This is a brief description of the IMAX film Wired to Win that I recently went to see with my son taken from the film’s web site:
“A jumpy home movie shows a six-year-old boy learning to ride his first bicycle with help from his father. The narrator tells us that with each moment, each new experience stimulates growing networks of cells in our brains. "We used to think these changes happened only in childhood, but now we know that our brains never stop developing — they keep wiring and rewiring themselves with every experience and every challenge." After several initial failed attempts — and even crashes — the boy begins to show improvement and confidence. Finally, he is riding alone in a seaside park, amazed at his own accomplishment.
Cut to a spectacular full-screen aerial shot descending the steep eastern escarpment of the Col d'Aubisque in Southern France. As the camera drops down the mountainside, we discover a ribbon of cyclists and vehicles streaming down a narrow, twisting, corniche road. This, says the narrator, is the legendary Tour de France – a 3,400-km, three-week bicycle race that has been called the world's most grueling sports event, and the ultimate test of the human brain.
Australian pro cyclist Baden Cooke and his French teammate Jimmy Caspar are two of the 200 riders competing in the legendary race. Just to finish in Paris, they will need to avoid danger, stave off crushing pain and fatigue, control their emotions, seize fleeting moments of opportunity, and stay highly motivated. It's the brain that controls all of this.”
What the film’s description fails to mention is the next scene of the film that shows Baden Cooke’s cycling team practicing for the tour by repeating taking a sharp right hand corner on a steep mountain descent as fast as possible. The edge of the tight right hand corner is outlined by those little square stone blocks that Europeans love to use to mark the side of the road.
In a often repeated shot the team flies around the corner getting closer and closer to the square stones until they clip the edge of the apex just right thus carrying the maximum amount of speed around the corner and down the mountain.
This is pretty impressive stuff and a wonderful demonstration of bike handling skills, not to mention fearlessness and bravery, until you happen to notice that the pro cyclists featured are not wearing helmets.
In fact, it was just a few years ago that the Tour de France actually mandated the use of helmets during the race.
For most of the tour’s history the riders wore those little colorful cycling caps to protect their heads. When they did wear helmets they were these old-school leather thongs that at best kept the pieces of your skull together after you crashed. This made for easy after crash clean-up I suppose.
In recent years, the high profile crashes and deaths of prominent racers prompted the tour organizers to cancel a stage of the race in respect for the fallen cyclist. However it did not occur to anybody to even suggest that the deaths may have been avoided by the mandatory use of helmets.
Now for the most part I consider folks that ride a bike or a motorcycle without a helmet a great example of natural selection at work. If you guys don’t want to pass on your helmetless genes to your potential offspring that fine by me. It is your God-given right, and I respect your decision to feel the wind and perhaps concrete in your hair.
I did however find it somewhat ironic that the movie was sponsored and produced by a physician group made up of brain surgeons. I was a bit confused though. Were the docs soliciting for new business with these helmetless scenes in the movie? Or, did somebody fail to notice the irony of this thus promoting the warning at the end of the film and on the web site that says…"Use Your Head - Wear a Helmet"
At any rate the movie did get me thinking about why somebody would not wear a helmet flying down a twisty French mountain road at speeds that would make Mario Andretti reach for the depends.
Here are the top ten reason that I came up with:
10) Helmet makes me feel hot
9) Helmet makes me look fat
8) Helmet doesn’t match my team jersey
7) Helmet catches too many bees
6) Helmet and bike shoes are a fashion no no
5) Not wearing a helmet is my freak flag
4) I can’t scratch me head in a helmet
3) Only wussies wear brain buckets
2) Can’t give my team mates a proper noogie…
And…
1) Wearing a helmet decreases the size of my manhood