Originally Posted by ElJamoquio

"I look at a girl in the group. She's sixteen, she's pretty. 'Allez, les sportifs,' she shouts. 'Un deux un deux.'

Why is she shouting that?

She knows Hinault fell into a ravine, but not the names of the classics he won. Classics? She knows everything about Poupou, but she's never heard of Milan-San Remo, has no idea what a forty-three nineteen is...

Never will I be able to make clear to her that I don't race because I wanted to lose weight, because turning thirty horrified me, because I was dissatisfied with cafe life, because I wanted to write this book, or because of anything else at all, but purely and simply because it's road racing. And even if she believed that, how much less could I make her see that I've got a smidgen of what it takes, without her thinking that I'd been lying in that ravine beside Hinault.

'Hey, pretty girl, I came in seventeenth in the Milan-San Remo.'

'Seventeenth? How many came in after you?'"