Social constraints and self-restraints in the habitus formation of professional cyclists

Since the early 1900s and the increasing integration of members of the lower classes into professional cycling there has been considerable symmetries in the social origins, work conditions and the economic and social insecurities experienced by cyclists right through the decades despite the development of less unequal power relations at different tiers of social integration. The ability to endure physiological suffering was closely bound up with these insecurities - a cyclist’s socio-economic conditions could be improved through the capacity to endure greater physiological suffering. The figuration of professional cycling that produced these constraints was also interwoven with other higher tier figurations which also shaped how suffering became conflated with the sport and increasingly amplified. This combination of both social and self-constraints exerted a compelling pressure on cyclists across the generations and led to the conflation of ‘suffering’ within the sport and the use of stimulants.