Italy's Vincenzo Nibali won the Tour de France on Sunday after dominating the three-week race from Leeds, England, to Paris. He finished in 89 hours and 59 seconds.

The 29-year-old Sicilian, who rides for the Astana Pro Team, beat France's Jean-Christophe Péraud of the Ag2r-La Mondiale team by 7 minutes and 37 seconds. In third was another Frenchman, Thibaut Pinot of the FDJ.fr team, 8 minutes and 15 seconds back. The top U.S. rider was Tejay van Garderen of BMC Racing, 11 minutes and 24 seconds behind in fifth.

"I've taken my place in the history of the Tour and that's very important," Nibali told the AFP. "It's the most important and the best moment — I never imagined it could feel this good."

Nibali added he would never have come even close to winning the Tour if it were not for improved doping tests. "Steps have been taken and great progress has been made and with it so my results have arrived," he said. "I have to thank [the doping controllers] because without these iron controls maybe I wouldn’t be here today."

The Tour started on July 5 with three stages in England before heading to France. This year's race was marked by the early withdrawals of favorites Britain's Chris Froome (Sky Pro Cycling) and Spain's Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo), both of whom crashed out in the first 10 days. Along the way, spectators with smartphones made headlines as they nearly caused riders to crash and almost took out the race leader.

Here's a breakdown of how Nibali won the 101st edition of the Tour:

He Attacked Early And Often

Nibali let his rivals know early on that he was at the Tour to win. Stage 2 finished with a select group charging into Sheffield; it included overall favorites Froome, Contador, and Van Garderen. Nibali, aka the Shark, launched a beautifully timed attack in the closing kilometers and powered his way to the finish line solo.

He was already well known for his astute tactics; this move showed he'd brought super legs to the big show too. He found himself in the leader's jersey only two days into the race, and suddenly everyone was talking not just about Froome and Contador but also the Shark as a true favorite for the overall.

He Mastered The Dreaded Cobbles

Stage 5 was the most feared day of the entire race. The route featured several sections of cobblestones, which don't usually appear in the Tour. To make things worse, it was raining on this hellish stage, so the century-old stones were slick and sure to cause chaos.

But Nibali surprised everyone by absolutely flying over the pavé, dropping just about everybody and gaining time in the general classification. He took third on the stage but the real damage had been done behind: He distanced chief rivals Contador and Froome, who crashed out.

The Tour was looking more and more like Nibali's to lose, yet the mountains loomed and some wondered if the Italian would be able to keep his lead when the "real race" started.

He Lit Up The Climbs

On stage 10, the Tour's first mountain test, Nibali's main rival, Contador, crashed out. That left the race open for others to attack on the summit finish at La Planche des Belles Filles. Yet all day Nibali benefited from his strong team, which set him up for a brilliant climbing debut in the Vosges Mountains. The only question now was, would Nibali shine in the mountains too?

Though some had questioned whether he'd have the legs to take the lead back, by day's end there was no doubt who owned this Tour. Nibali attacked in the closing kilometers and soloed to his second stage victory and into the lead.

Still, Nibali wasn't done. He would go on to win two more mountain stages, at Chamrousse and Hautacam, proving he was not only the best all-around rider but also the strongest climber. 

He Constantly Stayed Vigilant

To win the Tour you have to climb mountains fast and race time trials fast. But in reality that's not all: You also have to dodge crashes; race against headwinds and crosswinds in gnarly weather; bunny-hop potholes; and deal with in-the-way spectators. Nibali did all these things extraordinarily well. But there was more.

When it came to positioning himself in the peloton at critical moments, Nibali nailed that, too. To take one example, shown above, he found himself on stage 15 in a precarious situation where he could have crashed or been swarmed by riders as they approached a dangerous roundabout. He sensed the need to move up, so he powered out of the slipstream of his teammates and into the wind right to the front of the peloton. It was small but critical tactical moves like this that helped Nibali stay out of danger — and showed he could read a race as well as anyone.

He Was Relentless For The Full Three Weeks

In all Nibali won four stages, a remarkable achievement. Even until the final stages, he never rested on his well-padded lead of over 7 minutes. He raced more aggressively as the Tour went on, distancing himself from everyone with constant attacking.

With his victory, Nibali becomes the first Italian winner of the Tour de France since the late Marco Pantani in 1998. Before that, Felice Gimondi took the honors in 1965. 

Nibali has now won each of pro cycling's three Grand Tours: the Giro d'Italia, the Vuelta a España, and the Tour de France.

The Tour de France is the world's largest annual sporting event. It attracts 3.5 billion TV viewers each year, according to the race organizers, and another 12 million spectators along the route in a typical year's race.

SEE ALSO: This Is Why The Tour de France Can Be The Most Brutally Heartbreaking Sporting Event In The World

SEE ALSO: Tour de France Leader Nearly Taken Down By Oblivious Spectator On Cellphone

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Ford Motor Co. recently released a new YouTube video for its 2015 Mustang that features Kayle Leogrande, a competitive cyclist who served a two-year suspension for doping during his racing career, indirectly leading to the downfall of American sports icon Lance Armstrong.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) suspended Leogrande from cycling in 2008, and his doping case ultimately led investigators to Armstrong’s team, sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service.

After a long investigation, USADA successfully stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles in 2012, claiming "evidence shows beyond any doubt that the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."

Ford's video provoked a strong backlash on Twitter with several people questioning the choice of Leogrande as a representative for Ford. 

Business Insider watched the video several times on Thursday in order to report about it for this story, but the video was apparently removed from YouTube by Ford sometime Thursday afternoon.

This commercial makes me never want to buy a @Ford again. Pick better spokespeople. https://t.co/21zqUA7uCk

— DerKruser (@DerKruser) August 14, 2014

Ford's video, titled "For the Love. #InAMustang," showed Kayle and his wife, Chelsea Leogrande, driving a red Mustang along scenic roads.

At one point in the video, Leogrande said, "Whether it's cycling or driving, I've always felt a true connection with the road."

The "About" text on the YouTube page read: "Watch the reawakening of this couple's passion for work, life, and each other."

The video also erroneously referred to Leogrande as a "professional cyclist." But according to the sport's governing body in the U.S., USA Cycling, he holds an amateur category-one racing license.

A user on Instagram posted a parody of the video:

Ford's video was posted on YouTube on Aug. 8, and as of Thursday afternoon it had over 11,000 views. Comments for the video were disabled.

Representatives for Ford did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Not long after we reached out, however, the video was removed from YouTube. 

Update, Aug. 15, 2014, 10:45 a.m. EDT: Even though this video has been removed from YouTube, Ford still has the video on its website:

Update, Aug. 15, 2014, 4:35 p.m. EDT: Ford has removed the video from its website. Ford has not responded to repeated requests for comment from Business Insider.

SEE ALSO: A Cyclist In The Tour De France Was Busted For Using His Cellphone At Nearly 40 MPH

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"Shut up, legs!" is the battle cry of Jens Voigt, one of the world's toughest athletes.

He's scored all kinds of awesome victories, come back from horrific crashes that nearly ended his career, and inspired millions along the way. But outside the sport of cycling, many have never even heard of him.

"Shut up, legs!" is what the charismatic German, who rides for the U.S.-based Trek Factory Racing team, screams down at his human pistons as they brim with lactic acid, when all they really want to do is cease to exist. 

His message is always the same: Keep attacking, keep going, keep hurting for the win — no matter the pain. And that's what's inspired so many to love him. He's a true cycling original.

Voigt, who turns 43 in October, will retire this Sunday at the conclusion of the USA Pro Challenge, a weeklong stage race in Colorado, as The Denver Post reports. 

Before he hangs up his bike, he'll try for one last victory this week as he ends his 17-year racing career. He'll likely be uttering his famous phrase, one of the most famous in all of cycling:

As befits a champion such as Voigt, his team came up with a gorgeous send-off package, including a custom bike with matching shoes and helmet. He's donning a custom jersey and shorts to let everyone know it's his last hurrah. His team-issued Madone 7 is a chrome-colored vision that took Trek artists more than a week to perfectly polish, the company said.

Trek is the largest bicycle company headquartered in the U.S. and the largest bicycle manufacture in the country, according to the company. Voigt's bike was made in Trek's Waterloo, Wisconsin, factory.

