Holly Johnson is one of the hosts of The Beginner’s Guide to Pro Cycling, a new podcast from Escape Collective that unpacks the sport from the perspective of someone coming to it with fresh eyes.
Being a new fan to cycling doesn’t have to mean you’re someone like me who barely knew the sport of professional cycling existed before the Netflix documentary Unchained came along.
The only race I’d heard of was the Tour de France, which I assumed went around the full perimeter of France (and just France). Oh, how much there was to learn.
I did not know about jersey colors. I did not know about other races (though if you’d pressed me, I’d probably have assumed they existed). I did not know it was a team sport or how the sponsorship model worked, or what cyclocross is, or where The Basque Country is located. I did not know about bidons, or soigneurs, or team cars, or altitude camps, or pedaling descents, or drafting. And there are plenty of people who are still newcomers but know quite a bit more than that.
It might be someone who grew up with Tour playing on the telly during every summer visit with granddad but paid little attention. Maybe someone whose partner was a superfan and slowly dragged them into it.
There are people, though, who are exposed to cycling but genuinely don’t care. My wife, for example, glazes over when I start talking about cycling and still refers to Tadej Pogačar as Basil Focaccia.
No, to be a newcomer you have to start to care.
I cared just enough to follow Escape Collective’s podcast reviewing Netflix’s Unchained, and then stayed on for their Tour Daily podcast, and finally signed up for a membership deal offered in July 2024. I kept the subscription after the deal expired because I was starting to care. How did I know this? I sometimes glanced at the Escape Collective newsletters in my email.
One day an email arrived saying that Escape Collective had done a large scale survey of members and discovered that the content people most wanted more of was tech. Yes! More tech! Please tell us more about deciding between a 10-28 vs 10-33 cassette based on race profile. I must know about drag coefficients.
In my memory I read it at about two in the morning. In a fit of insomnia I banged out an email saying the data they collected likely never included the newcomers like me who were only at the periphery of fandom and who wouldn’t have been inspired to respond to the survey, but who I knew existed. And I had questions that the tech gurus weren’t going to answer, I wrote. Then I jotted down about 20 of them.
By morning I’d forgotten I’d sent that email, so when I received a response a few days later, it took me by surprise. Andy van Bergen, Escape Collective’s Membership Manager, said I made some good points and that Escape was looking to bring newcomers into cycling.
Great, I said, and like a normal person sent twelve more pages of questions (single-spaced), then two more a day later. That’s what it’s like to live in my mind.
I noted that there were some items on my list I could look up, some concepts that could be explained by AI, but most couldn’t. And I couldn’t find a real cycling die-hard to talk to, no one to bring me into the fold.
Amazingly, Escape Collective stepped up. They accepted the premise that while there may not be more people exactly like me, there had to be more people who could move from weak interest in cycling to genuine fandom.
Now, here we are, a little over a year later. We have a podcast. I have made a cycling friend or two. I have Iain for guidance. Many of my questions have been answered. But many more remain.
To be clear, I wasn’t angling for a side hustle. I have a busy job, a teenager, a mortgage. But cycling has come to mean something more to me than it did when I fired off that first email. As the world around me feels more and more chaotic, with political and social norms breaking and my own worries expanding, I find thinking about cycling helps my busy mind rest.
It’s not that sport isn’t political – it is and always has been. It’s that the vineyards of France are soothing to watch. It’s not that I am rooting for young men and women to injure themselves for fleeting glory. It’s that I’m awed to see someone look up at an Alp and say “I can conquer that.” And they can. And they do. And for a moment, however brief, I am with them as they throw their arms in the air.
And for me, asking questions that have answers is another relief. A lot of questions in our lives don’t.
People who are longtime cycling fans already know what I’m talking about. I am counting on them to reach out to the quiet woman on their Sunday coffee ride, or the droopy guy on the Peloton at the gym. Chat them up. Invite them to watch a stage of the Tour together – maybe at a pub that will let you pick the TV station. Tell them all the back stories; fill them in on the team drama. It’s no small thing to be a friend or find a friend.
Want to get started? First check out the podcast episode of The Beginner’s Guide to Pro Cycling that goes with this article. Then come back and post in the comments (or go crazy and post in Discord!).
Step one: take the test!
You are probably a newcomer if two or more of the following are true:
You feel like a newcomer
You have only been paying attention to pro cycling since watching Netflix’s Unchained
You have never referred to yourself as ‘a cycling fan’
You do not know what a bidon is
You could guess, but you don’t really know if the word ‘bonus’ means adding or subtracting in cycling.
You can’t name more than one Tour de France winner before 2020
You don’t know which teams are sponsored by Cervelo vs Pinarello bikes
You’re not 100% sure you could identify The Basque Country on an unmarked map
You don’t know what color the points jersey is for any race other than the Tour de France and until hearing this you assumed it was green
You do not know the difference between a crit race, a cross race, and a road race
You do not know what Haribo is
Step two: Find Your Pro Cycling Name!
If you are under age 26:
Your first name is the brand name of the last food you ate that was not home made. Your surname is the first word of the latinate name of your favorite animal.
If you are under age 33 but over age 26:
Your first name is the name of whatever medical product is closest to you. If it’s a prescription medication, shift it to the generic if you know what it is. Your surname is whatever confection (candy, pastry etc.) is closest to you, preferably pronounced in the accent or tone of your favorite rider.
If you are age 33 to 45 (Ah, the silver fox!):
Your first name is the name of the first classical musician who comes up in a web search who has your same birthdate and month and day. Shift to feminine or masculine version as preferred.Your surname is the color of the shirt or dress you are wearing in the language of the closest mainland European or Scandinavian country to which you are presently located (but not the country you are in).
If you are age 45 to the age where you are old enough to qualify for a pension:
Your first name is the brand name of the product closest to you that has one (e.g. Ikea, Kellogg’s etc.)Your surname is the surname of the General Manager of your favorite cycling team (at any level).
If you are old enough to qualify for a pension:
Your first name is an anagram for the part of your body you most recently injured.Add van or von between your first name and surname, depending on whether ‘a’ or ‘o’ is closest to the first vowel in your own name.Your surname is the first name of your childhood paediatrician or last name if that’s the only one you can remember.
If you are an actual pro cyclist:
Whoopee! Nice work on those thigh muscles. You get to keep your name.
And then… Post in the commentsYour Pro Cyclist NameLocationNewcomer or old fan?A question from newcomers or word of wisdom from the old fans
Did we do a good job with this story?
👍Yep
👎Nope