The Edinburgh Fringe this year features a striking crop of shows built around genuine physical endurance, with performers cycling, running and spinning through demanding routines as an integral part of the storytelling rather than mere spectacle. Productions such as SpinQueen™, in which Megan Tomei leads a chaotic high-intensity spin class, and Cadel: Lungs on Legs, in which Connor Delves recreates Cadel Evans's 2011 Tour de France victory, use real exercise equipment to make the physical struggle of sport tangible for audiences, blurring the line between athletic feat and theatrical performance.

Delves, who grew up around his parents' bike shop in Perth, Australia, cycles roughly 27km per show on bikes modelled on those Evans used to win, with his father working as the production's mechanic; he has adjusted his diet, sleep and drinking habits to cope with the physical toll. The article situates this trend within a longer lineage of endurance-based fringe theatre, citing Richard Gadd's 2016 award-winning treadmill show Monkey See Monkey Do, Kim Noble and Stuart Silver's earlier treadmill-and-chess act, and Katie Mitchell's lockdown-era eco-theatre piece powered by cycling performers, while noting that few such shows have made sport itself, rather than just the exercise, central to the narrative.