Election campaigning - Vote bike??!!

It's been going on since January. These four months of General Election campaigning have been filled with pledges for this, pledges for that, Punch and Judy politics, politicians feeding cute lambs and reading stories at less than enthusiastic primary school children! David Cameron has even declared himself a football fan - shame he got confused about which team he supports! And we've even had a big pink bus - specially to attract female voters (??)

Thankfully we are in the home strait, even if we have no idea who's gonna win the election race. This lack-lustre general election campaign has been a glut of vacuous policies, peppered with repetitive backbiting. How are we to decipher who to vote for??

I guess as a start point I could see what the parties promise for cycling.

These guys must have a bit more to say than "long term economic plan" and "tighten our borders and leave the EU"....

What do they have to say to the about the everyday man or woman in the street on a bicycle?

After all, the Infrastructure Act was passed earlier on this year, requiring the government to set a cycling and walking investment strategy on our roads. Furthermore, with all the campaigning being done by the likes of CTC, The Times Cities fit for Cycling, and Cycling Commissioner Chris Boardman, some of that must have rubbed off onto the politicians.

So what do the different political manifestos say?

The Labour Party gives a couple of mentions on cycling:

"We will continue to support the construction of High Speed Two, but keep costs down, and take action to improve and expand rail links across the North to boost its regional economies. We will support long-term investment in strategic roads, address the neglect of local roads, and promote cycling."

"We will embark on the biggest devolution of power to our English city and county regions in a hundred years with an English Devolution Act. It will transfer £30 billion of funding to city and county regions, along with new powers over economic development, skills, employment, housing, and business support. This will include control over local transport systems so that in future, local bodies can integrate trains, buses, trams and cycling into a single network. We will enable city and county regions to retain 100 per cent of additional business rates raised from growth in their area."

That's a bit slim, and no specific detail is given to exactly how much will be spent on promoting cycling. At least the Conservative Party give us some numbers.

"We will make motoring greener and promote cycling, to protect your environment. Our aim is for almost every car and van to be a zero emission vehicle by 2050 – and we will invest £500 million over the next five years to achieve it. We want to double the number of journeys made by bicycle and will invest over £200 million to make cycling safer, so we reduce the number of cyclists and other road users killed or injured on our roads every year."

I'm not sure how much can be done for cycling throughout the whole of the UK with that sum over five years. Currently Paris is embarking on an a project to improve its cycling infrastructure. The budget for the French capital alone is €150m. Shame on the Tories with its £200m for the whole country!

If the two major political parties don't have much to say about cycling in their manifestos the smaller political parties don't seem to fare much better.

The Liberal Democrats mention cycling in their manifesto in relation to policies on improving air quality, an pledge to introduce "New incentives for local schemes that cut transport-related pollutions, and encourage walking and cycling."

The manifesto continues:

To promote innovation and greener transport choices we will:

• Support options for an intercity cycleway along the HS2 route, within the overall budget for the project.
• Implement the recommendations of the Get Britain Cycling report, including steps to deliver a £10 a head annual public expenditure on cycling within existing budgets.
• This will allow greater investment in cycling including bike lanes, high-volume secure bike parking, and road safety measures to keep cyclists safe.

How happy would I be riding along a cycle path with high-speed trains zooming past me every few minutes. Hmm'nice! Of course the big question with the Lib Dems, more so than other parties is will they actually implement these plans if they entered a coalition government, or will they keel over and renege on things like they did with tuition fees?? 

It's no surprise that the party that gets five stars on its cycle policy is the Greens, which has cycle policy at the heart of its infrastructure and environmental policy. Using the work they have done in Lancaster and Brighton as the example, the Greens pledge to continue the work they have done to make the streets more welcoming for cyclists by restricting speed limits on the streets to 20 mile per hour, developing cycle hubs at train stations, setting up priority access for cyclists at junctions, and building more areas for secure cycle parking.

Neither UKIP nor the Scottish Nationalist Party give specific mention to cycling in their manifestos. The Welsh Nationalist Party (Plaid Cymru) has a one liner saying it "will ensure funding for urban cycle paths and between communities, particularly in travel to work areas."

A number of politicians are seen cycling around Westminster. There is an All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group, which organises a cycle ride every year. But I guess that's just as gimmicky as David Cameron proving his sustainability credentials by cycling to work while his ministerial car carrying his suit and shoes follows behind him!

So, there you have it - a rather sorry picture of government cycling policy in this country. None of the mainstream parties have got their wheels properly into motion!

Vote bike?! Well, that's going to be easier said than done.

10 soundbites from......David Millar

I caught up with David Millar at the recent Bike Expo in Manchester. I must say, having gotten used to seeing him in cycle racing kit over the course of the last twelve years it was quite refreshing to see him in civvies. And he looked quite stylish at that. Since rounding off his 18-year professional racing career last October he's been pretty busy, writing a book, designing a new clothing line, and becoming a Maserati ambassador for the Tour of Yorkshire.

