I Really Love Stories That Overturn the Verdict

Do not go gentle into that good night. – Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"

The night before last, I watched the live broadcast of the 2026 Paris-Roubaix road race. It's regarded as the first among the five Monuments of road cycling, so it draws a lot of attention.

The favorites were all names well known in the sport: three-time defending champion Mathieu van der Poel, plus top riders like Ganna, Van Aert, and Pogačar. Pogačar is the most influential rider of the moment, and among the five Monuments, Paris-Roubaix is the only one he hasn't won yet.

The race was thrilling. That's always the case with Paris-Roubaix, because it isn't an ordinary course. It's a bumpy course full of cobblestones, and at the highest points the unevenness is deep enough to hold a bottle of cola.

A race like that tests not only the riders' physical limits but also their bikes.

So I say Paris-Roubaix is, in a way, also a contest of luck. Whether your bike breaks in the race, where it breaks, and how fast you can get a replacement directly decide whether a rider still has a chance at the win.

Unsurprisingly, this year's Paris-Roubaix was hell on the bikes.

Pogačar, Van der Poel, and Van Aert all had flat tires, one after another.

In the end, Pogačar and Van Aert formed the lead group. In the last dozen or so kilometers, I could almost tell that the two of them would most likely sprint it out before the finish.

And at that moment, as a viewer, you can't help weighing it up: who do you want to win this title?

For Pogačar, he's without doubt the most dominant rider in the world today, with excellent results in all kinds of races. Paris-Roubaix is the one missing piece in his Monuments set, so he seems to have good reason to need this win.

And Van Aert? Compared with Pogačar, Van Aert is a top rider who has often been unlucky at Paris-Roubaix.

In 2018, in his first Paris-Roubaix, Van Aert lost his teammate Goolaerts on the course. From then on, he had a reason he had to win Paris-Roubaix.

But sadly, in the seven years after, Van Aert went through countless crashes and injuries, and each time he just missed Paris-Roubaix. Now he's one of the favorites too, but next to Van der Poel, who was going for a fourth straight win, and Pogačar, who was aiming to win all five Monuments, he looked more like the supporting character the story had forgotten.

Van Aert, a rider who'd produced countless iconic moments and also countless disappointing ones, looked completely powerless.

But in the end, Van Aert beat Pogačar in the sprint before the finish, almost comfortably, and took the Paris-Roubaix title he'd waited eight years for.

After getting off his bike, he cried and cried. He'd decided eight years ago that he would win this race, and it took him a full eight years to get here. He carried the loss of his teammate, years of injuries, and the doubts of the outside world the whole way.

Road cycling fans today may not realize it, but this may be the most exciting race of the two years before and the two years after.

After watching it, I was very moved.

But I think Van Aert's story is more than a so-called inspirational story.

Most people who see commentary and passionate moments like this will think it's a story of "perseverance wins," "if you don't give up there's hope," "heroes are made in adversity."

But I think that kind of story is too much chicken soup, and too boring. What really moves you in these stories has never been their perseverance.

Let me give two more examples.

Another legend in cycling is Mark Cavendish. In 2024, he broke the record of 34 career Tour de France stage wins set by Eddy Merckx.

But Cavendish's career wasn't as smooth as it looks. From 2012 to 2021, over nine years, Cavendish not only had several serious crashes but also caught the Epstein-Barr virus in 2017.

It's a virus that devours an athlete's physical strength, a nightmare for any athlete.

After repeated serious crashes, injuries, and the virus, almost everyone in the world believed the former star sprinter had left the stage of history and could never break Merckx's record.

But he came through in the end. He broke past the doubts of the outside world, kept pushing his own stage-win record between 2021 and 2024, and finally reached 35 Tour de France stage wins, setting a new all-time record.

In another field, there's a similar story.

That's the League of Legends pro player Deft.

He and the legendary player Faker were once classmates. Faker already had a Worlds title in 2013, while over the next eight or nine years Deft's best result was a top four in 2014.

As he got older, his form slipped from its peak and injuries followed. He moved from team to team, and a player like him who never had much to show for it was already at the end of his career.

In 2022, Deft announced he'd retire after that year. And that year's results weren't good either. Against Faker's T1 he went 0 wins and 18 losses over the whole year, and only barely made it into that year's World Championship.

In the final, his opponent was his old classmate Faker.

In the end, Deft got what he wanted and won the title.

After the match, Deft said: "Looking back now, I realize that none of this was a dream. Every day, someone was telling me I couldn't win Worlds. That I was tired, that I'd had surgery, that I was too old. It took me ten years to earn the right to look back at them and say, 'You were wrong.' I hope my win, and my team's win, can bring hope to people going through even harder times than mine. Most important of all is a heart that doesn't break."

Whether it's Van Aert, Cavendish, or Deft, I really love stories that overturn the verdict.

If the world is a book, everyone is a character in it.

Before they won, the world had already written their endings.

Cavendish should retire. Deft will never win a title in this lifetime. Van Aert will always be one breath short of the title.

That kind of narrative seems as unshakable as a law of physics, like hearing a death sentence, with no room to turn it around.

And the key to their stories is that with one win, they broke the script that fate had already written for them.

I really love stories that overturn the verdict.

The key to this kind of story is that everyone lives in a world that has already been defined for them: how others define you, how you define yourself, how time defines you.

And their stories aren't telling us to keep going.

They're telling us that the things other people say are settled can actually be changed.