Exercising is a better way to help the NHS than clapping once a week and more needs to be done to enact real changeFifteen years ago I was waiting by a red light when a dishevelled-looking cyclist, blond mop-top untamed by comb or helmet, pootled past without pausing. A couple of minutes later, the same thing happened again. Yes, it was Boris Johnson. And yes, he had form for this sort of thing – at one point he was filmed jumping through six red lights and a pedestrian crossing during one ride. But, to give Johnson his due, his tenure as the mayor of London did lead to some of the capital’s more dangerous roads and junctions becoming safer for...
A 20-year-old Briton has caused something of a sensation in a winter sport that can be a lot more fun than road cyclingCyclo-cross videos do not really go viral – at least not outside of Dutch-speaking Belgium – but there’s one that been doing modest traffic recently. It features the 20-year-old British rider Tom Pidcock at this month’s world championships in Switzerland. When the action starts, he’s surrounded by four Belgian riders in national-team uniform, making it a pleasing echo of the famous Diego Maradona photograph from the 1982 World Cup. But suddenly Pidcock accelerates, weaving in and out of the Aertses and Van Aertses, skimming over the grass and claggy mud like a four-wheel drive set against underpowered automatics....
Comfy mattresses and the proper washing of hands prove no match for extra-special shoesI don’t remember much about reading Bradley Wiggins’s last autobiography, his 16th I believe, but one detail has stayed with me. It was an incident from around 2011 or 2012 when, having shed six kilos, “Twiggo” started to be considered a serious contender for the Tour de France. When he left home to compete in the race, his preparations were so forensic that it was decided he should not lift his cases into the car taking him to the airport. Why risk an injury now after months of brutal training and near-starvation? Cath, the long‑suffering Mrs Wiggins, did the honours.Looking back, this was perhaps the period when...
Strong willed, strong and obsessively competitive, the legendary Yorkshirewoman was more than a match for menBeryl Burton had a simple motto. “Anything lads can do,” she told herself, “I can do.” And then she got on her bike and showed the world the truth of her assertion through achievements that provided an early sign of what we now believe to be true: that in endurance events, whether cycling or open-water swimming or ultra-marathon running, the gap between men and women decreases as the distance grows.Between the ages of 19 and 39 the Yorkshirewoman won enough cups and medals to fill a house. They included two world road race championships, five world pursuit titles, 72 national time trial championships at distances...
Bjorg Lambrecht’s death on Monday was the eighth of an international rider since 2016. Is the sport really worth it?It is almost 25 years since I stood in the French town of Pau on a July afternoon in 1995 and watched the six members of the Motorola team, including a young Lance Armstrong, ride into the Tour de France stage finish a few hundred metres in front of the peloton. It remains the single most impressive and affecting memory I can summon up in over 30 years of following cycling.The men of the Tour had taken eight hours to ride that day’s mountain stage over some of the race’s greatest ascents at the pace of a funeral cortege, in honour...