Trek provided Business Insider with the following photos of Voigt's custom bike and gear.

In an email to Business Insider, Eric Bjorling, director of brand communications for Trek, said, "Jens' team-issued Madone 7 Series is worth roughly $12,500. That would be for the team-issue spec. There may be a little variance depending on what wheel set he is riding and other odds and ends."

The coolest and most colorful details are the frame's top tube and down tube. The multicolored top tube features a variety of colors to represent his wife, six children, family dog, country, major victories, and teams.

Trek has incorporated social media into the package, encouraging fans to use the hashtag #FarewellJens to share their memories and best wishes. The brand says it has over 450,000 collective followers across social media platforms.

The really cool detail is all up and down the down tube, a tally representing Voigt's many race wins over his career. In other words, all the poor souls who challenged him and lost:

Here's the custom apparel and matching helmet and shoes:

On its website Trek is featuring the Jens Voigt Soundboard app, which has unforgettable samples of Voigt uttering his hilarious sayings:

Voigt is so popular there's a dance track with his expressions sampled throughout:

As The Wall Street Journal's Jason Gay put it, "It's Voigt's suffering that clinches his popularity. Cycling fetishizes pain—the more agony a rider can withstand, the more his or her legend grows. Voigt is a beautiful sufferer, sometimes a comical one ... Stories about Voigt's grit are abundant. The time he rode two stages of the Tour of California with a broken hand. The time he crashed, destroyed his own bike and had to borrow a tiny yellow kid's bike with toe clip pedals to finish the race."

All of this will help fans remember the one and only Jens Voigt.

#MFJVhttp://t.co/OPI9ZibC3Ipic.twitter.com/gAYuk4NFxC

— peloton magazine (@pelotonmagazine) August 17, 2014

You can watch this week's USA Pro Challenge via NBC Sports.

SEE ALSO: Why Cyclists Shave Their Legs

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Paradise Drive twists around the Tiburon Peninsula, hugging the Marin coastline. It loops from San Francisco to Sausalito, giving way to views of the city, the Richmond Bridge and the surrounding mountains, crushing in their beauty. It leads inland, shedding tourists en route to Mill Valley, San Rafael, San Anselmo and Fairfax, quaint villages in the tony county where mountain biking was born. Robin Williams rode Paradise Drive into these towns.

Williams' ties to cycling, to Marin County and to San Francisco ran deep. On Monday, news of his suicide engulfed the Northern California enclaves that view him as a celebrated son. His renown as the best his generation had to offer as a comedian and actor looms so large it's disingenuous to pretend he was anything else. Yet the way he wove in and out of everyday life here allowed him safe passage as a neighbor.

"Of course everyone knew him for his celebrity," says Felicia Burgess, a barista at Marin Coffee Roasters in San Anselmo, where he would stop for a coffee after riding from his home in Tiburon. Two customers within earshot then share stories of meeting Williams — on his bike — as she continues. "But around here, he was known as an avid cyclist, well-mannered and a really nice guy. Marin County is known for cycling. People always saw him on his bike."

Williams made his passion clear in a 2013 Reddit AMA: "My favorite thing to do is ride a bicycle. I ride road bikes. And for me, it's mobile meditation." Wander into any local bicycle shop and people know the comedian. Walk into Mike's Bikes in San Rafael and talk to the assistant sales manager, Erik Lindquist, who waited on the actor as a 15-year-old server during the Mork & Mindy era, then continued to commune with him via cycling. Lindquist last saw Williams on the Fourth of July at a private party on Sonoma Mountain, where Williams also loved to ride.

One of the world's funniest men rode through these small towns on customized ultra-light bikes, his infamous body hair contrasting with the shaved legs of other serious road cyclists, giving away his identity. According to Quoc Phan at Tam Bikes in Mill Valley, Williams' reps made him stop mountain biking as a safety precaution — though road biking is often considered more dangerous. So Williams would bike through these towns, completing an informal loop of bike shops, coffee houses and book stores.

Fellow cyclist Johnny Knowles recalls introducing the comic to his young daughter. Williams, remembering the family had a house in Greece, greeted her in Greek. Afterward, she announced she didn't believe it was really him. The comedian, about to jump on his bike, "unzips his sports jersey like a mad flasher," recalls Knowles, "sticks his chest out and yells, 'I am Robin Williams! Who else could have this much chest hair?!' "

Brad McKenzie knew Williams from his regular visits to 3 Ring Cycles in San Anselmo. "He did a Happy Feet routine with my kids here. It was pretty awesome because we had this little show that he did on his own, with just our family here in the shop," he says.

In the fraternity of local bike retailers, Williams was appreciated as a patron and, at times, a savior. When an iconic San Francisco bike store was up for sale 10 years ago, the actor was approached to back a bid that would keep the shop in the hands of its managers. He quietly offered $200,000, but the bid ultimately fizzled. Years ago, when A Bicycle Odyssey in Sausalito was crippled by an embezzling employee, owner Tony Tam faced tough times. The actor wrote him a check for $10,000 as a "down payment for bikes" when Tam refused his offer for help.

But it was the regular outings, where he would come in and shop for parts and gear for customized bikes, like a $12,000 Bianchi, that the small retailers appreciated. Given his collection at one point hovered around 100 bikes (many of which he auctioned off for charity), it was no small act.

"He would come in and special-order parts and then come back and pick them up. He could have shopped online or sent an assistant, but he always came in himself and waited in line, just like anybody else," says George Travin, a bike mechanic at Tam Bikes. "He always picked up in the store to support the business. Very humble, quiet. He's just a nice guy."

The staff at The Depot Bookstore & Cafe down the street echoed the sentiment. "There's a Barnes & Noble nearby, but he came here to shop for his daughter's birthday card and asked us which one we liked," a clerk tells me. Williams had coffee with an elder statesman of comedy, Mort Sahl, at the Depot on Sunday, less than 24 hours before he died.

For the last 10 years, Williams biked to the Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley for Tuesday Night Comedy With Mark Pitta & Friends. "He sort of created his own little safe haven to come and work on his new material," says the theater's marketing director, Julian Kaelon. Afterward, Williams would dine with Sahl down the street at Vasco. This past Tuesday, the show was canceled for the first time. The theater remained dark as fans dropped off flowers and cards and wrote messages in memoriam.

Almost a decade ago, Knowles, who currently works at Tam Bikes, knew Williams as a customer at Sunshine Bicycle Center in Fairfax. Knowles' father had cancer, and he bought him Lance Armstrong's book, It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life.

Knowing that Williams and Armstrong were friends, Knowles asked Williams to get the book autographed by the Tour de France champion. Williams delivered the signed book two weeks later, having added his own line, "Dearest Jack, Don't get caught in a hot tub with a bunch of naked men."

Then Williams asked, "Where does your father live?" Learning his was just a few blocks from the store, the comic offered, "Let's go see him and say hello." Sadly, Knowles' father was in San Francisco getting chemotherapy but loved to tell the story of how Robin Williams came to visit.

"He made us feel like we were lucky enough to be his friend," says Knowles. "That's what I think is so upsetting to people — that this guy we thought was so happy and funny and brought so much joy to our lives was so depressed himself."

Williams won't bike on Paradise Drive anymore, or stop in at Odyssey or Mike's or Tam's or 3 Rings or Above Category. He won't buy any more gear, order any more coffee, swap notes over any more books. But between all of these stops between San Francisco and Sonoma and Marin, Robin Williams rides on.

Email: Soo.Youn@THR.com
Twitter: @lalasoo

SEE ALSO: Robin Williams Had Parkinson's Disease, His Wife Reveals

MORE: Robin Williams Still Has 4 New Movies Coming Out — Here's What They Are

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Disgraced American sports icon Lance Armstrong still believes he is a seven-time Tour de France champion, he said recently in an interview on "The Dan Patrick Show."

Patrick asked Armstrong if it was correct to introduce him as "the seven-time Tour winner."

"It depends, Dan, I don't know," Armstrong said. "When you just said that, it didn't even register."

Patrick asked, "Do you believe you are?"

"I do, I do," Armstrong said. "And I don't like arguing and fighting about it. But if you ask me if I feel that way, I say yes. But I know very well that there are many, many people that don't agree with that. I respect that, and I understand that. I do."

