I bet you know a thing or two about failing.  I sure do.

In 2018 I set off with about eighteen others on the Tour du Canada, a cross-country bicycle ride.  I lasted four days.  I didn’t have the bike-handling skills or the endurance.  What I did have was fear, especially of the semi-trailers blasting by three metres to my left.

I sat in a hotel room for two days in Abbotsford, B.C., waiting for a flight east to Toronto.  I was in shock … crushed … wasted.  My self-esteem was gone.  Happily it returned.  Even though I don’t want to ride a bike anymore, I can look myself in the mirror and smile.

What’s true is that I failed in the task of riding across Canada.  That’s worlds away from being a failure. 

***

I’m enjoying the Vuelta a España on TV.  It’s a three-week cycling race in Spain.  The Friday and Saturday stages were in the Pyrenees – the mountain range that straddles Spain and France.

Remco Evenepoel is a young Belgian cyclist who won the race last year.  Friday’s stage crossed four mountain passes in its 135 kilometres.  He was considered one of the favourites for victory.

Remco finished 27 minutes after the winner.  He failed … spectacularly.  Not sick, not injured.  The legs were weak.

The cycling world was shocked.  Remco was inconsolable.

“I didn’t sleep too much,” he revealed. “I had a very bad night [with] negative thoughts in my head.” His defeat on the Aubisque, Spandelles and Tourmalet had hit him like a punch in the stomach. “It was a difficult evening with a lot of tears and crying,” he added.

Two people stayed with Remco in his sorrow: his wife and the team’s sports director.

“They talked a lot to me because I wasn’t motivated to start anymore; my big goal had disappeared, and there was a lot of disappointment. But the words Oumi said to me, literally, were, ‘Champions always answer with the pedals, and if you do it, do it for me.’ And that gave me the motivation to go for it today.”

What happened on Saturday was that Remco won the 156 kilometre stage, also full of mountain passes.  The photo shows him crying at the end.

***

From one of my favourite songs, The Mary Ellen Carter …

Rise again, rise again!
Though your heart it be broken and life about to end
No matter what you lost – be it a home, a love, a friend
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!