This Vuelta a España has been a lot. There’s been the racing, of course, which sees the top two separated by less than a minute heading into the final days. There’s been the Big Comfy Sofa, which has lulled countless brave boys into a state of pre-race slumber. And there’s also been the pro-Palestine protests that have caused days of upheaval, with more to come. All in all, business-as-usual has been hard to come by.
For these reasons and more, then, the visuals of stage 17’s final climb to Alto de El Morredero were a balm for the soul. Not the whole climb, of course – that would be absurd. We can hone in on the precise moment that nature healed: 4.1 kilometres from the finish, on a hairpin bend through a blackened landscape. Stretching around the bend, a good 20 metres or so in length, was an enormous spurting graffiti penis.
The graffiti penis is a long-standing mainstay of both cycling events and classrooms worldwide. The reasons are crude but obvious: it is a body part that is supposed to be concealed, yet in this illustrated form, it is not. The artist behind the penis (almost always a dude) is aware of the comedic possibilities inherent in this dichotomy; on a school wall, a penis is not supposed to be there. On the tarmac of Alto de El Morredero, a penis is also not supposed to be there.
And yet, there it is.
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