Patrick asked Armstrong if he could have won the world's greatest bike race without doping.

"Not in that era," Armstrong said.

Armstrong said he no longer wears a yellow Livestrong bracelet, which promoted the anticancer foundation he founded. Originally called the Lance Armstrong Foundation, Livestrong severed all ties with Armstrong in 2012.

Armstrong became the first person to win the Tour seven times, and he did so consecutively, from 1999 to 2005. From roughly the late 1980s to the mid-2000s, cycling was rampant with blood doping, mainly the use of EPO, and suffered from a lack of effective drug testing.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour titles in 2012, claiming"evidence shows beyond any doubt that the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."

"Was it worth it?" Patrick asked Armstrong in part two of the interview.

Armstrong went on at some length in answering, but eventually said, "I don't know what I'd do if I had to go back there again .... I sure as hell hope others are not put in that position again."

According to CNN, he's still fighting with the U.S. Federal Government over its sponsorship of his former cycling team with "potential $100 million ramifications."

Armstrong's net worth, according to The New York Times, was estimated at $125 million in 2012.

'Imminent Plans' To Write A New Book

In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Armstrong said he needed to write a new book:

"I need to write a book and it needs to be pretty raw," says Armstrong, who claims he has not read any of the books about him, or watched any of the programs, since the post-Oprah fallout, describing them as a "cesspool."

"The book needs to be pretty intense and transparent. I need to 'boom' -- put it out there and let it sit. The sooner the better. It has to be the right book, the right tone and there has to be totally no bullshit."

Armstrong said the reactions he gets when he's out in public today are "positive." He owns two houses, one in Austin, Texas, and one in Aspen, Colorado. He has five kids and says he's been trying to stay fit and is a "crappy golfer."

A quote from Hunter S. Thompson is Armstrong's current Twitter bio: "Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously."

You can listen to the full three-part interview with Dan Patrick below:

SEE ALSO: Ford Removes New Mustang Ad Starring A Disgraced Cyclist Who Helped Bring Down Lance Armstrong

SEE ALSO: Here's How Vincenzo Nibali Won The Tour De France

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Why don't more people bike to work? The reasons might surprise you.

Probably the most obvious is safety — no one wants to get hit by a car. But beyond that very valid concern are other gripes, a common one being ... sweat.

All that pedaling makes you perspire, and many companies don't have showers for employees to use. And who wants to start their day sitting at their desk feeling all gross?

I have some firsthand experience as I ride to work a few days week, from Brooklyn into Manhattan, a 40-minute ride each way. By the time I get into the city, especially in the summer, I've got a sweaty brow and an uncomfortable coat of perspiration. It takes a while to cool down, too, and there's only so much that taking a birdbath in the restroom can do to cool you off. (I keep a extra shirts in my desk in case it's really hot.)

Another issue, for some anyway, is that it's really tough to get up steep climbs and haul heavy loads, like stuffed backpacks and bags of groceries.

Enter the e-bike, whose electric motor helps you as you pedal along, making it easier to get up to speed and maintain it. In Europe they're loving them.

Another benefit of e-bikes, as with all bikes, is that they help you avoid traffic and thus get around faster. One company, Smart, has a video on YouTube showing a woman making it into work early, before all her coworkers. She looks decidedly fresh, thanks to her e-bike.

This week The New York Times' Danny Hakim wrote about surging e-bike sales in Europe. Several people interviewed said they could do without the sweat factor: "I have a regular bike,” one cyclist told Hakim, but “I wanted something I could commute to work in so I wasn't hot and sweaty when I arrived."

Although e-bikes have been around for a while, sales are really booming in the eurozone, as The Times reports [emphasis added]:

With tens of millions of e-bikes already on the road in China, e-bike sales are now surging in Europe, especially in northern countries with long cycling traditions. For some markets, e-bikes have recently been the only area of growth.

There are 250,000 on the road in Switzerland, according to the European Cyclists’ Federation. In Germany, bike sales were down 5.5 percent last year, but sales of more expensive e-bikes were up almost 8 percent and now command about 11 percent of the market. In the Netherlands, which has Europe’s highest per capita bicycle usage, the overall bike market fell slightly last year, but e-bike sales rose more than 9 percent.

This chart from Pike Research shows strong growth for e-bikes for Europe through 2018:

E-bikes aren't exactly cheap. On average, an e-bike in Europe will set you back about $2,700, The Times noted. In the U.S., for example, California-based Specialized sells this higher-end bike with an "electric-assist motor" for $3,800:

You can find more inexpensive, lower-end models, like this iZip, on Amazon.com for $800:

This spring, Wired's Rene Chun reviewed this Vanmoof from the Netherlands. Besides being a good-looking bike, it weighs a reasonable 42 pounds and costs $3,000:

And, yes, there are high-performance e-bikes. They go fast — some over 50 mph. This one will set you back $38,000, though:

There are those who don't like e-bikes. Some say they "breed laziness," as Outside suggested earlier this year. Others argue that they're too expensive and downright dangerous. As The Times points out, e-bikes are not all that popular in the U.S., not yet anyway, in part because in states such as New York they are regulated like motorcycles.

One thing that's unclear is whether e-bikes can succeed in putting you in a good mood the way a conventional bike can. A lot of people who bike say riding makes them feel more positive and decreases their stress levels. That's because when you ride your body releases chemicals called endorphins, which make you feel happy.

On an e-bike, you're pedaling but not as hard or as often as you might on a regular bike. That said, you're still pedaling. So at some point endorphins should be flowing.

SEE ALSO: 13 Reasons You Should Start Biking To Work

SEE ALSO: Why Cyclists Shave Their Legs

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Dutch cyclist Annefleur Kalvenhaar has died after crashing on Friday at the Mountain Bike World Cup in France. She was 20 years old.

"The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) is extremely sad to announce the loss of Dutch mountain bike rider Annefleur Kalvenhaar," the sport's governing body wrote on its website Saturday.

"The 20-year-old Focus XC Team rider fell on August 22, 2014, at the cross-country Eliminator qualifying rounds of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup in Méribel, France," the UCI statement said. "She was transferred to the intensive care unit at the Grenoble CHU, but despite all efforts died this morning."

RIP Annefleur Kalvenhaar http://t.co/TvTSwjBpsnhttp://t.co/gEvvyMf5qr

— UCI (@UCI_cycling) August 23, 2014

Brian Cookson, the president of the UCI, said in a statement: "I'm devastated to hear that the cycling family has lost one of its members at such a young age. Our deepest thoughts are with her family and friends."

World champion cyclist Marianne Vos expressed her condolences on Twitter:

Sad to hear the tragic news about Annefleur Kalvenhaar; died doing what she loved best. My thoughts are with her friends and family. RIP

— Marianne Vos (@marianne_vos) August 23, 2014

Many others expressed their condolences as well:

My thoughts are with the friends and family of Annefleur Kalvenhaar. A talented rider lost far too young. RIP

— Anthony McCrossan (@antmccrossan) August 23, 2014

Beyond sad to read the news about the shining talent that was Annefleur Kalvenhaar. Thoughts go out to her friends and family. Such a loss.

— Lesli Cohen (@Cycletart) August 23, 2014

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Robin Williams loved cycling. He rode all the time. He traveled to see the Tour de France in person. When asked how many bikes he had he said "too many to count,"according to CNN.

A few weeks before Williams' death on Aug. 11, he donated a beloved custom-made bike to help raise money for charity. It went for $20,000 on Saturday night, and the funds will go to a San Francisco Bay Area education charity called 10,000 Degrees, PageSix reports.

This is the bike:

As The Hollywood Reporter's Soo Youn wrote, "Williams made his passion clear in a 2013 Reddit AMA: 'My favorite thing to do is ride a bicycle. I ride road bikes. And for me, it's mobile meditation.'" He told a friend at his local bike shop that cycling saved his life.

Williams' collection was said to have 100 bikes, but he donated many of them.

The bike auctioned off Saturday was made by cult builder Dario Pegoretti, who's something of a god in world of custom bicycles.

When Williams met the fashionable Italian for the first time Pegoretti was suffering from lymphoma, The Wall Street Journal's Jason Gay reported. Pegoretti said Williams gave him strength and left him with "beautiful memories."

