Defining the Ineffable with Kate Wagner
Being brave and alone.
Kate Wagner writes
, a newsletter “telling some of the greatest stories of contemporary professional cycling in an unconventional, narrative-driven way.”The 29-year-old has carved for herself a career out of being a journalist writing about professional cycling, covering the Tour de France, the Vuelta and other World Tour races, along with their cyclists.
She got her start in creating “McMansion Hell,” a blog dedicated to humorously picking apart McMansions, overly-large houses that can’t pick an architectural style. The website went viral and in 2018 she gave a TedX Talk about it.
Then, she received a bike as a gift.
And that changed everything.
Fast forward to July 1, 2022. She’s been covering pro cycling as a freelance journalist for the better part of a year at this point. She’s in Copenhagen for the Grand Depart, trying to describe her surroundings and feelings. On one hand, she’s ecstatic to be there, in another world that she describes as “half like a postcard and half like one of those viral Twitter posts about how dense, walkable urbanism is illegal to build in America.”
On the other hand, Wagner says this about being there:
…nothing is really alright. Every hour, I check my phone to see American democracy crumble further and further, in a binge-long existential crisis I can’t stomach to watch. It is hard to focus on bike racing in general. I want to go back to Ljubljana and hide. I’m passing through the world with my brain sawed in half, following the Slovenian press corps around because I do not want to be alone and I do not want to make my own decisions. They are very generous towards me, and forgiving.
I feel ya. Lately, it feels as though nothing is alright. Like the world is a spinning top and at any moment it will come to a wobbly, violent stop. But that’s why we need writers like Wagner and others. Keeping this wonky world in line with honest stories of glory, defeat, pain.
Keep at it, Kate. You’re doing a good job.
Who are you?
I turn 29 next week. I live in Chicago with my husband Stephen and our dog Winston, but I spend my summers in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I work as a cycling journalist and also as a culture writer, specifically an architecture critic. It's easiest to just say I'm a freelance writer, but those are my two focuses.
You note in your Sep. 8 piece on derailleur about Primoz Roglic that you relate to him in the sense that you're at the end of your rope. As cycling's race season comes to a close, what's next for you?
Last year was really difficult for me. My mentor, Richard Moore, passed away in the spring and I felt kind of lost for the whole season. I decided to spend half of my summer in Europe for the first time away from my family covering cycling. By the time the season ended, I was a bit rudderless and over-extended so I took a break for about a month and am only now getting back into cycling work.
Right now I'm learning Slovene and working on a hobby novel in my spare time. I'll be taking a break from the grand tours next year to focus on the classics season, as I'll be in Ljubljana (and therefore Europe) doing language immersion for four months, February-May. An end goal of mine, something I want to work on for the next few years, is more historical work and research about cycling in socialist Yugoslavia -- many of the cyclists riding at the end of Yugoslavia, some of the first to ever go pro in the West, are still around. What a project like that will look like in the end is uncertain - maybe it's an academic paper, maybe it's an article, maybe a series of profiles. I realize it's a niche subject, but it's something I really care about.
What have you learned about yourself in covering the world's greatest cyclists the last couple of years?
I think the most important thing I've learned about myself is that I can actually be a brave person. When I was working primarily as a critic, I got to hide behind the ivory tower of criticism. Access journalism like sports journalism is very different. When I first started, I was very shy and wanted every cyclist to like me. I had to purge my inner fan which was painful and difficult. I think every day about what Roglič told me in that first ever profile I did: "I wish I could tell you that everything will be nice, but this is a fucking hard sport." He was so right.
My first Tour de France was in 2021. At the time, I was profiling Matej Mohorič. We spoke every day and he was really generous with me. I liked him a lot - he made my job much easier to do. But then in the 3rd week, Bahrain was raided by the French police, and I remember being on Luz Ardiden that afternoon having to ask Matej all these difficult questions about doping. This was probably the bravest thing I've ever had to do in life. With every race I became more and more sure of myself. It is one thing to speak truth to power in an essay, with critical distance. It is entirely another to interrogate it face to face.
As a fellow cyclist, I know you have bikes. Can you list off your steeds?
I have three bikes now (I used to have four but my husband salvaged the fourth for parts for his retro projects.) I'm a Bianchi girl. My everyday bike is a Bianchi Volpe from 2000, midnight blue, Tiagra components. It's got a rear rack on it and I use it to run around when the bus is too much hassle. My second bike is a Cannondale Topstone gravel bike I was using for cyclocross lessons at one point, but also as a winter bike as Chicago gets quite snowy and disc brakes are very useful. But my most beloved bike is a celeste 2019 Bianchi Oltre XR3 with full Ultegra. I got it for cheap because it's a little too big for me (though I like a more upright position anyway) and because it didn't have Di2 or disc brakes which I think is silly. It's a perfectly incredible bike as it is, way more than I deserve.
What is the length of your last ride in hours and miles?
I stopped tracking my bike rides a few months ago, but the last tracked one was on October 6th, and it was 37 miles.
Describe the feeling that cycling gives you.
For me, cycling is all about being alone with oneself, even if you're riding with other people. The bike necessitates focus. It gives you a chance to be bereft of distractions, and it has a magical way of putting things into perspective, because when you are cycling, you are inherently vulnerable both to the elements and to yourself; there are discrete limits to what you can do, how far you can go. I only ride my bike for pleasure - I don't even compete against myself. I ride because it simplifies my existence. You have this wonderful machine and the world around you, and your body, and that's it. It's just so simple.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, fellow cycopaths. I hope you enjoyed it as much I enjoyed putting it together. I hope it inspires you to simplify your existence by being on a bike on this MLK Day weekend.
If you’re new here, welcome. Please subscribe for more or share it with your friends if you’re so inclined. Stories on Cycotherapy aim to conquer the fear du jour by sharing stories about cycling that prompt us to get back in the saddle.