I have no idea what is happening but I dig it
Big Bicycle did a lot of puppetry to avoid these magnificent feats of engineering from coming overseas.
no gears
no freewheel
no brakes
no handlebars
no seatThe fixie hipster crowd would have been all over them.
SO MINIMAL
I tried to find Pedalorennen or similar. No luck.
Pro Pedalo racing was banned after what happened at the 1978 World Cup finals in Hockenheim.
Most of the survivors are still in a wheelchair today - and suffering from severe PTSD.Sounds dreadful.
Now we just need these things in some beans
Isn’t pedalo an insult in French?
Hopefully
A bit of searching and I found the word just means pedals in esperanto. For some reason the word pédale has another meaning of “faggot”. I can’t find any etymology for it, but probably it’s a changed spelling of pédéraste which translates to boy-lover - and I’ve heard Russians scream it at me in online games.
In conclusion, not directly a French insult, but maybe?
I speak french and kid me imagined pédale was referring to the way a bike pedal rotates down with gravity the same way the stereotypical gay was walking with broken wrists. (Same as tapette) Yeah I’m not proud of how my generation treated the gays. Trying to do better with my kids.
Pédalo is the word for those pedal propelled boats you can rent in touristy spots, like with the kids slide at the back. The rest of what you said about pédale is all correct.
Switch to English wiktionary for pédale and it suggests also looking at the shorter version of the word, where it is explained where it comes from and - guess what - you’re exactly right.
Also pederast comes from ancient greek which explains how widespread it is. Pede/pederast is commonly used in Estonian as well, as an insult. Usually just the equivalent of faggot, but boy lover
You’re thinking about pédale