In the video below, Pegoretti demonstrates his frame-painting technique. You can see why anyone would love to ride a Pegoretti.

In a 2013 "Daily Show" episode, Jon Stewart told Williams he looked amazing, and Williams replied: "I've just been riding my bike. It's been pretty sweet." 

The world will remember Williams as a great comedian and actor. Cyclists will also remember him as one of their own.

Williams told The Journal that cycling was the closest you could get to flying.

Watch this moving clip from ABC:

Watch more news videos | Latest from the US

SEE ALSO: Here's Why E-Bike Sales Are Booming In Europe

SEE ALSO: This Is Why The Tour de France Can Be The Most Brutally Heartbreaking Sporting Event In The World

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Some like it hot, and some say they like riding a bike because it helps them lose weight.

That's probably not what's going through the minds of cyclists in Spain this week, where it feels like an inferno:

It's so hot at the Vuelta a España, or Tour of Spain, that the riders are drinking 12 water bottles and losing 10 pounds a day, VeloNews' Andrew Hood reports from the race.

Riders can't seem to get enough water into their bodies — or over their heads:

#LaVuelta@Ride_Argyle@BrakeThroughpic.twitter.com/t6cUjKXGu7

— Eurocyclingnews (@eurocyclingnews) August 26, 2014

"Air temperatures are pushing 100F, and it’s even hotter with the sun beating off the asphalt,"Hood reports.

Today at #laVuelta - how hot was it? This hot. @jensdebus@Lotto_Belisol belisol @lavuelta@kevindishpic.twitter.com/ZvuNDZBRrL

— BrakeThrough Media (@BrakeThrough) August 25, 2014

One team, Tinkoff-Saxo, said its riders were getting up to 12 water bottles a day, although some of that water was poured over their heads to counter the oppressive conditions:

Fabian Cancellara, considered one of the toughest pro cyclists, said on Twitter that he lost the equivalent of about 10 pounds after racing Monday's stage, adding no matter how much he drank he still got cramps:

I lost 4,5kg weight today.was constant drinking and got still cramps i empty my hohle body.soloution was simply= motor over heatet.#crazy

— Fabian cancellara (@f_cancellara) August 25, 2014

The Vuelta is one of pro cycling's three grand tours, or three-week races, the other two being the Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) and the Tour de France.

This year's Vuelta has a stacked field with top riders such as Chris Froome, Alberto Contador, and Nairo Quintana participating.

To help beat the heat, Contador and his team are using a new "bar vest" for carrying water bottles during the race, as first reported by Peloton magazine:

Coincidentally, Contador, who won the Vuelta in 2012 and is hoping to win again this time, just did the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

He picked a good time to do it:

"When it comes to heat-related illnesses, conditions are generally categorized by severity, with heat stroke — a condition where the body’s core temperature reaches 104 degrees or more — being the most severe,"writes Lacie Glover of U.S. News & World Report. "Early symptoms include nausea, vomiting, dizziness and confusion. If you have these symptoms while in the heat, you should seek medical attention."

Unfortunately for the riders, things will likely get worse before they get better.

The intense heat in Spain is expected to last for several more days.

Spain's national tour started Saturday and finishes Sept. 14.

Read more at VeloNews here >>

DON'T MISS: This Incredibly Simple, Clever Invention Solves An Old, Annoying Problem For Tour De France Teams

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I took a too-small bike on a too-long ride, and it proved to be one of the highlights of my life so far.

In 1973, two reporters for The Des Moines Register set out on a west-to-east bicycle tour of Iowa to write about their experiences for the paper. The route was made public in advance, and all were welcome to join them as they pedaled from Sioux City to Davenport. Ultimately, 114 people rode the entire route with the reporters. There was such momentum around the ride that it became a yearly event called the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, but you can just call it RAGBRAI.

This year marked the ride’s 42nd edition of human-powered Iowa exploration. I made it my first, riding the full 475 or so miles on my daily commuter bike.

For those who cling to the misguided notion that it’s all about the bike, allow me to describe my ride. It’s a green Brompton M6-L, an English bike that folds down to a fraction of its size for easy indoor storage or for bringing aboard public transportation. I so fell in love with the utility of this thing that I ended up selling my ritzy road bike when it became clear that the Brompton was robust enough to do it all.

By the way, this is what it looks like when you close up a folding bike:

In three years of riding it around New York City, I’ve logged 7,000 miles between commutes, errands, leisure rides, and modest distance touring. RAGBRAI, a seven-day ride through heat and hills, would by far be the most serious ride I'd taken it on.

I checked the magic folding bike as luggage out of JFK, flew with it to Moline, Illinois, and joined up with the Quad Cities Bicycle Club on a charter bus taking us to this year's starting town of Rock Valley, Iowa. (The route is different every year.)

The bus driver introduced himself over the PA: "Welcome to Asphalt Airlines! We'll be flying at 70 miles per hour at an altitude of seven feet. Call me Mike if you have to call me anything." Mike's a joker.

Upon arrival in Rock Valley, there was nothing to do but pitch my tent, drink beer, and make friends until departure the following morning. RAGBRAI is crawling with good-natured people who want to talk to you and hear where you traveled from. After recalibrating my aloof New York sensibilities, I soon had a core group of four friendly faces that I’d ride with on and off throughout the week. We tore up the route together, fueled largely by lemonade and apple pie.

As mentioned, the tone of the ride is one of overwhelming affability. Everyone's off from work, everyone likes bikes, so it's easy to have a friendly conversation with a stranger. My bike proved to be a conversation starter all its own. It’s got small wheels. The handlebars form a letter U. The frame is a single steel tube. It doesn’t look like anything you’d ever see being pedaled by a Lycra-clad hotdogger, hence my affectionate nickname for it: the Clown Bike.

Here's what riding a folding bike looks like (no, it's not me, but a guy in a YouTube video):

A fair bit of my ride was spent fielding questions from alternately curious and incredulous bikers: The road warriors scoffed and the bike nerds shrieked with glee. Here were the questions I was most frequently asked:

"Where do you get one of those things?"

A bike shop on the Upper East Side, or any other discerning bike shop around the world.

"Do you have to pedal twice as often to keep pace?"

No. While the wheels are smaller the chainring is larger. It works out to require about the same effort to go the same distance.

"How is that to ride?"

A joy, just like any other bike.

Even if you've never done a distance ride before, RAGBRAI makes it quite easy to log some mileage. (You should still have a good number of training miles under your belt before taking off, however.)

The trick is to never worry about a given day's distance, which varied from 38 to 105 miles. Just count down to the next designated pass-through town. There are several of them each day, every 10 to 15 miles or so, and they're happy to receive the riders and their empty stomachs. RAGBRAI might stand for "Register's Annual Gorging and Binging Ride Across Iowa."

The economic boon of several thousand cyclists on vacation in small-town Iowa with plenty of spending money can't be overstated. Each rest stop sees area schools, churches, and other organizations get in on the game to sell the riders shirts, bike gear, souvenirs, and nearly any food item you can imagine. Other vendors set up shop along the route itself and travel with the ride each day. My favorite of these was The Smoothie Guys (I recommend peach-strawberry).

At the end of a day's pedaling, you're a sweaty wreck with sore legs. Allow me to explain how showering works for the folks who work themselves into a stink. Nearby schools or the YMCA will make their facilities available for a small fee, but it's never a sure thing.

Most likely, you'll end up paying a visit to Joe's Wet Shack. Joe has a big ol' semi truck, modified to house several shower stalls instead of plastic stuff on its way to a Wal-Mart shelf. Joe and company tap a fire hydrant with the county's blessing, run it to a hot-water heater, then pipe the water onto the heads and bodies of transcendentally smelly cyclists for $6 a pop. Joe is the hygiene magnate of Iowa.

Growing up in Virginia, I thought I knew things about wide-open spaces and country sunshine. I didn't. Imagine looking right and seeing bustling cornfields all the way to the horizon. Then you look left — the corn still looms. Keep looking a little longer and you'll likely see a rider step out from behind rows of America's number one agricultural product, having just urinated in between someone's crops (a common RAGBRAI practice).

Lance Armstrong rides RAGBRAI regularly. He passed me at a former-pro-cyclist speed, between the towns of Sheldon and Melvin. As if we were former pals, I said out loud, "Lance?!" The guy next to me said the same thing, then took off to catch him.

