the classics experience

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dream maker

ridden a huge race and they’re completely shattered.” But he’s found some good ones: Italian racing legend Fausto Coppi’s “Age and treachery will overcome youth and skill”, JFK’s “Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of riding a bike” and visionary architect Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis’s “Cherish the past, adorn the present, construct the future”, inked out above a huge spanner. e Chris begins each print with letterpress, then, for the screenprints, there’s a quick stint on the computer, “just using it as a photocopier really, and then blowing the whole thing up,” in order to prepare the design as a screen, so that colours can be added. He also creates posters that are pure letterpress from start to finish. “They’re great,” he says, “but they take much longer to do.” But you can tell that this slowness is part of the appeal. “Often when I ride, I ride at a speed that means I can really enjoy the heightened awareness that cycling brings, and when I see something interesting I’ll swerve off down a side road or stop to investigate. I get that with printmaking too; I can go off in different directions, it doesn’t matter if I make mistakes. They’re just happy incidents that can take the work to new and interesting places. It’s a lot like being on a bike, you just set off and let it all unfold...” e www.dynamoworks.co.uk

The infamous ‘spring classics’ hold a special place in many a cyclist’s heart. These are tough one-day races like the Tour of Flanders, Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Paris-Roubaix that typically include horrible roads and a lashing from the elements. The ridiculous terrain and bad weather certainly contribute to their masochistic allure, but the major attraction for me is the stories surrounding these fabled rides.

The stories from a hundred years ago when the idea for such races first emerged (usually to promote a local newspaper), the stories of blizzards (like the one that harried San Remo-Milan in 1910) why the start points and routes keep changing (to avoid landslides, or to include a particularly hazardous cobbled descent), and the ones explaining why they didn’t just use normal roads and make it easier (where’s the fun in that?). Cycling is a series of amazing stories written over and over again, and yet we still read and enjoy them. It’s a sport that makes me feel like I know everything and nothing about it at the same time. I see professional cyclists on a TV screen and I can easily imagine being there; everything seems so familiar and natural, but the reality is very different. It’s all planned out: a theatrical drama to benefit the sponsors, a moving billboard orchestra peopled by superhumans.

But like any other orchestra it has to be tuned just right; in order for it to work everyone has to know their place. It’s a constant search for perfection, and if I had to choose one word to describe cycling, it would definitely be ‘perfection’.

The classic races are a true test of this perfection, as teams work hard all year round to ensure they have the best equipment, but it can all go to hell with one unforeseen fault. The riders train all winter only to face the possibility of getting scattered across the cobbles in the first mile, which could ruin a whole year for them. But if it all goes right and the equipment works like it has to, and luck is on the riders’ side, they get to punch the air above the finish line, stagger to the podium and become immortal alongside Merckx, Coppi, Boonen… a dream that any professional rider is willing to risk their life for. I love watching these races because I would like to take part in them one day, too. But I know it’s too late for me to do that on a professional level. So I’ve devised my own way of tasting the grim-faced glory of the spring rides: The Classics Experience.

It’s a project we’ve been organizing for the past few years; through it we try to bring road racing closer to people who started cycling too late to get into it professionally, or the ones who have never been interested in the racing part of cycling at all. Basically, people like me. On the day of a given Classic race, such as Paris-Roubaix, we do a tribute ride. We happen to live near the capital of Slovenia, so that’s where we usually stage them – but the geographical location isn’t want matters.