Thinking, about cycling. "Anybody whose mind is proud enough not to breed true secretly carries a bomb at the back of his brain; and so I suggest, just for the fun of the thing, taking that private bomb and carefully dropping it upon the model city of commonsense." (This blog began as an archive of DYNAMITE!, the newsletter of London Dynamo cycling club, which you can still access via "DYNAMITE! filed" in the list below on the left.)
5 DOWN Kara Kum
It’s been seven days of utter confusion in our famous soundproof bunker. On Friday we thought Rapha had launched a range of jerseys designed to be worn in an insalubrious area of south-east London, until we opened their email and realised it wasn’t that sort of “New Cross Collection”. Then, on Tuesday night, Guy Pearson ended a day at his intriguing new bike boutique in East Sheen by asking “who has the longest regular vomited”, and it took us a few minutes to work out his phone had autocorrected “commute”. So, naturally, when we stumbled across a mention of a bike called Kara Kum on page 195 of the latest Cycling Plus, we thought that too was a typo. But no: Dawes really did christen a bicycle – a women’s-specificbicycle – with a name that sounds like it belongs to a porn star. Which could explain why you don’t see that many women riding them.
4 DOWN Dating
Speaking of rude matters, a matchmaking website called freedating.co.uk has interviewed 10,000 of its members and concluded that cyclists of both genders are less likely than average to get up to a bit of how’s-yer-father on a first date. Reporting on the survey in road.cc on Tuesday, Simon MacMichael mused: “Perhaps the finding reflects the typical cyclist’s behaviour when it comes to buying a new bike, which after all is a relationship that all of us hope will last a long time when contemplating it, and not to be entered lightly.” And you can see where Si is coming from: it may well be the case that fellas are looking for smooth, assured handling, while ladies perhaps want a model that’s stiff yet compliant. But knowing cyclists the way The DYNAMITE! Files does, it’s more probable that competitive cyclepeople equate dating with training, enduring many long, gruelling sessions before the “big event”. