>If he's been doing serious road biking since that age it's probably not something that he's doing on regular streets.

Of course he rides on regular streets, he's French. Seeing an elderly woman riding to the shops or a group of lycra-clad pensioners attacking a mountain pass is perfectly normal there.

It is a peculiarly American belief that bicycles are somehow incompatible with motor vehicles. Cyclists need no special facilities, just sane traffic laws that are actively enforced.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be48mIvXZrw

You can drive to Plano, Texas and find packs of bikers attacking the open road as well. That's not a video of Marchand in lycra speeding down a Paris boulevard.

Is it a particularly European belief that Americans are unenlightened savages? I mean, we are, but you don't have to assume it.

I don't believe that Americans are unenlightened savages. I believe that they have a very limited cycling culture, due largely to the dominance of car culture. America was fortunate enough to be the richest country on earth during the 20th century, so it developed a car culture sooner and more pervasively than any other country. At a time when cars were an unaffordable luxury for most Europeans, many Americans regarded cars as a basic necessity.

The public discourse about cycling in America is dominated by myths, because very few Americans have practical experience of regular cycling. Those who do cycle tend to be self-taught, because of the limited availability of cycle training and the lack of a strong tradition of club cycling. America is having to rebuild a culture of cycling from scratch, for no other reason than the ubiquity of the motorcar.

Yes, America has a "limited" cycling culture, but we're a nation of 300 million people; within that there are pockets of very real cycling culture informed by decades of experience from elsewhere.

Some of us do cycle, too. There are miles and miles of good trails running through some cities you wouldn't expect.

That is the exact opposite of a national culture of cycling...

I dunno, I've ridden the roads in Plano before. The fact that most roads are multi-lane definitely make things more amicable to biking there since cars can move around cyclists. In denser urban areas (yes, yes, Plano is semi-urban with all its corporate infrastructure) where the lights are denser and the roads have fewer (or one!) lanes it is much more difficult.

Also, more pertinent to Plano, what if you want to replace your car entirely? Grocery stores are still pretty spaced out and you are SoL if you want to get into Dallas proper! The DART is incredibly slow, so that's out, and biking from Plano to a night on the town with your friends is Deep Ellum or Greenville Ave is a tall, dangerous order.

Keep it 214!

> Is it a particularly European belief that Americans are unenlightened savages?

That depends on how Asia and Africa see America ;)

Certainly made urban, young, progressive America quite a but more impressive when I visited!

What basis do you have for either of those claims? What sort of irregular streets do you think "serious" road bikers use, and why do you think serious road bikers don't also use a bike for shopping?

Not sure why you decided to create a throwaway, but it's a valid question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Marchand_(cyclist)

Aged 35 he finished seventh in the Grand Prix des Nations in 1946.[3] He returned to cycling in 1978[2] and continued training after his 100th birthday.

My point is that the guy has very clearly been training and seriously cycling for a long time. While you can do it on normal city streets, you are often served better to do that on dedicated bike paths or on the open road.

You can reduce the impact of cars all you want and even make your city bike friendly but that's not going to change your ability to really train. It's not crazy to think that his health benefits are from this elevated level of training and not just leisurely cycling.