Hi,

“Meyrueis, Lozère, June 6, 1977. Hot and overcast. I take my gear out of the car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafés. Non-racers. The emptiness of those lives shocks me.”

 
The famous opening passage of Tim Krabbé’s book, The Rider (what, you haven't read it?), reminds us that racers are a different breed. For those people, there’s living (racing) and there’s everything in-between.
 
But for some of us looking on from sidewalk cafés, race season still delivers an emotional rollercoaster of thrills and spills and glory and, unfortunately, defeat.
 
It’s just that we experience it all differently: we watch in awe as our heroes go to battle and focus months and potentially years of build-up into a short moment of intensity.

We are inspired by the commitment and drive it takes them to put absolutely everything into such a punishing profession: in racing, one slip, a flat tyre or a badly timed off-day and you're instantly left behind – not even a lifetime of preparation can save your result.

But when it all goes right. Wow. What a feeling that must be.
 
As the international race season gets rolling, we watch with perhaps the greatest ever anticipation.
 
The year promises a fuller calendar of downhill, enduro and cross-country spread across a summer of spectacle.
 
There really is nothing quite like racing.

Even when viewed from the sidewalk.
 
Cheers,
 
James