Sunday, July 18, 2021

Lachlan's Alt Tour

 























New York Times Magazine – "A Tour de France With a Twist: Only 1 Rider"

"What made the alt tour feel special, though, has little to do with whether the black dot would overtake the pink. More enjoyable by far was the vicarious thrill of experiencing an epic journey that had been flattened into the two-dimensional space of a screen, but not compressed — the whole journey was there, spooling out in real time. With no television cameras or commentators to narrativize the relationship between those two small dots, the lone rider and the full event, the vague terrain between them was cultivated instead by the imagination. What grew in that space, aside from branding opportunities, was precisely what our pandemic year has made us crave and fear in equal measure: adventure. Proof of this could be found at Rapha’s Instagram feed, where some “dot watchers” became part of the story: After days spent following his progress across the map, they saw it pass through their villages or towns, where they hopped on their bikes and joined him for an hour or two. Morton briefly became a member of their community, and they briefly became part of the unique advertisement unfolding on social media."

Previously,
The Alt Tour (de France)

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