He managed to find a few minutes to chat to me for before he did his Questions & Answers session with Rob Hayles on the stage. Here are a few quotes from my interview with David Millar and when he was on the stage with Rob Hayles.

"When I stopped racing it didn’t feel as though I’d stopped because I had 3 months of having operations and having things done with my hands after crashing during the Tour of Spain.

We do thrash ourselves a fair bit over our careers and you only really realise it when you stop. I am quite shocked to know I do this much damage to myself.

I was quite surprised to be asked to represent the Cyclistes Professionelles Associes (CPA) at the extreme weather protocol meetings. I never ever thought I’d be doing stuff with the union that’s for sure. I used to think, "gee shoot me in the head".

I am based in Girona so I see some of my friends there like Ryder Hesjedal and Dan Martin. I will definitely hook up with them to ride on their recovery days. I won’t join them on their training days, that’s for sure!

We had a great year when Brad (Wiggins) was with us (in Garmin) in 2009. It was a bit complicated the way he left, but we had great times when we were racing together. He was always very serious and very professional.

The modern British cyclist is different to the cyclists of my generation or before. We had to ship out to France, Spain, Italy or Belgium and learn the language. Now you can become a pro and live in Essex, and never have left!

At my first Tour de France in 2000 racing for Cofidis, people thought we were at the vanguard of technology but it was far from that. I had just one bike to race and train with and bought my wheels and my handle bars.

I would have like to have ridden for team Sky, but with zero tolerance it was impossible. I was very lucky for the final part of my career to be on a team that I loved.

[Following the death of Wouter Weylandt in the 2011 Giro d'Italia] Wearing the pink jersey was something I’d always dreamt of doing. And there I was trying on the pink jersey and the whole place had fallen to pieces. The next morning I realised I had to take control and lead the peloton and it was such a very sad day.  I was quite proud that I was given that responsibility.

I had originally wanted to go to art college, but now with my new clothing line I have designed I have ended up doing what I always wanted to do I suppose." 

 

My interview with David Millar can be found in the latest Cycling Weekly magazine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leisure Cheshire Bike Ride

A ride through the hills of the Goyt Valley or the Cat and Fiddle climb near Macclesfield is lovely on the eye, but tough on the legs - especially when you are unfit, like me. Instead, the Cheshire Plain is a less onerous alternative.

One route that I like is to ride from Macclesfield via Broken Cross and then down the sweeping country lanes towards Siddington. There is a main road to cross, the A34, after which you arrive in the village of Lower Withington. I have good memories of this area as it's where I did a "lads 'n' lasses" 2-up time trial with the Manchester Wheelers. All I had to do was to ride in the slipstream of a guy who made a big hole in the air for 10 miles. The road was flat and I was shielded from the slightest wind. I wish all time trials were like that! Then we went for a pub meal afterwards at the Red Lion pub. Happy days!

From Lower Withington I find some even quieter roads which lead to the famous observatory at Jodrell Bank. I would have liked to ride a bit closer to the radio telescope but some of the roads shown on my map turned out to be off limits on the bike, so I pressed on with the rest of my ride to other nearby villages.

The best thing was that once I had left the main A535 road there was barely any traffic at all. At one point the road swooped down a lovely twisty descent, below the railway line and I felt like I was just out in my own private world of cycle lanes. Well, my world of Peover and Chelford!

I finally reach "civilisation" in the shape of the Chelford Island - not particularly exotic, it's just an asymmetric roundabout on the Knutsford Road. Soon I'm heading out towards the Chelsea of the North, Alderley Edge. In fact, I don't reach the heart of the Village with its smattering of Mancunian soap opera actors or footballers. I prefer to go properly to the edge - the chalky escarpment that gives views all over Cheshire and beyond.

Escarpment, I hear you cry? I said it is a flat ride, but in fact, dear reader, there is one teeny climb in the ride - Artists Lane. It's a popular climb in the area and often included in cyclosportive events. I said teeny, but in fact, dear reader it goes on for about 10 minutes if you have average fitness.

So, compared to Alpe d'Huez or Tourmalet it is a tiny baby! The only thing is because the road twists you are never quite sure when you are near the top, and that makes it a real slog at the end of your ride. That's exactly how it felt for me, as an unfit forty-something. At least I wasn't alone, for this is a popular road with cyclists - some of whom gave me sympathetic encouragement!

After tea and cake at the Wizard Pub and a quick look at the Cheshire plain panorama it's a nice steady descent back to Macc. Not a bad little leisure ride.  

Route map for this ride.

