Every cycling team has a number of specialists: general classification riders like Lance Armstrong, who are good at time trials and have great endurance; sprinters, who go for broke on the flat stages of a race; climbers, who tend to be small and thin and who gain ground in the mountains; and all-rounders, good pack riders who are useful in strategic attacks. Casper is a sprinter, known for his explosive power over a short distance.

Also known as the joker who keeps his teammates laughing, the cyclist attributes much of his success to his ability to “disconnect my brain: to forget everything that can happen during a sprint. Without this, even the fastest cyclist in superb condition would stay behind,” he maintains. But he has learned from experience to take some precautions. “When I was a junior in the 17th class and there was a cow in front of me, I would have run into the cow. I had no limits,” he admits. “Now, I’ve already proven some of my qualities, and I don’t want to kill myself for a small race.” But keeping up with the best means taking risks. “I just did the world championships, and I knew that if necessary, I’d go for broke. The worst that happens is that I fall, and skin is only varnish.”

“Sometimes, it takes a fall to calm the racers down,” Casper notes. The cyclists scout each day’s route, if possible, and try to commit the last three kilometers to memory. They need to look far ahead as well as closely monitor the tiny gaps between the bikes: “I’m talking millimeters,” Casper explains. Cyclists use their other senses, too. During descents, “I can smell the brakes—probably hear them at the same time—and immediately think ‘Uh-oh, danger!’—especially during the Tour, because it’s so hot,” he says.

There’s always one spectacular crash during a race like the Tour de France, and in some years more. Casper has had his share, none worse than the massive pileup that occurred in the closing meters of the first stage of the 2003 centenary Tour. Prostrate on the ground with a serious neck injury and a lot of skin missing, he made a fist to signal to his family that he was okay. He recalls thinking, “That’s it, my Tour is over; I’m on the ground, and I didn’t even do a single sprint!” Incredibly, Casper did get back in the race, in a neck brace, but had to abandon it on the long climb up the Col du Lautaret, in the Alps, when he couldn’t keep up as the pace quickened. Almost as frustrating was the fact that he couldn’t help his teammate and fellow sprinter Baden Cooke. But when Casper was taken off in the ambulance, “I knew I had given it everything I had, so I could keep my head high.”

The dream of all French kids is to win a stage of the Tour de France. So far, Casper’s ridden in five Tours and finished two. “I will fight for my kids—and also for the chance to participate in the last stage. Both times I made it to the Champs Elysées, I came in sixth, and that was a great reward.” For now, it’s back home to train through the winter with his brother Stanley. “Cycling is my job,” says Casper. “It’s what I want to do, and it only lasts 10 or 15 years, so there’s no time to lose.”

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Name: Jimmy Casper

Born: Montdidier, France, 1978

Job: Cyclist

Where I go to watch IMAX films: I’ve never seen one! I want to take my wife and family to the Geode in Paris this winter.

Book(s) I’d want if I were stranded on a desert island: Letters from my family would be enough.

Favorite place to visit: L’Isle des Pins, a little island off New Caledonia (in the southwest Pacific Ocean). I went on vacation there after a race, and it’s the greatest countryside I’ve ever seen.

Favorite food: Spaghetti carbonara

Favorite artist/kind of music: A French group called Louise Attaque