The acronym MAMIL for “Middle Aged Men in Lycra” has, from its inception several years ago in a British newspaper, always had something of a derogatory air to it. To the majority of people, MAMILs are Caucasian males of a certain age who shamelessly jam themselves into ill-fitting and disturbingly revealing clothing to slowly ride their incredibly expensive pro-wannabe carbon bikes while selfishly blocking traffic. But as a new Australian-produced film--its latest single night showings to be across Canada on Thursday, November 30—indicates, there is so much more to the story.
One would think that the term MAMIL, when first coined, would cause some cheap laughs and disappear soon enough. In fact, with the explosive growth of high-end cycling and all its accoutrements, including those carbon bikes and flyweight components, Alpine tours, advanced training programs, and even better Lycra, the MAMILs did not disappear at all but in fact the word was included in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2014.
The MAMIL movie opens with a sequence in which a number of person-in-the-street chats in which the interviewees express their unparalleled revulsion at the wear of Lycra. We then go into the world of the MAMIL in Australia, with the Fatboys Cycling Club. The Fatboys, based in Adelaide and operating since 1995, are apparently the largest recreational cycling group in South Australia. The club looks like a pretty typical MAMIL haunt, with about 100 members, early morning group rides and a lot of socializing.
This is from the club's website:
Why do we ride? No one is really sure. With an average age upward of 50, it could be a late mid-life thing. We like to think it is driven by the need to keep fit, lose weight and spend time with our mates. But it is more likely the mix of endorphins, adrenaline and caffeine (and the need to talk crap) that hits us at the end of a big ride. This is when we all get together and remind each other what heroes we could have been and ponder why our families fail to appreciate our cycling prowess.
But MAMIL is about much more than “cycling prowess” as it tells not only the Fatboys story but of cyclists in Britain, New York, Minnesota, Iowa, and California as well. All of those profiled have very different reasons for cycling and it is clear that MAMILs are a group of great diversity. Cycling is an end to find some kind of fulfillment.
What are the different reasons for cycling? For many, like the Fatboys, there is camaraderie on the open road, the opportunity to push one's physical limits with others suffering the same effort, to sit around and laugh about it all afterwards. A barrister from Australia with a high-pressure job finds a release on what he considers a self-indulgent vacation as he follows the Vuelta with a tour group. For some it is finding like-minded people, such as the gay cycling group in New York City, or the devout church group in Minnesota. But for others cycling has a much more serious purpose.
For example, the East Side Cycling Club of Los Angeles was formed when its founder, who was morbidly obese, asked friends to come with him as he started to ride and not only did his health improve but others joined in seeking the same kind of support. A British father of two seeing his fitness fall apart in middle age was determined to regain control of his life. Another in the UK learned that he had MS and discovered that while his unresponsive right side meant walking was difficult it did not affect his balance on the bicycle. A Fatboy found solace in his club as he suffered from depression. A paraplegic discovers a new world riding a tandem recumbent with his wife.
A group of friends in Australia rallied around one of their number who was diagnosed with cancer and joined a charity ride and have formed their own club (yes, named MAMIL) that has raised a good deal of money. And an English rider, who regrets that he gave up too early on what might have been a pro racing career decades ago, grits his teeth and hammers away at local races determined to crush men half his age.
Of course, being a MAMIL is not without its downsides. The president of a local racing club has to juggle unpleasant administrative work and steps back, in spite of his success at it, when he realizes how much time it costs. There is time away from the family in order to train, the considerable expense of the equipment, and, worst of all is the risk of very serious injury. Several riders are rolling GoPro stations as they record encounters with hostile and dangerous drivers. There is an interview with what must be the world's unluckiest cyclist, an Australian who gets confused about what has happened in his chain of life-threatening accidents, but who is back out riding with his club while wearing a neck brace. The president of the Fatboys breaks his back in a mountain bike crash.
Being a middle aged male can be tough generally as it becomes an interlude to reflect on a half lifetime of accomplishment as well as goals unfulfilled. The clock is running and everyone in this often amusing but sensitive documentary is aware of it. The barrister, who is agonizing over his trip to Spain as he thinks it is short-changing his partner should be less stressed as she would only need to watch him in this film as he stands on the edge of the time trial course as Alberto Contador blasts by. He looks like the happiest man on earth as he watches.
“MAMIL” will be shown on one-time screenings in Canada on Thursday, November 30. For more information about these showings or to get the film into a theatre near you go to https://ca.demand.film/mamil/
Many sports—baseball, football,
hockey, soccer--offer fans fantasy camps to let the average person
get a feel for what the Real Thing is like. Every cyclist's fantasy,
perhaps, is to ride in the Tour de France but sometimes it might be
better for that wish to be unfulfilled. The recent film, “Le
Ride,” shows what happens when two enthusiasts decided to honour
the first English-speaking team in the Tour and duplicate that 1928
event today.
New Zealander Phil Keoghan is highly
visible as the host of CBS' “The Amazing Race” reality show and
has many exploits to his name, including some spectacular underwater
dives and even a bungee-jumping world record. In 2009 he rode across
the United States, averaging 100 miles daily, for a charity event
that raised $500,000 for multiple sclerosis research. He made a
documentary, “the Ride,” about that 3,500 mile trip.