10 soundbites from.... Dani King

London 2012 team pursuit gold medallist and Wiggle Honda rider Dani King is getting back in the swing of things after her terrible accident at the end of last year.


Photo from www.wigglehonda.com

Having to overcome the physical injuries was bad enough, but getting over the mental hurdle was a greater challenge.
But now following her 10-week rehabilitation Dani is back in the saddle and racing.
 She has also been busy on training camps, supporting her Wiggle Honda team mates on the side lines at some early European road races, and appearing at Bike Expo, Manchester. I caught up with Dani King at the team launch in Ghent. Here are a few things she had to say.


"I was lucky to get a break last October – I hadn’t had that in about 3 years, which was good but unfortunately I had another forced break with the crash in November."

"I can still feel pain in my ribs every now and again but it’s more of a mental battle for me now, but I’m getting there."

"My first race will be in the UK, the Tour of the Reservoir, then I’ll do a few time trials. My first race with my team will be the Omloop van Borsele, which is towards the end of April. It’s a classics type race."

"I’d like to target the Women's Tour. That’ll be a major goal of mine."

"Rochelle [Gilmore] has done a great job in putting some great personalities together [in Wiggle Honda], so I’m really excited about racing with them this year."

"I took my health for granted before the accident but I’ve found a lot of perspective since."

"It is a shame they [Joanna Rowsell and Laura Trott] are not riding in this team but I’ll still see them out on the road. We communicate on social media most days. It’s not like their completely out of my life – and I’m going to Jo’s wedding this year."

"Getting into the pursuit team for Rio [2016] is gonna be a massive deal for me. It’s not gonna be easy, that’s for sure. What I was lacking for the four kilometres was strength so this road season’s about developing myself as an athlete."

"I really enjoyed my presenting role on the BBC. Who knows, a future career in broadcasting would be nice. But I’ll stick to cycling for now."

"My dad is my biggest role model. He competed in the winter Olympics in biathlon.  After him, Chris Hoy is a cycling role model. He is such a genuinely nice guy who is always there for me to offer advice." 

The full interview with Dani is now up on the Cycling Weekly website.         


 

MacAskill tricks with the Eclipse!

Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle - the bull jumped over the moon! Well, Red Bull-sponsored Danny MacAskill got pretty close during the solar eclipse yesterday!

Photo by Rutger Pauw/Red Bull content pool

So yesterday morning we huddled around looking through our jazzy specs in Jodrell Bank or posed with pinhole cameras and colanders in Cornwall to see the first almost total solar eclipse of the century.

I remember the big event in 1999 and how everywhere went slightly dark for a moment in London, and then we all cheered and celebrated this momentous occasion!

This time I was in an office in Macclesfield. The sun was shrouded in cloud, it was all a bit grey, then there was apparently an 89% covering of the sun by the moon. The sun came out and people celebrated that we had seen the eclipse. The office going dark and then light again as the sun comes in and out of view happens on any day of the year, but yesterday was special because it was Solar Eclipse day!

Meanwhile in Skye, northern Scotland, where there would have been around a 96% eclipse, Danny MacAskill made much more of the occasion by doing this shoot with photographer Rutger Pauw. Smart move. MacAskill never ceases to impress me with his tricks, and I have enjoyed the various films he's done. I guess he would just see this as having a bit of fun at home - it's jolly amazing though. Here's the account from Pauw and MacAskill of how they produced this photo.

Cycling CIRCus

So the much anticipated CIRC Report was published last week. We were warned that it would make for uncomfortable reading. That was probably the case for the bosses at cycling's governing world body the UCI. The likes of Hein Verbruggen and Pat McQuaid must have had acute indigestion at breakfast as they read the report that morning, citing how they turned a blind eye to doping by Lance Armstrong and co.

For some riders, the report was at best unhelpful, at worst insulting when it stated some of the people interviewed reckon 90% of professional cyclists dope nowadays.

As with a lot of these things the media has homed in on just one aspect of this 227-page report. Doping and Lance Armstrong - actually that's two! CIRC does discuss other things: the use of non-banned substances like caffeine and painkillers. They may appear to be performance-enhancing in the immediate term, but can be detrimental over time. For instance, opiate-based Tramadol relieves severe pain so riders can get up and race, though it can also cause drowsiness and dizziness putting riders at risk of crashes.

Perhaps the CIRC report does make for uncomfortable reading. However, I don't know if it is any more uncomfortable than reading about the set-up in other professional sports that rely heavily on sponsorship, or the average global corporation, or dare I say it, a bank!

