Twitter and pro cycling’s human element

Mike Martin added this very gracious post to the MASH blog yesterday:

Wanted to take a minute to say thanks to Josh for his support in helping get this trip organized. We all learned a ton from this experience, and was cool for us to see a road version, and for you to see a raw version. Thanks!!!!!!

Mike correctly implies that there’s a disconnect between the pro cyclist’s experience on the bike and what everyone else gets.  At least in perception, the pro’s life is one of precise organization, flawless equipment, and self-sacrificial training, spiced with varying degrees of glitz and glamour. In the industry, our instinct is to bring that experience to the masses with $10,000 bikes, first-class bike tours, VIP passes, behind-the-scenes documentaries, and an explosion of Twittering as noted yesterday on Mashable. Because of those offerings, cycling fans have as good a sense as any of what it’s really like to be a professional bike racer.

And, at least in this country, professionals can actually relate pretty well to the enthusiast cyclist. For starters, they share a socioeconomic background, and only a select few riders are more than a tax bracket away from their well-heeled US fan base. The pros face the same dangers on the same roads as anyone else who rides a bike. They understand that we understand what it’s like to push oneself on the bike and be exhausted afterwards, even if we’re moving 15km/h slower.

So there’s a common ground between these two…

…that doesn’t exist between these two.

But is this good for cycling? Mythmaking is a significant driver of global professional sport, but that’s a difficult process when the athletes and fans can relate so well to each other. While the human scale of cycling is one of its most endearing qualities, it might also be a reason why television coverage, sponsorship dollars, salaries, prize money haven’t tracked upwards in cycling as they have in other sports in recent decades.

On the other hand, the lack of distance between the fans and athletes is a major factor in the sport’s internal motivation against doping. Because we consider pro cyclists to be fundamentally similar to us, we’ll always believe that it’s possible to hold them to our ethical standards. But among, say, baseball fans, there seems to be a sense that the players are too far removed from the everyday person to understand the fans’ desire for fair play. That is, if the fans care at all.

So, where are we heading?

More than any other pro sport, cycling has taken to Twitter like a fish to water. I believe it’s because the approachability of the tweet fits with the already approachable nature of the sport. As Twitter and other social tools permeate our everyday lives, myths will become human and a pre-humanized sport like cycling will adapt more quickly and naturally than its larger counterparts. In other words, we’ll benefit from the convergence of what Mike refers to as the road version and the raw version.

Flickr photos: pro cyclist by me, orange cyclist by lapstrake, Kobe by Rich115, high school baller by Jamie L. Williams