Cycling UK Forum

Article in The Graun today: this is the last paragraph:

"Cycling will always endure here because there will always be people who want to sustain it. But this is a poorer country now, a meaner and more insular and more pecuniary place, obsessed with quick fixes and the bottom line. And perhaps for all its successes Britain has never really seemed to get cycling, a sport of collaboration and selflessness, a sport where people turn up and watch for free, where you can’t sell out a stadium or sell debentures, where the benefits are intangible and reveal themselves over generations. In this respect, too, cycling feels like a pretty good metaphor for the past decade."

See: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/ ... ep-it-away

My kind of recreational cycling has never really been about sport. The nearest I got to racing was Audax, which just asks you to take on rides that you find a challenge. If you choose to try to get ahead of the person in front, that's your choice, but nobody is going to call you the winner at the end.

And that sort of cycling has its equivalents in the world of hiking, where people can take on challenges without being competitive. And if someone has problems along the way, others will pause to assist. The feeling that we are all in this activity together, and will watch out for each other, is part of what draws us to it in the first place.

I hate the "dog-eat-dog" approach to sport, or life in general, and I reject it. Professional sport, even professional cycling, makes me switch the TV off. It is just people taking games too seriously and ignoring what really matters. It is sport missing the point of sport. If they aren't playing for fun, they aren't playing, and I'm just not interested.

Cycling is not really "a thing" but lots of very different thing the only link being the 2-wheels and pedals (except when there are 3-wheels or/and a motor).

Those wizzing round a velodrome on carbon frames with no brakes can hardly be considered to be doing the same activity as a 70 year old grandmother cycling home from the local shop with some bread & veg in her handlebar basket.

Or those hammering down a mountainside in helmets and knee protectors on dedicated tracks.

Ian

The problem might lie in trying to make cycling a thing we all do. On a dark wet evening, turning up your collar and your face to the rain, it doesn't feel like a national event. As the cars whoosh past, you have to make your own life and death decisions as to how you ride. You choose the route, it's not signposted (in fact the most useful signposts have been deliberately taken down), you're well resourced with some tools (the familiar AA van won't stop for you) and you're going to be the only one at your gathering who arrives by bicycle. The closed-off roads, the cheering spectators, the colourful but inadequate jerseys will not be for you, there's no support car. And on the canal path you look out for shadowy figures lurking under the bridges like modern-day trolls. Cycling isn't a social occasion, it's something you do because you intend to do it, whatever government support exists or doesn't. Making cycling into a sport completely misses the point.

pwa wrote: ↑6 Feb 2024, 10:52am My kind of recreational cycling has never really been about sport. The nearest I got to racing was Audax, which just asks you to take on rides that you find a challenge. If you choose to try to get ahead of the person in front, that's your choice, but nobody is going to call you the winner at the end.

And that sort of cycling has its equivalents in the world of hiking, where people can take on challenges without being competitive. And if someone has problems along the way, others will pause to assist. The feeling that we are all in this activity together, and will watch out for each other, is part of what draws us to it in the first place.

I hate the "dog-eat-dog" approach to sport, or life in general, and I reject it. Professional sport, even professional cycling, makes me switch the TV off. It is just people taking games too seriously and ignoring what really matters. It is sport missing the point of sport. If they aren't playing for fun, they aren't playing, and I'm just not interested.

Professional "sport" isn't really a sport at all but rather a circus. The skills are high. The audience are passive but hope for the excitement of a fall or a death. They can have their favourites, who they like to frst praise then bring down for real or imagined failures & faults.

I've taken part in various of the sporting varieties of cycling and greatly enjoyed them all. But, as perhaps that G article intimates, the sports of cycling at the lower amateur levels are definitely about taking part, with winning only of appeal to a tiny minority, who are useful to the rest as a sort of live rabbit in a dog race. We chased those habitual winners but rarely caught them. We were very pleased just to have completed the chase, especially if we nearly caught the rabbit near the end.

Many sports used to be local, almost street-level activities, sometimes made slightly more formal via local or works clubs and the like. The vast majority of participants took part for the process rather than the outcome, even if the outcome mattered to one or two participants and their friends & relatives. Those days have gone, really. Most sport now at the amateur level (what's left of it) seeks to emulate the antics of the professional circus performers. Even pseudo cycling sports such as those so-called sportives tend to contain large numbers of inept wannabees pretending to be Cav or Wig or whoever is the latest sleb circus performer.

Sad, really. I often recall, with great pleasure, the races of my younger days, on bikes that didn't cost two months wages, with folk who adhered to the notion that its how you play the game rather than whether you're The Winnah! After all, there can only be one winner so might as well enjoy being a not-the-winner too.

Football (yes, that; bring out your prejudices) exists at at least two levels, “grassroots” and “insane money go round circus” (there are actually sensible intermediary levels too), and at grassroots level it provides a massive amount of fun, exercise, and life-skills for kids. Absolutely thousands of kids participate.

So ….. there is no real reason why sport-cycling couldn’t exist at those different, to all intents and purposes totally separate, levels, and I think for CX it effectively does.

But, sport cycling and utility cycling both need their place, and there is too often a confusion, or an excessive emphasis on competition. Nobody would get confused between putting in a pavement to walk to the shops, and competing at Olympic level in walking, or between driving to B&Q to fetch some wallpaper and F1 (OK some drivers, a tiny few, struggle to keep their fantasy lives in their heads), but cycling seems somehow over-identified with sport.

It’s all very odd, and I think that having a sport’s national governing body getting tangled-up in general cycling advocacy is sometimes part of the problem, and it’s a problem that many clubs seem to get tangled in too.

Slight rant; sorry!