Reading the first page of a magazine where you don’t recognize most of the names quoted in the table of contents and when you are still interested in the subject is a special pleasure. So Foot magazine launches on the 25 June in France a special issue dedicated to bike with the incredible title “Pédale !” (a play on words, « pédale ! » both meaning “ride on!” and in a slightly informal and old-fashioned language, “gay!”).
We should be able to recognize the footprint of the team So Foot in their inimitable way to use sport to talk about the society we’re living in. Their writing is funny and almost poetic, very much adapted to cycling. Not the slightest mention of a fixie in the table of contents and that is a relief; maybe they even should give the magazine for free to girls riding fixie bikes in Paris and to guys like me, who one day made the mistake to ask Google “advantages of fixed-gear” and got no valid answer. The cover boy is Andy Schleck, and the magazine offers, among other things, an interview with Eddy Merckx (“the greatest sportsman of the 20th century” according to them) and the story of a Paris-Roubaix race under the influence of vodka, cigarettes and aspirin.