In her post "Chicken Soup for the Apocalypse", Catez Steven has this quote from Eugen Weber's Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults, and Millennial Beliefs through the Ages:

But the bicycle, with its recently invented brakes and pneumatic tires, was seen by doomsdayers as just another nail in the coffin of civilization. Women were riding bicycles, contributing to the decline of morals and accelerating the collapse of social harmony. New-fangled sports, rambling, and cycling, threatened rank, order, and culture.

Perhaps the breakdown of rank, order, and culture in Europe can be blamed on the Tour de France.

Too bad this idea ever went out of fashion. The Left Behind novels would have been much more interesting if the Antichrist rode into Armageddon riding a Schwinn.