Rituais do espetáculo de ciclismo: hierarquias e seu significado

Abstract

The scale of media visibility which the Tour de France has been able to attain, when compared to the Volta a Portugal, is the starting point for this questioning of the social, political and economic hierarchies, which become evident and are celebrated through the ceremonies that take place on the podium. In this comparative study of the Tour and the Volta, I also aim to apply the Randal Collins theoretical framework of ritual interaction, analysing the exclusion of sport spectacles from the category of formal rituals and counter the idea of the “artificiality of lived experience” deployed by the author in relation to participation in these kinds of rituals. To question this notion of the artificiality of experience, I propose a comparative analysis of the Volta and the Tour, seeking to demonstrate that neither of these rituals is autonomous or independent from the desire for the identification and identity of the social actors, groups or communities involved in their organization or in the celebration that is instituted by their spectacle.