You know what? He couldn't.

The only time I was not having the time of my life was on day six. It's not that it rained, but that the mighty waters of Poseidon fell from the sky. Despite loud but unspoken complaints, I and everyone buckled down for it: Rain jackets came out, legs moved in circles, and the weather was behind us after several hours of not-that-enjoyable riding.

I'd love to go all poetic and say that the rain only added to the experience. "Not only are you conquering an entire U.S. state on two wheels but you're also fighting nature itself" or something. But this wasn't the case. The rain sucked for a long time, then it ended. Spirits were hoisted right back to the rooftops when it did, however. Cheers broke out in the pack I was with when the sun finally shone again.

The ride concluded with a beautiful downhill that stretched for miles. With the Mississippi River on the left and the finish somewhere in front, we received the priceless reward of coasting effortlessly at 25 miles an hour to the end. Once you finish, there's nothing to do but eat kettle corn and drink that life-giving elixir that goes by the name of Dr. Pepper.

As the tradition is to dip your rear wheel in the Missouri River on the ride's first day, you should also dip your front wheel in the Mississippi on the last. This completes the symbolic river-to-river gesture that 12,000 to 15,000 people aim for every year.

As for me and my Brompton, we will keep doing RAGBRAI as many years as we can.

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Belgian cyclist Igor Decraene, the junior world time-trial champion, has died in an apparent suicide, AFP reports. He was 18 years old.

"A native of Waregem in northern Belgium, Decraene killed himself not far from there at Zulte, the Belga news agency said without giving further details," AFP said.

The Belgian Cycling Federation confirmed the news on its website. Its president, Tom van Damme, said, "It's difficult to comment on this terrible news. It will take time."

The governing body of world cycling, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), posted this statement on its website:

The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) is very sad to announce the loss of Belgian rider Igor Decraene.

At a mere 18 years of age, Igor was the current Junior individual time-trial World Champion. At the end of 2013, he received the Vélo de Cristal as best Junior rider of the year in Belgium, and was due to defend his title in a few weeks time in Ponferrada at the 2014 UCI Road World Championships in Spain.

UCI President Brian Cookson said: "This is a terribly sad news. Igor was a very promising rider. Our thoughts are with his parents, brothers, family and friends."

Belgian sports channel Sporza reported the news in a video (click here to watch it):

On Sept. 24, 2013, in Florence, Italy, Decraene won a gold medal and became the world champion in the junior men's time trial:

He was set to ride with one of professional cycling's biggest teams, Omega Pharma–Quick-Step.

He was to take part in the cycling world championships in Ponferrada, Spain, in September.

Teams, riders, coaches, and fans expressed their condolences on social media:

Thoughts go out to friends and family of Igor Decraene. RIP Igor. Gone too soon!

— axelmerckx (@axelmerckx) August 30, 2014

Shocked by the news of Igor Decraene. Sad day for cycling. Our deepest thoughts go out to his family and friends. #rip

— Lotto Belisol (@Lotto_Belisol) August 30, 2014

Our thoughts are with the friends and family of Igor Decraene.

— OPQS Cycling Team (@opqscyclingteam) August 30, 2014

Incredible and sad news coming from Belgium , RIP Juniors World champ Igor Decraene , one more big talent disappearing.

— John Lelangue (@johnlelangue) August 30, 2014

RIP, Igor Decraene. pic.twitter.com/uYQIYWhNhn

— peloton magazine (@pelotonmagazine) August 30, 2014

Shocked by the news that Igor Decraene died. A big talent, a very good boy, with both feet on the ground! Why? Can't believe it! RIP Igor

— Sep Vanmarcke (@sepvanmarcke) August 30, 2014

Then you get quiet and put everything in perspective . RIP Igor Decraene , only 18 years old #worldchampion

— Geert Van Bondt (@Geertvanbondt) August 30, 2014

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German cyclist Jens Voigt just set a new world hour record, cycling's hardest and most grueling event. In 60 minutes he rode 51.115 kilometers, or about 31.76 miles — an amazing human achievement. 

The hour record is cycling's loneliest 60 minutes. It's just you and your bike and a big oval track. You ride as fast as you can, as hard as you can, and as far as you can for an entire hour.

Very few professional cyclists can even think of even attempting to do the hour. It's that hard. It requires super time-trialing ability, perfect fitness, great strength, and complete focus. 

Voigt turned 43 on Wednesday and retired from professional cycling after his record ride Thursday. He beat the previous mark of 49.700 kilometers set by Ondrej Sosenka of the Czech Republic in 2005 in Moscow by 1,415 meters, AFP reported.

Here's a recap of the hour:

Voigt carefully walked out onto the velodrome in Grenchen, Switzerland, before a big crowd and got on his custom-designed Trek (his main sponsor):

He was super-focused on the enormous effort he'd have to produce:

His coach gave him last-minute advice and encouragement:

Finally, after months of careful planning and training, Voigt set off:

He would average over 51 kph, over 31 mph, for the full hour.

He kept his upper body as still as possible to maximize power transfer to the pedals and maintain his aerodynamics, much like a downhill skier:

All the while his coach was standing by to give him updates on his progress:

As the kilometers ticked away, it became clearer and clearer that Voigt was on his way to setting a new world hour record in cycling. He was riding faster and faster toward the end.

But it was painful in the closing minutes as lactic acid seared his veins:

In the end he did it: He set a new world hour record — pedaling 51.115 kilometers in 60 minutes.

He was ecstatic and blowing kisses to the crowd:

His facial expressions were priceless:

A member of his performance staff immediately took a sample to measure his blood lactate. Cycling Weekly suggested this was done so that the Trek team could use Voigt's performance data to help his teammate Fabian Cancellara, who is widely expected to try to break the hour record sometime in the next year.

Voigt also had an SRM power meter under his saddle. The data it collected — power, heart rate, cadence — could prove critical to the success of Cancellara's hour-record attempt.

After his ride, Voigt told AFP:

"Fifty-one kilometers in a hour! It's a lot more than I had imagined," said the Berliner. "I gave it everything in the last 20 minutes.

"I knew that I still had the energy, that I was ahead of the mark. I felt euphoric — it was the last 20 minutes of my sporting career," he said.

"I was super-motivated. Now I am on the list of all the famous names, I am so proud to join the likes of Merckx, Indurain. It’s fantastic to finish like this," he said.

You can watch a full replay of Voigt's record-breaking hour ride below (the video starts about 27 seconds in).

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Alex Howes is one of the best cyclists in the country.

He's a World Tour rider for Team Garmin Sharp, which means he races in the big international tours in Europe. This year, he placed third in the professional national road race championships in the US, and won a stage of the USA Pro Challenge in Colorado. In 2014 he finished the Tour de France, and last year, he completed the Vuelta a España.

Wednesday, he became a temporary spin instructor at the Peloton Cycle studio in Manhattan. It was his first time teaching a class and only his second time on a spin bike. You can usually find him doing six-hour training rides in Boulder, Colorado or his European base in Spain. He liked it though.

"In spin class, you have a lot of friends. You can look at and watch them suffer and sweat," he said. Then he laughed.

We went to his class and came out exhausted and swimming in our own sweat. Along the way, we got some tips from the pros.

Click Here For Pics From The Ride »

Check out the video:

Alex gets set up.

It was a packed house.

Before class, we took a selfie, naturally.

A daredevil Frenchman broke a speed record last week on a rocket-powered bicycle that reached 207 miles per hour, CBC News reports.

The rocket was powered by hydrogen-peroxide and strapped to the back of an elongated bicycle. François Gissy, 32, recorded the highest speeds ever on a rocket-powered bicycle, leaving a Ferrari in the dust in tests at a French racetrack.

The bike was able to reach top speed in just 4.8 seconds, according to CBC.

Gissy told Gizmag that with the intense wind that came with riding at 207 miles per hour, he's "lucky [his] head is still bolted on [his] body."

Bloomberg posted video of the bicycle in action. The bike takes off at an extremely fast speed.

And you can see Gissy outpace a Ferrari:

Here's what the bike looks like:

The full video is below:

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Brendan McMahon, 55, is a senior partner at PwC who has cycled all of his life, racing competitively from the age of fourteen, well before starting his career in finance.

