bc Rolf DIED FROM A BROKEN COLLARBONE
Of all the injuries?! Why pick the one injury that can’t be fatal unless it’s from like… surgical complications and infection?! 😭
And now I’m retroactively salty at the first road fatality back when Chris’s friend died because this is such a dumb repeat of a tragedy, it undermines the genuine emotional impact
This is petty now, but it irks me that braincell-deprived Christopher is the only one who notices the sprinter’s bike is geared wrong for climbing. Gearing fuckups happen, sure, but trust me that any sprinter who so much as sneezes in the direction of the Alps, much less climbs *checks notes*
MONT ZONCOLAN, will know to not over-gear their bike, as will every mechanic, teammate, DS, commentator, and most fans of the race. It will not require a cycling newb from a Colorado bike shop to have this brainstorm.
THIS IS ALSO WHY SPRINTERS CANNOT WIN CLIMBS AND CLIMBERS CANNOT WIN SPRINTS
At this point, I can’t tell if I’m rooting against them out of spite, or if I’m like, sure why not, these two dumbasses deserve each other
“You’re as strong a man as Johan Bruyneel. And almost as crazy.” Bruyneel would understand exactly why Luca completed Mont Zoncolan.
^^ Not… the hero you want? 😳
(Worth noting: circa 2012–13, the Garmin-Sharp teammates were testifying for USADA against Armstrong. Bruyneel banned by 2014. None of that circus is really acknowledged. Main comment about Armstrong is that he mashed the pedals.)
And now… Vincenzo Nibali wins the Giro as god intended. Fucking finally.
What’s wild to me is if you know enough to accurately include Nibali in your book, an Italian climber who wins in the Giro in 2013, then use his palmares as the template for your fictional cyclist, an Italian climber who aims to win the Giro in 2013. See what races Nibali does as prep (note: NOT the Flemish classics!!), and more importantly, what types of stages and races he wins. Ta-daa! It’s like a cheatsheet for how to create accurate drama, not name-dropping Big Mig but then botching your whole cycling cred by having your climber win Roubaix and every sprint in sight 🤦🏻♀️
If it’s circa 2013, hi Brad Wiggins! 👋 ↩︎
She says 2.1, but it’s 2.2—a legit typo, because she already explained the different classifications in the glossary ↩︎
Again, super easy to fact check: the gap between first and second in the final 2013 GC is a measly 22 seconds, the largest gap of the race, and typical for this type of race
[4]: This more than anything is the giveaway that you’re an American who has only watched the Tour, despite all protests to the contrary 🙃 ↩︎