Book Review: The Art of Cycling, by James Hibbard

Title: The Art of Cycling – Philosophy, Meaning and a Life on Two Wheels
Author: James Hibbard
Publisher: Quercus (UK) l Pegasus (US)
Pages: 305
Year: 2022 (UK) l 2023 (US)
Order: Quercus (UK) l Simon & Schuster (US)
What it is: A cycling memoir that challenges traditional views of the sport while taking the reader on a journey through two and a half thousand years of Western philosophy
Strengths: It’s rare for a cycling book to challenge the reader to reassess central tenets of what some claim it means to be a cyclist
Weaknesses: In places it is tempting to lose sight of the big picture and focus on the detail

I saw his name with a hundred more
In a book in the library,
It said he had never fully achieved
His potentiality.
~ Patrick Kavanagh

Cycling is a difficult sport. Forget all the exceptionalist blather about whether it’s more or less difficult than other sports, just focus on the simple reality: cycling is a difficult sport. One of the difficulties comes in how easy it is to get washed out early, regardless of your talent. Doping has washed so many potential stars out of the sport. Sexism has washed so many potential stars out of the sport. Racism has washed so many potential stars out of the sport.

What happens to those the sport spits out early? What, even, of those who make a go of it but find their careers over and they have become thirty-something retirees? Having dedicated themselves to the sport, cycling having become the core of their identity, central to how the world sees them and how they see themselves, what happens when they cease being cyclists?

For James Hibbard – who rode track for the US and raced in the pro ranks with a couple of conti squads – he turned to philosophy, having already found himself drawn to the subject earlier in his youth:

I’d first heard about Nietzsche several years before reading him seriously. In Nietzsche, I found a thinker who was unlike anything I’d ever encountered – and one who further cemented my sense that philosophy was at least as important to me as cycling. […] A thinker who lauded the high mountains, and extolled the virtues of bravery, fresh air, and physical effort, there is simply no thinker better suited to the sport of cycling than Friedrich Nietzsche.

Born at the start…