But if he has had a head start, C-suite cyclists are enthusiastically starting to catch up.

He recently took part in the Haute Route Pyrénées, dubbed 'the endurance ride for hedge-funders', a professional-standard cycling race where participants cover over 800km in a week and climb more than 20,000m.

Thirty years ago someone like McMahon was a rarity in the Haute Route Pyrénées; today the story is rather different. At this year's race he met 'entrepreneurs, people from Silicon Valley, technology investors, bankers, accountants, litigation lawyers'. There has been, he says, 'a very significant shift in the people who are cycling'.

HotChillee, a company that organises a large number of 'professional events for amateurs', confirms McMahon's observation. The demographic of their rider is an 'HNW male A-type, between 35-55 years' and their key sectors are 'banking and finance, technology, media, legal and sport'; most are business owners or executive level.

The huge increase in CEOs and MDs taking part in such events cannot simply be put down to hundreds of simultaneous midlife crises. No, the reasons are much broader, from a traditional motivator such as showing off to newer spurs such as networking, raising money for charity and even honing your boardroom skills.

While recreational cycling can be as cheap as you want, executives getting ready for competitions can indulge expensive tastes.

According to HotChillee, these riders 'typically spend over £4,000 a year on cycling, will ride ten-plus events a year of which three are international events' and will purchase a new bike every two to three years. The Pinarello Rokh will set you back £2,695, while a Dogma F8 — the model used by Team Sky, including Chris Froome — will cost £7,000-£11,000.

It's not yet the same outlay as a sportscar, but I've heard of a surgeon spending £2,500 on wheels alone and lawyers flying to America to have frames custom-built by companies like Parlee, which will fit your bike to you just as a tailor would your new suit. For this, prices go north of £10,000. Add to that the gadgets and kit and you have a whole other world of spending opportunity.

Companies like Rapha produce high-end clothing in a mix of technical fabrics and high-quality merino wool to help you look the part both when racing and when cycling in the city.

Training for these races need no longer consume your every spare hour either. Thanks to developments in sport science, days of training can be replaced with high-intensity sessions focusing on power, allowing those who are time-poor to train around work.

You don't even need to be in premium shape when you start as it's a low-impact sport, nor do you need to book courts or find teammates, so you can cycle however, wherever and whenever you feel.

The Wattbike — essentially a sophisticated exercise bike — is a great example. It has been developed in association with British Cycling and allows at-home riders to replicate the exact setup of their racing bikes and the feel of cycling on the road indoors.

You would expect this sort of high-level technology (even a basic model will set you back £1,695) to be used mainly by professionals but, says Tom Crampton, marketing manager at Wattbike UK, the majority of sales come from the 'in-home market'. In fact, their target demographic is the 'London City boy' between the ages of 35 and 55 with high levels of disposable income but little time.

Andrew Hawes, MD of wine shipper Mentzendorff & Co, took up cycling again in his forties as for him it provided 'the perfect balance to the demands of a young family and quickly developing career'. Getting out on the bike is also a great release — a way to clear your head and work through the problems of the day.

Training first thing in the morning, as many do, has the added benefit of kickstarting your metabolism and releasing endorphins that boost your energy for the next four hours and, studies have shown, dramatically improve your performance in the office.

Cycling also allows you to take the key characteristics that help you succeed in the workplace — discipline, ambition and determination — out of the office. Pushing yourself that bit further and never being satisfied that you have reached your peak are what top-level business is all about; cycling is a natural extension, only with great scenery and fresh air rather than drab office furniture and air-conditioning.

But you can't do a Grand Tour alone. "Cycling is quite unique in being a team sport played by individuals," says Hawes.

It fosters a supportive network — you may well be competing on performance-tracking app Strava to get better times than your colleagues, but you need a team around you for motivation, to support you when you're tired by sheltering you within the peloton and for conversation over the traditional coffee stops. This collegiate atmosphere lends itself to networking.

Brendan McMahon says he has broadened his business network as a result of cycling and he puts that down to the fact that the people he meets at races are 'like-minded, both professionally and from a sports perspective'. Cycling is now the common factor in many client meetings and a mutual appreciation of the sport can be the starting point of business relationships.

It is also a hobby that fosters collaboration and trust. As McMahon says, 'If I'm going down a mountain at 50-60mph and I'm six inches away from somebody's back wheel, I need to trust that that individual knows what they are doing.' This just doesn't happen on a golf course.

In addition to helping your business, cycling can help more broadly: 10 per cent of cyclists, according to Mintel, have taken part in a sponsored cycle ride. For many in the City, cycling for a cause can be a great philanthropic outlet. Lawrence Dallaglio, former England rugby captain and founder of the biennial Dallaglio Cycle Slam, cycles for this reason — and to keep himself active now he is no longer on the field.

His Cycle Slam attracts headline sponsorship from Citibank, Bollinger and Virgin Media and this year they are on target to raise seven figures yet again. Everyone who signs up commits to raising a minimum of £3,000 for the chosen causes and while the Cycle Slam is open to everyone of all abilities and professions, Dallaglio does notice that 'there is undoubtedly a group of C-suite, very driven people who take part'.

Everyone I have spoken to, from McMahon (who rides to raise money for Room to Read) to Hawes and Dallaglio (who ride for the Dallaglio Foundation's causes), comments on the sense of achievement cycling gives them.

This feeling is the reason Dallaglio chose cycling for his fundraising event, and he prizes its teamwork aspect too: "It must be great to climb Everest and stand at the top and look out over the amazing view, but it is much greater when you climb Everest with other people and you can hold hands on the top. You get that shared sense of achievement, and that is where the Cycle Slam was born."

Perhaps for some, cycling started as a midlife crisis — men turning to a low-impact sport as an escape from work, an excuse to go on a trip to France and show off in Lycra — but it isn't that any more. It has become a popular part of business communication, networking and conversation, boosting efficiency and driving ambition and philanthropy along the way. Time to gear up.

SEE ALSO: Why People Pay $34 A Class For The Most Popular Cycling Work Out In America

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Cycling can be dangerous. Last November, six people were killed while riding on the streets in London. Big cities like New York and Sydney can also be hazardous for pedallars, and sometimes just a regular helmet won't do. 

Enter the rather perplexing Smart Hat, a product so elaborate Gizmodo even questioned its authenticity. But it appears to be a real concept — with the backing of a local councillor in Australia, in fact. 

A Sydney-based website, The Daily Telegraph, reports that creator Toby King presented the helmet to Mosan Council on Nov. 11. 

Here are all the crazy things the design includes: 

• Multi-layer construction with impact-absorbing features and facial protection 
• In-helmet bluetooth display with speaker, satnav, speedometer, speed zones, temperature, heart rate, tilt sensor, ultrasonic object proximity warning, and more
• Remote control indicators
• Automatic brake lights
• Head lights and night lights
• A retractable visor, with a wiper system
• Integrated digital camera
• Smart phone storage
• E-tag storage 
• Batteries
• Bluetooth
• ID sign-in
• Customisable outer skin
• In-helmet cooling fan
• Comfort additions

Yes, it's a staggering list. And it looks as futuristic as it sounds:

King explains he has the "skills to fully develop" the product and although it's not commercially available "yet", he's now looking for funding.

While the least technological, the most important aspect of the Smart Hat is its registration plates. The state government of New South Wales is now considering licencing options for cyclists — a very controversial idea. 

King says the Smart Hat would cost about $200, or about £100 in the UK. It's worth checking up on, because if it is approved and funded in Australia, maybe it'll one day turn up on British roads?

Could all this really be on so many peoples' heads? 

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NEW YORK (AP) — U2 frontman Bono has injured his arm while riding a bicycle in New York City.

A posting on the band's website Sunday says Bono "injured his arm in a cycling spill in Central Park" and will require surgery to repair it.

The posting by guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen did not say when or how the accident happened.

The bandmates also said they'll have to reschedule their planned weeklong appearance on NBC's "Tonight Show" with Jimmy Fallon.

An NBC spokesperson confirmed that U2, which had been booked to appear every day this week, had pulled out due to the accident.

Just last week, German authorities said Bono's private plane lost a hatch as it was coming in for a landing at Berlin's airport.

