So cycling is a fringe sport. So what?
I can remember back 40 years to my father who absolutely despaired because his son and namesake was absolutely pathetic at (take a deep breath) baseball, football, basketball, wrestling, golf, and tennis (the mainstream stuff at my high school). Completely disinterested in hunting and fishing. In fact his kid was an underweight, completely out of shape little twerp who didn't do well in classes, either.
Then said kid went to college. Discovered cycling, fencing, soccer and rugby (this is back in the late 60's). Turned into one heck of an amateur athlete, although completely in sports that dad couldn't understand in the slightest. Fringe sports, you know. Got into real good shape, which he still is 40 years later.
Sports is sports. What fringe is America is huge in Belgium. And visa-versa. What does it matter?
Oh yeah, NASCAR is NOT a sport because they don't race in the rain. Formula 1, MotoGP, World Superbike, bicycle racing all pound on ahead no matter what the weather. NASCAR parks it's fake stock cars. NASCAR is motorsports answer to the World Wrestling Federation.
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Syke
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
H.L. Mencken, (1926)