Photo Gallery Superhuman Cyclists on Dope
Mont Ventoux, one of the mythical mountains of the Tour de France, where English cyclist Tom Simpson died in 1967.
German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk climbed Mont Ventoux, slowly, "perhaps to prove that men around the age of 60 aren't quite ready for the scrap heap."
Sloterdijk agrees with the French theorist Roland Barthes that doping among professional cyclists is profane. "Now the poetry is gone, the sublime has been steamrolled," he says. "The riders are just regular employees."
On the hills of the Tour de France, Sloterdijk discovered, "the feat these men perform is completely beyond the grasp of ordinary mortals."
Lance Armstrong, right (in a file photo), caught his handlebar in a spectator's plastic bag during an uphill climb in 2003. "What happened then was what Barthes called the 'jump,'" says Sloterdijk, "-- a sudden burst of energy that enabled Armstrong to press on with the fury of Achilles. It drove him to the summit and past every other rider along the way."
Danish rider Bjarne Riis told journalists in 2007 that his coveted yellow jersey was "in a cardboard box in my garage," after revelations of doping. "Pure Danish nihilism," says Sloterdijk.
