The commercial aspect of Morton’s ride actually resonated with the original tour just as much as his return to the days of solo racing. In 1903, faced with a shrinking readership and fierce competition, the French newspaper L’Auto created the Tour – an extended spectacle of grotesque dimensions – as a means of boosting its circulation. The brutality of the race proved irresistible to spectators. It was the first stage in road cycling, which stretched for more than 400 kilometers, and was challenged not only by professional cyclists but also carpenters, blacksmiths, teachers. . after stopping to fix his bike.
The same kind of struggle was evident to those who followed Morton’s ordeal along the way Rapha’s Instagram feed. A week after the alt tour, he crossed the path from groomed blisters to trench rejection. His performance in the Alps was hampered by the weight of his camping gear, and his tires broke so many times that he eventually had to tie a knot in the inner tube to continue.
Against the background of the map of France, the rider appeared as a pink dot, slowly shifting through the landscape.
It is, of course, more than a promise of pain and glory what make the Tour de France and its Morton alternative version so striking. Many bike races are tough enough to push riders into a state of zombie-like misery, but no one but the Tour has surpassed the sport itself through 108 editions. One reason for this, according to French literary theorist Roland Barthes, is related to Tour’s role in reconstructing his country’s “material unity” each summer. The race takes place in the world, not at the stadium, and its competitors become, however, briefly part of every community they pass through, slowly connecting the country into a national whole. “It is said that the Frenchman is not exactly a geographer,” Barthes said wrote 1960. “His Geography is not a book, it is a Tour; every year, through the Tour, he knows the length of his shores and the height of his mountains. “
Through Morton, I rediscovered the length of those shores and the height of those mountains, years after doping scandals turned me off from cycling. On alt tour site, its geographical progress could be tracked in real time. The experience was incredibly enchanting: on the background of a map of France, the rider appeared like a pink dot, slowly moving through the landscape. Behind him was a black dot representing the advanced Peloton Tour de France, which Morton managed to surpass – a new experience for the journeyman rider. (He would usually ride in the service of a team leader who is considered a contender to win the Tour, a task to protect him from the wind or to bring him water bottles.) He reached his half of the tour with a lead of about 850 kilometers above his pursuers in the second half of his ride, amid steep mountains and a loss of 800 kilometers in transfers. And finally, he did indeed reach Paris, days before the peloton.
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