The brilliance of cycling is that if you were to invent a cheating competition, you could never call it that because it would give away the game. You would need a pretext for rules, one that used some arbitrary but very specific set of contraints that disqualify all functionally efficient solutions outside their domain. They would enable byzantine regulations that created jobs for (pliable) authorities who outnumbered athletes, and be a constant source of subtext, scandal, misdirection, and betrayal.
To appreciate the peculiar beauty of cycling you need to understand what it is. It is not merely a sport or an athletic competition, it is itself the art of cheating.
To appreciate the peculiar beauty of cycling you need to understand what it is. It is not merely a sport or an athletic competition, it is itself the art of cheating.