one-eyed_jim
Old School Grand Master
Yeah, that's a given. There are plenty of cyclists in France. They're just not continuing what (rightly or wrongly) is perceived to be French touring heritage. There's nothing unusual about a guy of 75 in lycra on a carbon Kuota with 10-speed Dura Ace on a Sunday club run, or 1000 young men on modern mountain bikes on an organised Raid VTT in some departmental forest, or 1000 cyclosportifs on a pseudo-race in the Alps, or a team time trial at the village kermesse. What you don't see is a French family on bikes on a camping holiday, or new bikes built with luggage-carrying in mind, or with integrated lighting, or any discussion of bikes outside quite a narrow mainstream in the mass-market cycling press.cchris2lou":2pqilsgw said:Cyclotourist are numerous in france , but they just dont ride randoneurs bikes .
in my town of 26000 people on any sunday morning , you can get up to 100 riders , plus the audax ( slower group , older ) and a few on mountain bikes .
most of them ride modern carbon fibre bikes .
I'm not saying that things should be any different, only that there's a gap between the perception of France's cycling heritage by the non-French (which is probably an invention of the internet age, and focuses on the things that, while very idiomatically French - the 650B campeur Alex Singer for example - may never have had quite the mass popularity one might assume) and cycling as practised in France, by the French - Decathlon, carbon, century rides and sag wagons.