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You may know Max Levchin best as one of the cofounders of PayPal, or the entrepreneur who sold one of his startups, Slide, to Google for millions of dollars. Or you might know him as the mastermind behind the potentially revolutionary companies Glow and Affirm. Perhaps you know that he sits on the board of directors at Yahoo and Yelp. 

You might not know he’s a fast cyclist.

I learned this firsthand when I traveled to California to write a profile of him, share my passion for pedaling with a fellow obsessive, and, yes, test my mettle against his. As he probably has his whole life, Levchin won, and with grace. 

Up And At 'Em

Levchin brings a sharp focus and a high level of intensity to his business life and his cycling. He often wakes up early to go out for a ride, then it’s into the office for a busy day. If he's pressed for time, he'll ride his indoor trainer for an hour. "I try to touch my bike at least once every day," he says.

Style Is The Man

Levchin’s penchant for the stealth look borders on obsessive, but then again, obsessive is what roadies are. He avoids loud colors and showy brand logos whenever possible. Note the reflective tabs on his Swiss-made Assos apparel, on the back of his thighs and calves. On his left leg he wears a Road ID, which has his name and emergency contacts.

Preride Logistics

Before we roll out, Levchin tells me about the ride we're doing, Paradise Loop, one of the most popular routes in the Bay Area. He has ridden it more than a hundred times, so he knows each rise, downhill, and turn. He likes that he can test himself repeatedly over certain sections and compare his performance data over time.

When Max Levchin was 10 years old and growing up in Communist Ukraine in the mid-1980s, his parents saved up to buy him a junior-size road bike, a rare luxury, and his mother, a cycling enthusiast, taught him how to ride. His family happened to live in an apartment complex that stood behind Kiev's only open-air cycling track. At night, Levchin would sneak into the closed facility, pedaling around the oval, counting each completed lap in his head as he tapped out a steady rhythm. In the darkness of the velodrome, the only sound he heard was the whirring of his chain spinning the cogs on the back wheel of his bicycle.

Nearly three decades later, Levchin still rides, not in a velodrome, but in the California hills. Numbers continue to speed rhythmically through his mind, powering the engineering genius of his work and the data-driven cyclist he has become, logging between 200 and 300 miles a week, often over the steepest hills he can find. And while his state-of-the-art carbon-fiber road bike is a world away from the steel racer he’d ridden as a boy, Levchin's passion for cycling has only intensified. Every day, the 39-year-old entrepreneur — who has multiple hits behind him and more startups now in early stages — competes only against himself.

I have no business riding with Max Levchin. This thought flashes through my mind as I watch him pedal away from me. Having pushed off at 7 a.m., we're not long into our ride on a cold mid-November morning, and he's already dropped me on the first climb, Camino Alto. It's a quiet, leafy ascent in Mill Valley, north of Levchin's adopted hometown of San Francisco. Camino is not a particularly hard climb, but he's pushing 400 watts and I'm pushing myself into oxygen debt. Eventually I crest the summit and find him waiting on the side of the road. He’s standing over his bike, tapping the display of his cycling computer. It looks like he’s not even breathing.

A pattern emerges. We hit a climb, Levchin blitzes up the hill, I do my best to chase him, and he soars out of view. He waits at the top, I roll up, and we bomb the descent. We match pace on the flats until the next climb, and the cycle repeats itself. Perhaps the hardest thing about doing this ride, known locally as Paradise Loop, is not that Levchin is out-climbing me, which he is, but that he’s so nice about it. Over the course of our ride, he takes the time to tell me about the local roads, all of which he knows intimately. He points out potentially wet or dangerous grates and manhole covers. If he were a jerk and this good on the bike, I could easily dislike him, but he’s not. He’s just very fit and surprisingly laid-back for a star of Silicon Valley. It’s hard to not like him.

Rediscovering A Sense Of Order

Two days before our ride, Levchin — the serial entrepreneur who cofounded PayPal and the game maker Slide, and joined Yahoo's board at the behest of CEO Marissa Mayer — agrees to meet me at his office in downtown San Francisco. There he works on one of his latest startups, Affirm, which aims “to remake consumer finance from the ground up.” It’s a casual, open-space office. Levchin is wearing sneakers, jeans, and T-shirt, and he greets me with a bar of dark chocolate and iced coffee. As we sit down to chat, he opens by saying, “I’m completely obsessed with cycling. It’s the only sport I follow.” That means keeping close tabs on everything from one-day classics like Paris-Roubaix and track racing, to cyclocross and the grand tours such as the Tour de France.

That, thankfully, puts us on slightly more equal footing. Technology is not my beat, but as a journalist I have been to the Tour and Milan-Sanremo and the Tour of California and other world-class bike races, and I've pedaled a road bike since I was a teen, too. Over the years, Levchin and I have both done our share of racing in the amateur ranks, but three years ago he crashed hard at 40 mph. This “pretty permanently” injured his right hip and more or less put an end to his racing; about the same time, I wiped out on a mountain bike, breaking bones in my left leg and ankle. I, too, am pretty permanently injured, thanks to an initial misdiagnosis that, in the end, had me wearing a cast and confined to a couch for nearly a year. Bouncing back from those crashes is something we’re both tackling, though his grueling daily regimen is a tough one to match.

Levchin moved to the Bay Area in the late 1990s, and while he was working at PayPal, he didn’t ride a bike at all. After PayPal, he was “bored” and gained a little weight. His girlfriend, and now wife, Nellie, said to him, “You have a beautiful bike sitting in the garage. Why don’t you ride it? It’ll give you a sense of order.”

But it was a few months before he decided he was ready to take up cycling again seriously. He used to be good at it, he says, and now had to deal with being “fat and slow on the bike.” He didn’t want the frustration of not being able to fly up hills.

As I would learn, Levchin doesn’t care for moving slow. He tackles climbs just as he appears to do business: deliberately and efficiently.

Levchin says he became "readdicted" to cycling after attending some CompuTrainer classes, in which you set your bike up on an indoor turbo trainer and do high-intensity interval workouts. “I ran my Vo2 max and was like, ‘Oh, I’m still pretty good — I can still push 300 watts without breaking too much sweat,” he says. “I was probably stronger than most people in the CompuTrainer group, so I thought I might as well get back on the road.”

"Every couple of years I threaten to get back into racing, but Affirm has taken up a lot of time that I’d normally spend training," he says. "To be competitive, you need to ride 15 hours a week, at least, and I'm not really there anymore, but I still manage 10 to 12 hours consistently, some weeks more. My primary goal right now is to still be the strongest in my pack," he says with a little smile, "though sometimes that might involve editing the pack."

The Millionaire Who Goes To Bed Hungry

Throughout the 2000s, Levchin pursued cycling while he was building Slide and helping with the launch of Yelp. Then, Google bought Slide, in 2010, for an estimated $228 million. The following year, Levchin came up with a new project: win bike races.

He trimmed down, hitting a low of 153, taking on the lean frame and low body weight of most competitive cyclists. His threshold power, a significant predictor of endurance performance ability, was between 385 and 390, and he could “put real hurt on people.”

Levchin became so thin that one day his wife said to him, “Look, a couple more pounds, and I’m going to look for an alternative husband. There’s not a lot of you left.”

“She threatened to take photos,” Levchin recalls, “because she could count my ribs from the back. I said, ‘All right, just give me a year. I wanna race.’”

During that time Levchin often went to bed hungry in an effort to get leaner. But it wasn’t as simple as riding a bike and eating carefully, because there were things like running a company and leading all-hands meetings. He had to have enough sugar to function. “My goal for about a year was to be the best cyclist I could be, and I worked hard at it,” he recalls, “and I was quite good.”

Today, Levchin weighs 165 pounds, “and that’s if I have a light breakfast,” he says only half-jokingly. He estimates that his threshold now is 365, or about 5% lower than when he was racing. “It used to be like, ‘Hey, there’s a fun hill — I’ll show you how it’s done.’ Now it’s like, ‘Oh man, I’m going to have to really work it.’”

Data As Truth

For all his passion for two wheels, it isn’t just pedaling Levchin loves. He also thrives on data and information. It’s helped make him who he is, quite literally. (As PayPal's chief technology officer, he revolutionized the payments system and developed breakthrough antifraud technology.) After hanging out with Levchin, even for a few hours, you get the impression that no matter what he’s doing, he can’t go long without some sort of numbers to process.

