Culture
Tour de France cyclist fined for kissing wife and son
Julien Bernard had a dreamy homecoming Friday. During the stage seven time trial of the Tour de France, held in Bernard’s home region of Burgundy, the French cyclist soaked up his local crowd and shared a costly embrace with his wife and son.
For stopping his ride to kiss his family, Bernard was slapped with a fine of 200 Swiss francs ($223) by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) for what the governing body deemed “unseemly or inappropriate behavior during the race and damage to the image of sport.”
The smooch — which drew a rousing ovation from his hundreds of local fans cheering — came in a cinematic moment as Bernard pushed up a steep hill with one arm raised in the air as his friends and family crowded the course, slapping him on the back, waving signs and playing instruments.
In the middle of the pack was his beaming wife carrying their son.
Amazing scenes for Julien Bernard with incredible fan support and stopping with his family during the time trial.#TDF2024 📺: Peacock pic.twitter.com/FjIhSOWtjx
— NBC Sports Cycling (@NBCSCycling) July 5, 2024
On social media, Bernard took the fine in jest.
“Sorry UCI for having damaged the image of sport,” Bernard wrote on X. “But I am willing to pay 200 (francs) every day and relive this moment.”
Belgium’s Remco Evenepoel eventually won the hilly 23.5 km (14.6 mile) stage.
Bernard’s time of 32:03 was the 61st fastest time of the stage. His Lidl-Trek teammate Giulio Ciccone finished in 31:19 for 41st in the stage.
Another Lidl-Trek teammate, Toms Skujins, responded to Bernard’s fine with similar sarcastic confusion.
UCI doing UCI things
😂 pic.twitter.com/VFrIDWYL2I— Toms Skujiņš (@Tomashuuns) July 5, 2024
“I knew my wife and my friends did something on the climb, and I was looking forward to seeing them,” Bernard said in an interview after the trial, later adding, “I wanted to enjoy everyone second with my friend and family. It was dream moment for me.”
“On a time trial, you have time to enjoy yourself. It’s these moments that keep me going and cycling.”
Required reading
(Photo: Dario Belingheri / Getty Images)
Welcome to Literary Quotable Quotes, a quiz that tests your recognition of classic lines. This week’s installment highlights observations from future or alternate worlds depicted in popular science fiction. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’re intrigued and inspired to read more.
Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge tests your memory of books that made huge impacts on society after they were published — some of them even spurring changes to American laws. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
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