Pet Mutul

The Pet Mutul, sometime simply referred to as the Pet in Mutli but also known by many different names throughout the Mutul (Ch'olti: Set Xmutul; Ch'orti: Mak Mutul; K'iche: Sutinak Mutul) is a yearly Cycle race held in the Divine Kingdom which was first held in 1894 and has been held continuously since 1924. 130 years old and with its 111th edition held in 2024, it is the oldest cycling competition in the world.

History

Early adoption of the bicycle

The first models of bicycles first appeared outside of the Mutul in the years 1810s but struggled to find their place, incapable of challenging horse-drawn carriages. However, this competition did not exist in the Mutul, where horses were almost unheard of. The country's reconstruction in the wake of the Sajal War was the perfect occasion for early bicycles to make their entrance in the Divine Kingdom. Contrary to other parts of the world, it was immediately aimed at the working class and notably the coolie-workers of K'alak Muul who did all of their activities on foot. To make them less awkward to use, rubber tires and Treadles were adapted to the velocipede in the late 1830s and quickly artisans and shops appeared in almost every street of the capital and then in every large industrial city. And so the daily use of wheeled-vehicles had become mundane by the time the Bicycle pedal was invented in the 1860s, and velocipede racing was already a popular pastime.

Beginning of racing

Unsanctioned races happened throughout the Mutul possibly as early as the 1840s with the first documented race in 1861. The first stage of professionalism reached cycling when sport magazines and enterprises began to organize their own races. The "Bicycle craze" spread far and wide and early-days cyclists became the frequent victims of unscrupulous promoters who would leave events with all the money before drivers were paid. In 1874, a meeting was held in K'alak Muul between the Aj Tun Ji (Chief-editor of "On Two-wheels"), Ajaw Toj Ok Mam (Chief executive of the Capital Bicycle Workshops), Ix Balam Chi Way (largest promoter outside of K'alak Muul' area) and twenty other representative of the bicycle-manufacturing, newspapers, and promotion industries. The talks ended with the formation of the Worshipful Company for the Promotion of Bicycle Racing the following year and the reveal a cycle of 13 sanctioned circuits of races, of 18 races each, covering the entirety of the Mutul. They also began to build large Velodromes for Track cyclings, which would go on to become extremely popular in the Mutul as well. With time, track cycling events would replace some of the races as permanent fixtures.

Beginning of the Grand Tour

The reliefs crossed by the first Grand Tour matches locations of important Mutuleses victory during the war of 1845

By the 1880s talk began to crown this network of sanctioned races with a "Grand Tour" that would represent the summit of bicycle racing in the Mutul as a way to give a windback to newspapers sells and betting revenues which had been diminished by the velodromes craze. A change of leadership within the Worshipful Society allowed for the plan to become real. In 1892, the Long-distance cycle race structure was completely shifted in preparation for the event that was to be held the next year: the first ever Grand Tour in the Mutul, the Pet Mutul.

The idea of the Pet-Mtl was to "encircle" and mark down the Mutul's borders through races in the countryside and show unity under the K'uhul Ajaw. For the first edition, the focus was placed on the war of 1845 with the circuit following more or less the battle lines: starting in the hills of the Ixil Triangle, the cyclists would go down to the Kat'ak Valley, cross the river, and then climb the Waxaklajun Hills to enter the Yajawil of Kowmul. They would continue, following the border and then the coastline before crossing the Mephaa Hills in their northern portion and then race through mountains and plateaux until reaching Danguixh, the largest metropolis in western Mutul. Then they would go down into the coastal plain and reach Yu. The final stretch was to go eastward, alongside the Yuxa River and the K'ol Canal to finally reach K'alak Muul. The circuit thus drawn was 2055km long, with an average of 102km per stage.

Following the first edition, the Worshipful Company received support from the Divine Throne to continue upholding the race. The second edition was a rather flat and long tour of the Xuman Peninsula. The third edition was a more varied but still low-elevation race through the eastern viceroyalties. It's only for the fifth edition that the organizers decided to try higher mountain passes with a succession of stages going through the high mountains separating the Yajawil of Kuhmakah from Sante Reze. The public answered positively to the challenge and the impressive feats performed by the cyclists, and so the K'alibih Mountain pass became a fixture of the Grand Tour.

Three kinds of spectators can be separated at the time: enthusiasts who followed the race attentively, camping next to the circuit and following the cyclists; sportsmen; and "laypersons" who profited from the festivities organized in towns crossed by the Grand Tour. Aristocrats and the wealthier classes of society were infamously uninterested by cyclism as a sport, seeing it as a working class and "commoner" activity. The Pet Mutul was nonetheless able to give cyclism its "Nobility Papers" through its sheer scale and promotion by "reputable" instances.

Even so the rise of motorsports would represent a difficult challenge for the Worshipful Company as a whole. The Pet Mutul itself kept its appeal, but their other events knew dwindling numbers and profits. By the late 1900s, even the Grand Tour was knowing difficulties as the lack of passion outside of a reduced core audience became obvious. The Belfro-Mutulese war of 1911 proved to be the final nail in the coffin of the Worshipful Company which folded and dissolved far from the public eyes as the war raged on.