“A Sunday in Hell”: Choosing sprocket teeth for ‘almost impossible roads’

Let’s revisit “Hell” on this wonderful Sunday. Here’s the latest in our weekly series about the best scenes and narration from “A Sunday in Hell,” Jorgen Leth’s timeless and brilliant documentary about the 1976 Paris-Roubaix race:

Mechanics for Italian superstar Francesco Moser’s Mechanics for Italian superstar Francesco Moser’s team are loading Bennotto bikes onto the roof racks of the team’s support vehicle. The narrator explains, “At the hotels in the morning, the teams are getting ready to meet up at the starting place in Chantilly. Each one of the bicycles has been taken apart. Each bicycle has 10 or 12 gears, but the individual riders choose the number of teeth on their sprockets. The machines of Moser and his best support rider, Ole Ritter, are equipped with especially strong patented tires in the hope of avoiding too many punctures on the almost impossible cobbled roads.”