Allez Les Bichettes! 

It’s 2:07 on a Saturday morning in the center of Zermatt, Switzerland, and hundreds of people are standing shoulder to shoulder on makeshift grandstands-or leaning against makeshift barriers-and frantically waving makeshift props: Swiss flags, hometown pennants, bedsheets spray-painted with words of encouragement. One fan holds a banner that simply proclaims, “Go bitches!”

The air smells like stale beer. A stumbling spectator pulls his pie-eyed friend out of a puddle of slush. Over the loudspeakers, military marching songs alternate with a cheesy remix of “Hey Jude.”

“Bonjour les machines!” The Swiss Team—there are hundreds of Swiss teams, but only one has been dubbed les machines by its fans—jogs into the light from a backstreet. Ten minutes later, the French  all-star trio called Parc des Bauges Savoie struts out from another dim alley. The cameras turn to the top two seeds of the race, converging on them before they can duck into psych-up huddles. A few moments later, the loudspeaker blares a French countdown: dix! neuf! huit!