On the Problem of Freedom and the Incoherence of Sport (Warning: demotivational)

Ok, maybe this isn't the best post to write before racing tomorrow. But I've got to write it.

Why do we race bikes? And why do we care about other people racing bikes? Why do we participate in, or even follow, competitive sports at all?

Dude, why are you asking such idiotic, annoying questions?! Maybe because your only ability of note is descending fast in a (nearly) straight line.

Fair enough. But if the question is idiotic, what's the answer?

Here's one: we're just curious as to who is all around fastest and fittest. Racing tells us who those people are.

Right. Well, that is valuable information, particularly if you're a female looking for the highest quality sperm to fertilize your viable eggs. An evolutionary basis for cycling (and podium girls).












Victor of athletic contest between male primates releases his pressurized, uh, champagne, uh, against a backdrop of attractive female primates bearing tokens in his honor.









But suppose you could determine who's fastest without endangering anyone's testes... without racing, I mean.



The Joe Parkin book I reviewed a few weeks back tells a story about a father and son team of doctors who tested him upon his arrival in Belgium. They first attached some leather straps to his wrists and ankles, each with wires connecting to a tan steel box. Then measured. Parkin reports:

It was amazing how accurately the doctors' numbers foretold the truth... The good doctors had compiled quite a bit of data on riders and had devised a graph that would put me into a category of cyclist. At the bottom of the list was "Cyclotourist" and "Amateur" and then a boundary line signifying "Beroepsrenner" (professional). At the lower end of the professional category was the "Kermis racer" and then "Classics racer," with the top level being "Tour winner." I fell into the category of classics riders, somewhere in the middle of that group.

Parkin goes on to say that if he accepted his fate he would have made a lot more money, and found a lot more contentment than chasing after the polka dot jersey in a grand tour.

Remember, this was nearly two decades ago, with what sounds like torture equipment. Imagine what medicine will be like two decades hence.

Will we be able to determine the winner of a race before the starting gun is fired?

Suppose we could. Not only would we measure brute physical attributes like strength, endurance, and the ability to process oxygen, but also efficiency, tenacity, pain threshold... you name it. Anything relevant to the physical process whereby one bike wheel crosses that finish line before all the others.

Ok, so in that case, why race? We'd already know the outcome. Would we do it anyway? Would we avoid the data beforehand so as to enjoy the surprising reveal?

Is bike racing like the television show, Deal or No Deal, where the logical thing to do is to draw up a curve beforehand with one's risk tolerance, i.e., the price of insurance, i.e., the price one would be willing to pay beyond expected utility for various bets? And then to write down the sequence of breifcases to be opened? (Or accept the proposed order of a random sequence generator. This part of the show is just plain irrational.)

Deal or No Deal continues on, as far as I know, and makes a lot of money. People watch it just to see something unfold over 30 minutes that shouldn't take more than a few seconds.

Hey Howie... Here's what I'm willing to pay for insurance. Here's what you are offering. Here are my briefcase numbers, should you need them. Decision is predetermined by our formulae plus the sequence. Just patch our spreadsheets together and we're done.

There's no reason to sweat over this stuff in real time. But we like the titillation, the surprise, the suspense, of just coming to know something. Is that all bike racing is? A striptease?

In the cheesy, but surprisingly hard to forget film, Gladiator, Proximo (Oliver Reed) tells Maximus (Russell Crowe): "Listen to me. Learn from me. I was not the best because I killed quickly. I was the best because the crowd loved me. Win the crowd and you will win your freedom."

In other words, entertainment requires suspense. Suspense requires prolonged ignorance of the outcome.

Another way in... My brother proposed a different way of setting up racing categories. You do a complete genetic profile and base the categories on groups of people with roughly the same genetic potential. Great idea. If we did that, I'd be racing some pretty sad competition.

But what would separate out the people within each category into faster and slower? Well, the variations in RNA, variations in how neatly the genetic sequences were triggered in development, the history of the person's diet and environment (e.g., altitude), and so on. If we knew all of these, we could make all of the categories more even still. That is, we could make the categories even fairer.

But then what would account for the remaining variation in the categories? Still more causal factors that would need to be programmed into the system, until eventually you would have categories with perfectly evenly matched people, destined to tie, or else some unknown or lucky factors would decide the race (e.g., squirrel gets caught in one guy's spokes). So then the joy of racing rests on ignorance and chance. (And a really great system would take the squirrels into account and predict their actions as well!)

The deep underlying problem, I think, is none other than that old philosophical chestnut: the freedom of the will. We think that for all of the medical factors: genetics, childhood conditioning, diet, and brain chemistry, there is some mysterious leftover: the will. And racing sorts that out; it is a "test of wills", after all.

The will is a magical, living thing, operating outside the scientific realm of cause and effect. It's an unmoved mover, a first cause. There's no figuring it out beforehand. You've just got to reach deep into your suitcase of courage and see what you're packing. That's what racing is all about.

