Praise of Cycling "When I was thirteen years old, I felt like I was born to pedal." Most people believe that nothing is easier and more mechanical than moving a pedal. Cycling is considered a cultureless barbarism, and bike racing at best a clinical, aseptic version of Modern Times, without Chaplin and devoid of any poetry. Cycling is Poulidor and Thurau and Lance Armstrong; it smells of camphor and lemon tea, of hollow phrases and EPO. Cycling is the Tour de France on television, which only stops being boring when you’ve fallen asleep on the sofa. The French writer and philosopher Olivier Haralambon knows better. For ten years, he raced bicycles himself. He lived in the world of cyclists and became one of them. And he has come to the conclusion: books are not necessarily made.