In all the EPO haze of the Lance Armstrong-UCI show that has been talked about and talked about, there were a few things in the report that caught my eye through all the mist:

Women's cycling gets only a brief mention in the report. It says that Therapeutic Use Exemptions (which authorise the use of a drug for medical reasons) occur in the women's peloton, with some women going to a race with extensive folders of  TUE-related documentation. TUEs are often applied for with corticoid, which reduces weight quickly in order to improve power to weight ratio. That is slightly worrying as it also ties in with the issue of eating disorders (not mentioned in the CIRC report). Last week the Wiggle-Honda rider and Belgian Road Race Champion Jolien D'Hoore spoke out about eating disorders and called for the UCI to do more to provide support for women and help to prevent these problems.

The report highlighted that women's cycling has been poorly supported in the past years - that's not news really. What is quite worrying is that the report stated that examples were given where riders had been exploited financially, and allegedly sexually. Furthermore, team managers of women's team were almost always male and some were not of the quality to get a job in a male cycling team. But yet they were managing women's teams. The report continued that "glaring opportunities to recognise women's cycling for its potential were tainted by a male-dominated sport that failed to realise the potential of women's cycling."

Well, the report could have started off by giving more than a couple of short paragraphs out of 227 pages to women's cycling! They could have also interviewed more professional cyclists, not just Nicole Cooke. Rant over.

I hope that the couple of points mentioned, which are already significant points will be taken up by key players in the cycling world otherwise the future of women's professional cycling would be very bleak future - with or without doping.

Female Cycling Legends

For International Women's Day a couple of years ago I saluted a few outstanding women in sport. I still salute them, as well as a few more like Serena Williams (tennis), Joanna Rowsell (cycling), Lizzy Yarnold (skeleton), Katie Taylor (boxing), Katie Walsh (jockey), Charlotte Dujardin (dressage) and Sarah Storey (cycling).

This year I also wanted to mention a few more women who were legends in their day.

When it comes to cycling Beryl Burton (who I profiled a couple of years ago) is the standout performer for me. Her prowess went to places no one else's went then, or since. Taking various British records some of which took a number of years to be beaten even by male cycle racers, Burton is arguably the greatest female cycle racer in Britain.

Another legend is Leontien van Moorsel. Her name has been mentioned recently as Sarah Storey recently tried unsuccessfully to break her world hour record. The record that she set of 46.065km in 2003 has become a high bar for women racers, especially given this Dutch racer's brilliant pedigree. She won a number of titles in the 1990s and noughties on the road and on the track, including battles with one of her then rivals Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli during the women's Tour de France.

Van Moorsel won gold medals in the road race, the time trial and on the track, plus a silver on the track at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, as well as a gold and a bronze medal at Athens in 2004 in the time trial and on the track. This makes her the most decorated female cyclist in the Olympics. And she managed this after having battled with anorexia nervosa some years before. Today, Leontien van Moorsel is a coach and motivational speaker.

Further back in time was the so-named "Miss America" from the late 1860s when cycle racing first began. Women were not encouraged to take part in sport as it was assumed they would stick to doing household duties! But it was later found that sport may benefit women's as well as men's health so they were encouraged to do light exercise. Cycle racing in France was becoming popular, with many cities up and down the country hosting cycle races, usually in conjunction with festivals - watching the men race on velocipedes provided a lot of entertainment, especially as these machines weren't easy to ride, the races contained obstacles to run or jump over and crashes occurred.

Although organisers welcomed women taking part, few or none signed up as their large skirts made it impractical for them to ride. Cycle friendly women's clothing was only in its infancy and many women did not possess the new garments advocated by Amelia Bloomer. Furthermore, many women didn't know how to ride and would not want to embarrass themselves in front of large crowds. Then "Miss America" turned up. She hitched up her revolutionary bloomers and took up the contests held in 1868 in the suburbs of Paris, winning a number of races.

Fortunately for her, the few other women who turned out were still mastering how to ride a velocipede so her wins were quite convincing. Her performances proved a spectacle and her appearance at the races was a crowd puller. What really impressed people was when she competed in the very first cycle race in 1869 - the Paris-Rouen. 

At 7.30 am on 7th November under torrential rain the one hundred competitors, which included Miss America and one other woman set out from the Arc de Triomphe. Only 34 riders completed the race, many abandoning due to mechanical failure, fatigue in the difficult conditions or missing the 24-hour cut-off. Miss America finished in 29th place around 6 o'clock the following morning - some 12 hours after the winner, a British man called James Moore who completed the 123km in 10hours 40 minutes.

Completing the race was quite a feat, and Miss America, as the only woman to have withstood all the rigours and challenges was seen as an instant heroine. It is not known what her real name was. She was the wife of a cycle racer, but she raced under a pseudonym, like other women who competed. Society frowned at the idea of women doing such unladylike things as riding velocipedes, still less, racing. Their participation was seen more as a novel spectacle as an aside to the real races contested by the men - women couldn't possible engage in serious competition! How times have changed!


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