Except I think the notion of free will is an illusion. It's not just that we don't have it. It's that the very idea doesn't make any sense.

(More later. Or not. I'm guessing this post will not be well received. Even I'd rather read about Floyd's apocryphal exploits.)

Why I Love Crappy-Category Amateur Racing

A new allegation against Alex Rodriguez: he tipped opposing players about what was coming next from his own team's pitcher. A-Rod would signal the batter to expect high heat, a slider off the plate, or a pick off. In return, the opposing players -- a cabal of midfielders -- would tip A-Rod when he was at the plate.

It's just what an economist would predict, because giving tips doesn't hurt you as an individual, while receiving them helps you. But what a devastating blow to the sport of baseball. Whereas steroid use cheats the history books, the fans, and non-steroidal players (if there are any), tipping cheats your own team. I mean, free agency is one thing...

Professional cycling is apparently not so different, though. Everybody knows about the drug abuse in the peleton. What is, perhaps, less well known is that riders routinely sell races or grab UCI points by sandbagging and then sprinting in events where they should be working for their teams.



I've been reading A Dog in a Hat, by Joe Parkin, an American who raced professionally in Europe in the late eighties and early nineties. Parkin's gripping and well-told tale will shock even those who are already resigned to the fact that everybody dopes.

He describes the typical scene before kermis, in Belgium, where riders prepare for the race in someone's living room near the start line, shooting up and/or ingesting their favorite drug cocktail: some of the racers, amphetamine addicts who race in order to use, rather than the other way around.

He tells how riders infuse clean urine, catheter-to-bladder, before testing, or sneak it into testing rooms via condom-in-body-orifice.

But more disturbing: when Parkin gets into his first winning break with nine other riders, he realizes that they're working together well and will stay away from the pack. He's thrilled, knowing he'll place top-ten, but his director asks him if he's in the deal.

"Nee," I responded. "There's a deal?"

"Of course there is, dummy. Why do you think they are all so content with each other? You must attack. When they take you back, you must go again and again, until they speak with you. Understand?"

Parkin follows orders and eventually they let him in on the deal: seven thousand francs.

Parkin explains:

"Over the years I have recounted the stories of selling kermis races, and the response has run from shocked disbelief and anger to fascination. My experience as a pro cyclist in Europe has left me with a somewhat altered moral code, such that many of the things that bother normal people are invisible to me. This race that I sold would not be the last. In fact, I was able to make good spending money by making it into the breakaway and then attacking at precisely the right moment if I thought a deal was forming. A rider from the town where the race is being held will often want to win more than anything else in the world. Think of this as Homecoming for bike racers. As such, the local cafe might offer him a small bonus for winning in front of his people. Most likely, he would also receive a bonus from his team. Add to that the prize money, assuming he didn't have to split it with any teammates, and his cost for buying a kermis race could be reasonable."

Interesting. Very interesting. It is, of course, just what an economist would predict. But it goes against the very spirit of bike racing.

The Parkin book is a great read and I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in pro cycling, or in human nature for that matter. Parkin never achieves much in terms of results, but he becomes a real European pro in every sense: language, values, skills, body-type. If you'd like to know what that means, well, A Dog in a Hat is probably your best guide.

Bob Roll was racing in Europe at the same time, and in fact advised Parkin to leave the U.S. for Belgium. He pens a ridiculous foreword, which is, by itself, worth the price of the book. In the following excerpt, he recounts running into Parkin along the canal, years after seeing him last:

"Joe was no longer the rheumatoid doughy tosser type that ruled Stateside racing in those days. He was an avenging angel of misery and, best of all, not a starry-eyed regional time trial champ with delusions of grandeur about to be sent home in a pain-induced coma after falling asleep in a crosswind battle. No, Joe knew the score. Joe had become the inside skinny. Joe was a twelve-toothed assassin.

What was it in those bleak landscapes that carved the fat off Joe's carcass like vultures around a kill? The weeks, months, and years of isolation in Belgium? The vicious, epic races that were virtually unknown by Americans then but are now part of our own cycling lore? The ancient, semi-illusionary dialect of a downtrodden people who revere cyclists as beacons of hope and cultural pride? The food, the dirty deals, the pig-shit toothpaste, the two-faced team managers, the smoky bars, homicidal teammates, and demented competitors? All these things and many more that you will read carved Joe into a missile of sinew, veins, sunken eyes, narrow shoulders, skinny arms, and huge ass and legs typical of a survivor of the toughest game on two wheels.

You should count yourself lucky to have stumbled across a treasure map from the old country of forgotten dreams and buried riches. In Belgium, bike racing rules, and I am not surprised in the least that Joe Parkin was a Flemish prince.

I have a rather ominous premonition that many a cycling fan will take umbrage with the grittier side of our sport that Joe writes about. If you do, you do not deserve to read this book -- and feel free to FO and D! For everyone else, you may now read and be enlightened and entertained by the most authentic book ever written about making a two-wheeled living as a pro cyclist in Europe."