Sports as Emergent Storytelling. The Narrative Construction of Road Cycling

Abstract

Professional road cycling is grounded in ludus (structured play), but its reception has long been shaped by narrative (stories). Focusing on the Tour de France as a paradigmatic case, this article examines how, since its late nineteenth-century inception, the sport has functioned as a narrative engine: a ludic system that generates storied interpretations. Drawing on cultural and cognitive narratology, the article argues that cycling’s narrativization arises not from predetermined storytelling but from emergent narrativity: stories produced by the sport’s ludic dynamics, the media ecologies that frame it, and the interpretive activities of commentators and fans. To show this, the article (1) traces how professional cycling historically developed in close intertwinement with the rise of new mass media and narrative mediation, and (2) identifies distinct ludic features that afford the cognitive construction of road races as narratives. It hereby shows how cycling’s ludic and medial structures have coevolved, turning athletic performance into shared storyworlds that connect the sport to experiential, social, and ideological meanings.