During the third stage of the Tour de France, attention was focused on French cyclist Fabien Grellier when the cameras caught him racing down a straight line at full speed, while the wheels of his bike seemed to be spinning in the opposite direction. A paradox against all the laws of physics that sent fans and enthusiasts into a tailspin and amused reporters.
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During the third stage of the Tour de France a bit of everything happened, to the point of registering Piacenza-Torino among the most iconic stages ever. The history of the Grande Boucle was rewritten with Birman Girmay who won the stage, the first African cyclist to do so, and with Richard Carapaz who wore the yellow jersey, taking it from Pogacar: the first Ecuadorian to do so. But even during the race there were other special moments, including one that sent fans and enthusiasts into a tailspin: these are the Fabien Grellier’s bicycle wheels which, at full speed, spin in the opposite direction creating an inexplicable paradox.
The video quickly went viral and revealed the absurd phenomenon that goes beyond any law of physics but appears extremely real and has confused many viewers, even sparking hilarity among commentators and TV commentators. It is the movement of the two wheels of the bicycle of the French cyclist Fabien Grellier, modest domestique of Team TotalEnergies who earned his 5 minutes of fame. At 66 km from the finish line he attempted a solo breakaway – useless for the stage victory but which gave him the day’s combativeness award – and at that moment the cameras were all on him: during a flat stretch of the 3rd stage, while he was speeding along at full speed, its tires were rotating in the opposite direction to the direction of travel.
Why Grellier’s Wheels Turn Backwards: What Happened
The suggestive and in its own way unreal image has a quite simple answer: it is an optical effect that deceives the brain through sight creating a paradox that apparently becomes inexplicable, developed thanks to the images on TV. In jargon it is the classic “wagon wheel effect”. The cameras filming Grellier actually don’t film more than 24 or 25 frames per second, which makes it look like the wheel is spinning backwards, live on television. In Grellier’s case the two wheels turn much slower than 25 times per secondthen the camera films the wheel giving the viewer the impression that it is actually moving in the opposite direction to the direction of travel, creating the “visual short circuit”.