Mr. Keoghan learned about the
Australasian team (three Australians, one New Zealander) at the 1928
Tour de France and was surprised that the Kiwi rider, Harry Watson,
had come from his hometown of Canterbury. After considerable
research he decided to honour that team by retracing their route in
2013, starting on June 17 and ending on July 15, the same dates as
the 1928 Tour. This meant riding 5,376 kms (3,340 miles) over 22
stages, or 244 kms (151 miles) daily. There were four rest days.
And he was to do this with his riding partner Ben Cornell using
period bicycles.
The resulting film is a highly
entertaining mixture of accounts from the 1928 race and Phil and
Ben's Really Hard Ride. The Australasian team arrived in France
expecting to be joined by six Europeans to make up a ten man team but
this did not happen, nor did their French support crew ever
materialize. Led by famous Australian rider Hubert Opperman, they
nonetheless were ready when the peloton rolled out of Paris, although
the local press gave them no chance of winning and predicted they
would be out after the first stage.
Hubert Opperman receiving flowers during Stage 6
The Tour de France was quite different
from the race we know today as the Tour's founder Henri Desgrange was
constantly fiddling with its format. In 1927 it had consisted of
nothing but team time trials across France and the 1928 race retained
those in 15 of the stages. There was no rule about how many men
would be on a team except a maximum of 10, which would be an obvious
disadvantage to the four Australasians as several teams had a full
complement, although the ultimate winning team, Alcyon, did not.
Even stranger, fresh riders were allowed into the race as domestiques
part way through, although not allowed to officially win a stage or
the race overall! 162 riders entered the race, the highest number to
date, but 111 of those were “touriste-routier” cyclists who rode
along as independents and had to be self-supporting. Phil Keoghan,
in his narration, does not mention the difference between the pro
riders and these amateurs, not a single one of whom completed the
race.
When the Tour riders went out, they had
modern equipment for the day, although “modern” still meant very
heavy bicycles by our standards. While the first Tour winner in 1903
had a bicycle that weighed 18 kg (39 lbs), by 1928 a more typical
weight was 11.5 kg (25.3 lbs), still hefty compared to today's 6.8
kg (15 lbs) limit but actually about the same as bikes used in the
early 1960s. The difference was clearly in having variable gearing
and effective brakes, the lack of which obviously added to the trials
of the Keoghan party who, it must be remembered, were riding 85 year
old antiques.
The difficulty of these early Tours
cannot be overstated. Along with their primitive bicycles, rides had
to contend with massively long stages, very poor roads—many
unpaved—and nutritional issues. Tires constantly flatted and
Desgrange's rules were designed to weed out almost everyone. During
Stage 19, race leader Nicolas Frantz's bicycle broke and he ended up
riding the last 100 kms on an undersized woman's bicycle.
Incidentally, as the previous year's winner, Frantz started in the
yellow jersey on the first day and kept it until the end, the only
time this has occurred in the race's history.
At least the modern adventurers had LED
lights and helmets, as well as GPS and cellphones to help. One of
the other issues, of course, is that in 1928 the racers simply took
the main roads from town to town but in 2013 many of those roads were
now limited-access highways and closed to bicycles so often getting
lost, even with the support team, added to the woes. And the
mountain stages, where navigation was not so much of a problem, were
terrible—we watch Keoghan descend the Galibier at what appears to
be 7 km/h and the squeal of the quasi-useless brakes are a constant
part of the film's soundtrack.
The mountain stages are incredible and
the fabulous scenery is balanced with Phil and Ben's epic suffering.
Leaving in the dark and arriving in the dark almost every day, they
took 23 hours to complete one of the 1928 stages. Those four rest
days must have seemed very short. And while Phil Keoghan mentions
that the oldest Australasian team member was 38 and had to drop out,
he does not mention that he himself was 46.
41 riders finished the 1928 race and
the three remaining Australasians of the Ravat-Wonder-Dunlop team
confounded the critics by placing well enough, with Opperman best at
18th. Amazingly, the sole rider who entered the race as
the Thoman-Dunlop team, placed fourth. Belgium's Jan Mertens also
won the Tour of Flanders that year.
While a lot of this historical
background is underplayed, it is commendable that Phil Keoghan's
enthusiasm for that 1928 team has led to this film to honour their
efforts. All four riders lived into their 90s, a seemingly
impossible actuarial result, and they were harbingers of the
non-Europeans who would come to the Tour so many years later. But
one must give a tip of the hat to Phil Keoghan and Ben Cornell as
touriste-routiers who did not quit in spite of the many obstructions
they faced and the remarkable physical demands they were able to meet
although I was not convinced it was really necessary to do the ride
in this way. Still, an enjoyable evening for cycling fans; the
cinema in Ottawa was packed to overflowing when I saw it.
“Le Ride” screenings took place
across Canada last week. They are arranged via Demand Film,which
organizes screenings of independent films in Australia, New Zealand,
the United States, Canada, Italy and Germany upon request. For more
information, go to: https://ca.demand.film/le-ride/