Today, cyclists like Levchin have loads of performance information at their fingertips, and quantifying training intensity and recovery is much easier to do. Many amateur athletes, and almost all the pros, have power meters attached to their handlebars, as does Levchin. One of his favorite tools that he syncs with his power meter is Strava. Used by cyclists and other endurance athletes around the world, the Strava app allows you to record your speed, elevation gain, calories burned, power output, heart rate, and more, and then share it online and compare notes with others. A popular feature on Strava is the KOM, or king of the mountain. When you climb a hill, or a “segment” in Stravaspeak, faster than everyone else, you become the king of that climb. That is, until someone pedals up faster and knocks you off.

Strava’s headquarters are in San Francisco, not far from where Levchin lives and works. The day Strava launched in 2009, Levchin signed up as a paid “premium” member. He encouraged his friends to start paying for the service too. “I was like, ‘You don’t want this thing to shut down,” he recalls. “I’m a big fan of products where I’m passionate about the experience, so I’m happy to pay for it. I think Strava is doing fine now.” (That’s true: In October, Strava raised $18.5 million in Series D funding. It also hired venture capitalist Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital as an adviser.) For data-driven athletes like Levchin, Strava is a must-have.

"My No. 1 competitor is me,” he says. “In the end, the trick of convincing yourself that you’re still good because your buddies are having a bad day and you’re killing them only goes so far. Strava is the source of truth, where you upload your ride and say, ‘Hey, my power up this hill was 5% less than it was last year, when I set my personal record. My heart rate is a bit higher.’ There’s no one to blame but you.

“Then you say, ‘What’s going on here? Oh, you’re trucking around five more pounds, and you’re not training as hard.’ So Strava is a good way to keep yourself completely honest. It’s also a good way to compare notes with other riders. It creates a ladder for me to climb. For most segments on Strava, I know I’m not in the top 10, but I’m frequently in the top 10% or 20%, and that’s a meaningfully high level.”

With the most popular KOMs on Strava, he knows the top riders are pros, but still he’d like to get as close to them as possible.

The Reptilian Brain

What’s most compelling about cycling for Levchin is that it comes down to riding through the pain. “There’s always a moment where you’re like, ‘I can’t do it anymore,’ but it’s never when you’re cresting — it’s when you’re halfway up a climb,” he says. “When your tongue is hanging out on the handlebar and you’ve still got another five k to go. You just have to fire that extra gear, or climb off, which is sort of pathetic.”

That skill is mirrored in successful entrepreneurs, he says. "When I'm in the middle of a really hard ride, it's a bit like starting a company," he says. "Am I going to slow down, or am I gonna go all in? And you just grind. On the bike, I'm no [Tour de France champion] Chris Froome, but I work very hard. I'm willing to suffer. I ride every day, no matter what."

Still, even Levchin admits that in both entrepreneurship and cycling, sometimes you have to know when to give up. “In a bike race, if you know you’re not going to bridge to the front group, you don’t want to burn yourself, because you know there’s another race tomorrow,” he says. “In entrepreneurship it’s the same thing: You can spend five years trying to find an elusive market that doesn’t exist. The parallels are fairly frequent, but the one that appeals to me the most is this getting through the barrier of ‘I just can’t do it anymore.’ That’s just not an option. It’s very true in bike races, and it’s very much true in entrepreneurship.

“The one thing that happens when you’re at the limit on the bike is that you get this diminished reptilian brain,” he tells me. “There’s no room for neocortex, there’s no room for middle-brain activity. It’s like [makes heavy-panting sounds] — Make it stop! And the only way to make it stop is to get to the finish line.”

Whereas some people might burn out with so much data passing through their reptilian brains, Levchin can’t seem to get enough. And that can be a problem: All the data he picks up feeds into his tendency to over-train, and it’s hard for him not to work hard. He even gets annoyed whenever he has to ride slow.

“My No. 1 enemy is the power meter,” he says. “If the number has not cracked 300 [watts] I am not OK with that.”

He recalls a recent workout at home on his indoor trainer. It was supposed to be a recovery workout during which he’d go easy, give his body active rest, and spin out lactic acid. But after warming up he found himself looking at his power meter, which read 190 watts. He decided that was pathetic, so he pushed harder and was soon at 250 watts. Not long after he was hammering at 300 watts. He literally could not pedal easy.

“It’s very easy to be very focused on one thing,” Levchin tells me. “If you’re focused on being the best cyclist you can be, it’s easy to deprive yourself of conversation, food, wine, whatever it is that interferes with being the best cyclist, because you need your eight hours of sleep and your carefully measured calories.

“When you’re training and running a company and you’re trying to be a good family man and have friends, inevitably you have to make a decision where you say, ‘Well, it’s stupid not go to this great dinner party, because I’ll see all my friends and I’ll have a great meal and it will be fun, and yeah, I’ll stay up late and I’ll still ride in the morning, but I’ll feel crappy and be two pounds heavier than I would like to be, and probably slightly hung-over.”

Levchin used to ride every other day outdoors and the rest on the indoor trainer. These days, he typically does five days on the trainer and “sneaks out” for longer rides on the weekend. That, in part, is because he and his wife, Nellie, now have two kids.

“They’re a lot of fun,” he says, “and they need me and I need them. Today, for instance, it was very tempting to just go out and ride, but I wanted to be with them, so I just banged out an hour on the trainer doing intervals.”

Riding with Levchin reveals his intensity. When he wasn’t pushing it on the climbs, we sprinted for town signs. When a magnet used for his computer’s sensor became dislodged from his chainring, Levchin, the meticulous engineer, spent several intense minutes to try to fix it on the side of the road, as if he feared he might miss the opportunity to capture some ride data.

Coming Full Circle

Our three-hour ride ends at one his favorite coffee shops. Levchin checks his computer to see how far he’s ridden, and checks his phone to see who has been texting him. He’s got a little more time to ride, he realizes, before he and Nellie take their kids to a party that afternoon.

I’m cooked, and I’m content to sit in the sun and sip espresso. Sure enough, Levchin tells me he’s going to take a quick spin up and over a nearby climb and that he’ll be back shortly. I watch him reset his computer for his next workout, and off he goes.

Inside 30 minutes Levchin returns, with the extra climbing workout done.

As we head back to San Francisco, over the Golden Gate Bridge, he’s already talking about his next ride.

“For someone as competitive as I am — foolishly competitive or correctly competitive — it’s sometimes hard to reconcile having a family life and a great experience with my friends and a nice meal with a great glass of wine, and the prioritization is pretty hard,” he says.

“I’m getting better about knowing what’s important, but in the morning I still want to be the fastest guy up the hill.”

NOW CHECK OUT: Images of my ride with Max. Here, we go head to head in a sprint to the line:

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You may know Max Levchin best as one of the cofounders of PayPal, or the entrepreneur who sold one of his startups, Slide, to Google for millions of dollars. Or you might know him as the mastermind behind the potentially revolutionary companies Glow and Affirm. Perhaps you know that he sits on the board of directors at Yahoo and Yelp. 

You might not know he’s a fast cyclist.

I learned this firsthand when I traveled to California to write a profile of him, share my passion for pedaling with a fellow obsessive, and, yes, test my mettle against his. As he probably has his whole life, Levchin won, and with grace. 

Up And At 'Em

Levchin brings a sharp focus and a high level of intensity to his business life and his cycling. He often wakes up early to go out for a ride, then it’s into the office for a busy day. If he's pressed for time, he'll ride his indoor trainer for an hour. "I try to touch my bike at least once every day," he says.

Style Is The Man

Levchin’s penchant for the stealth look borders on obsessive, but then again, obsessive is what roadies are. He avoids loud colors and showy brand logos whenever possible. Note the reflective tabs on his Swiss-made Assos apparel, on the back of his thighs and calves. On his left leg he wears a Road ID, which has his name and emergency contacts.

Preride Logistics

Before we roll out, Levchin tells me about the ride we're doing, Paradise Loop, one of the most popular routes in the Bay Area. He has ridden it more than a hundred times, so he knows each rise, downhill, and turn. He likes that he can test himself repeatedly over certain sections and compare his performance data over time.