The announcer begins by describing this race “as much of a staring contest as it is a bike race,” and while Claudio Golinelli and Michael Huebner spent the next six minutes validating that statement, I spent it pondering which variable in the announcer’s explanation, the bike race or the staring contest, is intended to be the enticing part of the event.

While bike racing conjures up thoughts of bikes and racing, two things that require some athletic prowess, a staring contest connotes a clear cut winner, something bike racing, what with its steroid use and risk of running into barb wire fences, always seemed to lack. So you can imagine I was pretty torn.

Yet anyone who’s ever owned a Huffy has pedaled as fast as they possibly could down the big hill in town. They’ve also tried to come to a complete stop without touching the ground with their feet. One of those activities often resulted in falling and bloodying your knee, and it isn’t the pedaling as fast as shit option, which means the most athletic, most skillful, most cerebral, most compelling part about bike sprinting is going as slowly as possible--and we wonder why bike messengers always pissed us off.

H/T Reddit