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“Only a few times in his life, perhaps never, does a rider push himself to the absolute limit, or ten-tenths as I call it. Most of the time you ride pretty close to it, say at about eight-tenths. Nine is really suffering. But ten is how you’d ride if to be caught meant disembowelment or the torture of the hooks, or to save your mother or children. It means to ride so that parts you never think of, such as your liver, your whole system, refuse to do any more. I’ve seen men try it. Sometimes they succeed, but mostly they finish in the ambulance. Usually they faint and crash at about nine-and-a-half tenths.”

Ralph Hurne, The Yellow Jersey