Living legends
I was just a few months into my obsession with cycling when I thumbed through a coffee table book on the “Legends” of the Tour de France. The sport’s 100-year history unfolded in black-and-white photographs as I turned each page. There were entire chapters on celebrated riders like Jacques Anquetil and Eddy Merckx, and sections on the race’s famed routes through the Alps and Pyrenees. L’Alpe d’Huez came to life before my eyes in a series of images taken from Andy Hampsten’s victory there in 1992. Reading about these legends fueled my passion. I was hooked. These days I tend to view the sport’s churn of race results and news through the lens of that history book. After all, we are always living through history. In the future, some of today's…