PelotonTales is the oldest among my online projects (websites/blogs) written in English. For those, who are not familiar with the cycling phrase:
peloton means the main bunch of the cyclists riding together at a road cycling race.
The name PelotonTales is a literally translation of the Peloton-mesék category name on my Hungarian cycling site TOURázzunk együtt.
As you can expect both from the name and because I’m the author of the blog,
this project is about the great (big and small) stories in the history of professional road cycling.
Due to the unique circumstances, how road cycling races were created at the turn of the 19th and 20th century (basically, they were marketing assets for daily sport newspapers), the representation of the sport is always supposed to be epic, heroic, fascinating, sensational, therefore the blog tries to transmit similar sentiment.
The focus of the articles tends to shift more and more on the earliest decades of the road cycling races. Significant amount of posts are about the time period between 1903 (the year of the first Tour de France) and 1914. As in many other parts of the early 20th century European life, the outbreak of World War I seems to be a watershed also in the world of road cycling races.
Speaking of World War I, recently I bumped into a quite intriguing detail about Tour de France’s abroad stages before the war. When Tour de France visited a foreign town for the first time in 1906, actually, it was not entirely a “foreign” place. As it’s well known from history lessons, after the Franco-Prussian War (1879-1871) the territory Alsace-Lorraine, including the city of Metz, had been occupied by Germany. (This part of the world played an important role in the outbreak of both world wars). Reading about Tour de France frequently visited Metz between 1906 and 1910, I had so many questions about this tiny detail suddenly, that I started thinking about a bit deeper and wider research, something, that would be
a great subject of a book written with the method of microhistory.
Permanently trying to connect my project to eachother for practical reasons, this plan would suit to my idea of a crime story set during the time of the first Tour de France (but unfortunately, or fortunately?, I have ideas enough for at least seven livetimes, so there is no guarantee I would really do the research). Also, it fits to one of the subproject of PelotonTales, called Cycling Revolution, that put the birth of the bicycle and its impact on the everyday life in the late 19th century into a wider, cultural historical context.
I mentioned this particular story in this indroduction to demonstrate, ghat there is a more complex level of the blog, it’s not just about writing one or two paragraphs about a story behind the most famous vintage cycling picures.
Also, if you’d like to follow my activities, learn about my latest ideas and plans, but your’re not particularly interested in road cycling,
this is the part of the topic might be worth to follow.
There is another special project of PelotonTales, called Anita Pethő writes cycling, which is more about how I see cycling, how I write about this, and not about the stories itself. Also, this is the project I write about current road cycling races. The majority of the posts are avaible only for patrons of PelotonTales.