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08-20-08, 02:25 PM
Sure, an Olympic cyclist can finish a 152-mile road race in less than seven hours, but what would happen if you took away his finely tuned, aerodynamic, carbon-fiber racing bicycle and asked him to do battle on the streets of Beijing?
Would it be like hiring Big Brown to be a carriage horse in Central Park?
I was still finding my balance on my clunky, one-speed bicycle when Jason McCartney answered the question and exposed it for all its armchair arrogance.
McCartney, who two days earlier had raced for the American cycling team, threaded his rented bike through a crowd of rush-hour pedestrians, dodged a cluster of bicyclists commuting home and slipped into the flow of traffic on Jinyu Hutong, a busy street in central Beijing.
Then he turned left — across two lanes of cars, trucks and buses.
I searched in the distance for McCartney’s red USA T-shirt and remembered something else about my afternoon riding companion: He once worked as a bike messenger in New York City.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/sports/olympics/15bikes.html?ex=1376452800&en=cb83c8cc87e37312&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Would it be like hiring Big Brown to be a carriage horse in Central Park?
I was still finding my balance on my clunky, one-speed bicycle when Jason McCartney answered the question and exposed it for all its armchair arrogance.
McCartney, who two days earlier had raced for the American cycling team, threaded his rented bike through a crowd of rush-hour pedestrians, dodged a cluster of bicyclists commuting home and slipped into the flow of traffic on Jinyu Hutong, a busy street in central Beijing.
Then he turned left — across two lanes of cars, trucks and buses.
I searched in the distance for McCartney’s red USA T-shirt and remembered something else about my afternoon riding companion: He once worked as a bike messenger in New York City.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/sports/olympics/15bikes.html?ex=1376452800&en=cb83c8cc87e37312&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink