on richard moore
I first met Richard Moore in the Grand Départ press room of the 2021 Tour de France. I’d caught a bus there from my AirBnb and had brought all my luggage with me because I had to change hotels that night. It turned out that the AirBnb I was supposed to check into later was a scam listing, but in the end, what a blessing that was, as it meant I could have dinner with Richard.
When I was in the press room at the Grand Départ of the Tour de France, I felt like a child who had undergone a particularly transformative relocation and as a result knew no one. And no one knew me. It was a very uncomfortable situation. Deeply awkward. Originally my plans were to hitch rides with my colleagues from Cycling Weekly, but for the first week, Richard had other ideas, and I tagged along with him and François Thomazeau and The Cycling Podcast. This changed my life in ways I cannot explain in my current state, but I will try.
When Richard found me looking rather pathetic and helpless that day in the press room, he introduced me to everyone, to a lifetime’s worth of colleagues. In his presence, I became somebody. Cyclists wanted to speak to me, writers’ whose books I’d read suddenly knew of my work. A long time ago, I became an architecture critic, something I did almost entirely on my own. But to become a cycling journalist, I needed Richard.
Grief has a way of making us all entitled. And simultaneously ashamed of that entitlement. There are people who knew Richard better and for longer, most of all his family, who I never met personally but of whom he spoke with great tenderness, especially his young son Maxime. One of the last times I saw Richard in person was outside some press room at the Vuelta, when he got a call from his son and as he answered it the whole world of cycling disappeared from view. My entire heart goes out to his family, to Maxime and Virginie, the people who loved him most, and to Daniel and Lionel and everyone else at The Cycling Podcast.
Richard was my friend and he was my mentor — he quite literally took me under his wing, and believe me, I was some ugly, fledgling bird, indeed. He protected me from the judgement of others. He gave me the safety I needed to learn on the job and delivered to me a crash course (a brief masterclass) on how to act and carry oneself as a journalist. I fell flat on my face several times in that process but Richard was always there to help me and take the sting out of that embarrassment. Even as I write this, I loathe having to go out on my own in paddocks and mixed zones without him there. As long as he was standing around me, I could stand next to him, and when I stood next to him it brought great confidence. I always learned something.
Richard backed me with his whole formidable and unparalleled reputation. He was a giant and I was an amateur and even when I went to the Vuelta on my own accord, I sought refuge in his shadow watching him so expertly and humanely do the job I so wanted and have so struggled to do. There have been many crises, many times I have wanted to quit all of this cycling buisness because so often, being non-European, non-male, non-staff, and non-J-schooled, the battle has been brutal, Ventoux-esque. But every instance in which I was on the precipice of defeat, Richard was there with all his stories, all his experiences, all his patience and his journalist’s capacity for listening, and most of all an indefatiguable reserve of grace and kindness. As long as Richard believed in me, I could do anything. There exists nothing in my vocabulary that can convey to all of you what a profound and unrepayable gift that was.
One of Richard’s many idiosyncrasies was his preference for driving an English car with the driver’s seat on the right side in places not in England. During that first week of the Tour, I was put in the passenger seat and the rather unnerving position of co-pilot, and Richard would ask me many times if it was clear to pass. As we were descending (I should add, he was an expert driver) towards the start of stage three, where I was supossed to, for the first time speak in person with Primož Roglič, I took stock of everything. I took stock of the cool Breton air and the sun which had finally come out so shine after so much rain. Of François transcribing for Le Figaro in the backseat. Of every twist in the road before us, the dark summer shade of the trees, the limestone crags. I can’t for the life of me tell you where exactly we were or had come from — even now I still have to look up the names of the towns we started in, and maybe in my grief I am getting my days mixed up. But this was one of those moments of frission in life where the boundlessness of the journey traveled and the journey still to come is joyfully staggering.
I had the stupidest, slap-happy grin on my face when I turned to Richard and said, “Richard I think this is the happiest and greatest week of my whole life, and I can’t thank you enough for it.” And Richard laughed his big, warm laugh and said in his Scottish accent, “Get back to me when the whole bloody thing is done. It’s only just started.” He was prescient like that, but I meant what I said. I can recall some happy times in my very short life, but few are comparable to that week spent with Richard and François, that formative, brilliant week where we talked about the romanticism of Van der Poel and the resilience of Roglič, and about wine, which I had no taste in and architecture, about which I was more discerning. We spoke for long hours and with many others into the night about Bernard Hinault and about the weather and about literature and music (both of which Richard had phenomenal taste in, better than any arts journalist I know, bar none.) We stuffed our faces with cured meat and played ping pong in a grand, drafty chateaux.
Richard never discouraged me from feeling things, from being emotional or personal both in my writing and in life. When Roglič crashed out in stage three and I saw him ride in all bloody and fucked up, his chance of redemption ruined, it was too much for me and as soon as I got in the car I cried because I’d lived a precious existence and this was the worst physical violence I had hitherto witnessed. I feared that without Roglič I would have nothing else to contribute and nothing to say. Richard consoled me and admitted that he had perhaps grown inured to the suffering of our sport. But he also told me to harden my heart because this would be only the first of many challenges, and this was something I needed to hear very, very badly. No one else but Richard had the balls to say it to my face or the tact to say it so empathetically. This is just one of many things I have to thank him for.
Richard and I were supposed to see each other at the end of April in Slovenia to do a special for the podcast about Slovenian cycling, which I have made (with Richard’s repeated encouragement) my specialization. Because I love Slovenia, a place that has been almost as kind and supportive to me as Richard was. That these two things would come together represented the synthesis of a long road traveled. When I woke up to the shocking and devastating news of Richard’s passing, I thought, what can I possibly say? And how can I say anything in a way that doesn’t make me look like I’m making this about myself? But like I wrote earlier, grief makes us all entitled. This I concede. But I had to share something with those who grieve with me, even if it is entitled and insignificant.
There are few people on this Earth that have so directly guided my life in the direction it’s going in than Richard Moore. Even in the unfairly short time I knew him, I loved him very much, in the way children love adults who give them what they need to be who they are, but with enough years of living under my belt to understand the magnitude of that gift. If I could be to anyone what Richard Moore was to me and to countless, countless others, I will have considered my life to have been some kind of success. It is not enough to say that Richard was an immensely talented journalist whose work has left an indelible mark on the canon of sportswriting. One must understand that what Richard did with his success, the world he built, the support and friendship and camaraderie he lent to others if not the whole entire world of professional cycling, is something that will continue to serve as a beacon to what kind of writers and people we should all strive to be.
The world of cycling has lost its greatest ambassador.
Richard was the elder of three brothers who lived in the same street in Edinburgh and when he was a young, racing cyclist he sometimes came to the house to borrow something to make some adjustments to his bike. He then progressed to the elite level and had those jobs done for him and so we followed his progress into writing and journalism from a distance. Thank you for such a beautifully written tribute to him and for sharing your feelings about what is still something that I am struggling to process.
As ever, beautifully written… raw, heart-first, honest… and all the more powerful for it. Thank you. This is such a shock, and so very very sad. I’m sorry for your loss, and for that of the rest of his friends, colleagues and family.