The 2022 Tour de France left Copenhagen for Stage 2 and started in Roskilde. But I stayed in Copenhagen. I ended up changing plans for covering the Tour after learning the limits of what I can do by bike in a professional capacity.
That’s not to say the great “Tour de France by Bike” experiment was a failure. Quite the opposite, in fact. Changing plans on the fly is always part of the process. Since this was a new experiment for me, I learned a lot about what I can and can’t do by bike when I’m working a traveling race like the Tour.
As a side benefit of ‘giving up’ on my experiment, I got to play tourist in Copenhagen. Changing plans isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, in all the years that I have covered bike racing, I have very rarely had the chance to enjoy the cities I’ve visited. It’s wonderful to be in these beautiful places, but so often we journalists are in and out as quickly as the riders are.
Copenhagen was just too special of a place to ignore. So while changing plans away from covering the Tour was probably not the best turn of events for my wallet, it turned out to be a wonderful decision for my mental health. I rode around Copenhagen’s streamlined bicycle infrastructure and took note of what lessons we in America can learn from it all. (That’s a topic for another article and video…stay tuned for that!)
In the mean time, be sure to check out all the coverage I amassed during my time in Copenhagen at the 2022 Tour de France, right here on Slow Guy on the Fast Ride.