Cycling celebrations. They are a curious thing, aren’t they?
I always marvel at a cyclists ability to judge the point at which the race is
won and that they are safe to take their hands off the bars and celebrate as
they see fit.
It raises obvious questions. What if they were to sit up too
soon and get caught? What if they were to lose their balance and fall off
completely? And is it right to celebrate a win with the same level of
premeditation as a footballer unveiling a base layer with a cryptic message on
it (© Mario Balotelli)?
Of course, we can blame one man for making the subject a
talking point: Peter Sagan (pictured above). The 22-year-old Slovakian rider has taken this
year’s race by storm, winning three stages in a thunderous opening week of
broken bones, cracked carbon fibre and ‘fankled’ cyclists (© David Millar).
Putting the ease with which Sagan won his three stages
aside, the thing that got most people talking was his celebrations.
So, in honour of all this, here are some of the best (and
worst) cycling celebrations:
Peter Sagan
Let’s start with the man who has got us all talking. This
year’s Tour has seen a plethora of – quite random – film references.
At Stage 1
we had the clucking chicken, the following day Forrest Gump arrived in Boulogne, before
Stage 6 saw the Incredible Hulk.
It wasn’t to everyone’s taste, with Robbie Hunter a staunch critic via his Twitter feed. What is next is anyone’s guess, although as this video of Sagan shows, a wheelie might not be as out of the question as you
might think.
If anyone has a right to have a premeditated celebration
ready, it is Cav. Such is the prolific nature of his success at the Tour over
recent years, it would be odd if he didn’t have something up his sleeve as he
rolls out at the start of each flat stage.
We have seen the best and the worst of Cav at the exact
moment of triumph. Who could forget his two-fingered gesture aimed at his
critics on winning a stage at the Tour of Romandie in 2010? Or the incongruous ‘phone’ gesture at Stage 3 of the 2009 Tour that would have had his team’s
sponsors, HTC, purring but made the rest of us feel slightly queasy.
There has been some good though. Perhaps the best being Stage 7 of last year’s race into Chateauroux, where he mimicked the exact ‘hands on
head’ celebration he had done at the same finish three years earlier on winning
his first-ever stage at the Tour. It was a nice touch and the fact that he
remembered to do it was a fine illustration of how clearly he thinks in chaotic
sprints.
Now, you wouldn’t normally expect to see Bradley Wiggins in
a list like this, saved as it normally is for sprinters and not GC riders. As
Andy Schleck has proved (more on him later) overall contenders can be quite one
dimensional in their finishing celebrations.
But Brad bucked the trend earlier this year, winning Stage 1 of the this year's Tour of Romandie with an uncharacteristic sprint finish. The celebration
was a fine one – until he realised he was about to lose control of his bike and
frantically put his hands back on the bars.
Andy Schleck
Many will miss Andy Schleck at this year’s race. His one-man assault on Stage 18 of last year’s race is exactly the sort of thing this
year’s race is crying out for. Whether anyone has the guts
to have a dig remains to be seen.
What we won’t miss is his celebration, easily as
one-dimensional as Alan Shearer’s goal celebration. He wins, he puts his puny
arms in the air, he roars. Every time.
When it all goes
wrong
Of course, celebrating too early can often get you in
trouble. I think the moral of this story is: don’t celebrate too early.
Especially if it’s wet.
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