 Hell on Wheels This year’s Le Tour de France will be more than 2,200 miles long. It starts in the Netherlands and weaves its way through Belgium and around Southern France before finishing up in Paris.
The bicycle race is an extreme sporting event, kind of like cliff-diving except Tour riders would be making dives for three weeks straight. Broken tailbones, horrific crashes and road-skinned arms and legs are all common place. The documentary “Hell on Wheels” digs into it all. It follows a German cycling team in 2003 as it slogs through the lows and highs that come with this serpentine marathon. Clocking in at two hours, the documentary is exacting. Its film crews rarely miss a beat, whether it’s captured from the back of a motorbike or onboard a helicopter. You get so personal with the Germans during video diary sessions that it feels like it’s your muscles that are sore when the trainer gives the cyclists their post-ride rub downs. Erik Zabel, a top German rider who is now retired, gets the most screen time. “As a cyclist, you shouldn’t think too much,” Zabel says in “Hell on Wheels.” “If you worry about it at all, you’ll never make it. But if you’re susceptible to it, then you start thinking, and that’s not good … there’s this rhythm between high tension and stress, then this complete release. Three weeks living on the extreme.” Whether or not you are good at climbing mountains on a bicycle is crucial to success in the Tour. The event, which begins July 3, varies its route through French towns each year but always there are the mountains. This year there are nine flat stages and 10 mountains stages planned. At one point “Hell on Wheels” captures the agony of one rider, who, as he powers uphill for the umpteenth time, seizes up exhausted, and must be taken away by ambulance. While some falter in the mountains, others, like Lance Armstrong, excel. Armstrong, a U.S. cyclist, came out of a short-lived retirement to participate in last year’s Tour in which he placed third. This year he will attempt to win his 8th Tour de France with the help of his newly assembled Team Radioshack. “It’s their bike race,” says Armstrong who appears in “Hell on Wheels” but is not a featured rider. “I show up prepared. I show up motivated and I show up because I love it, respect it, and I want to do well. Nothing means more to me than to win this event.” When Armstrong says “their,” he is referring to the French people. This year will be the Tour’s 97th year, and one, like always, that the French, and thousands of other people from around the world, who will come out to line the roadsides and cheer and even help push cyclists up over the mountains. - Gregory Crofton
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