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.”
This story is from the October 2017 edition of Cycling Plus.
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This story is from the October 2017 edition of Cycling Plus.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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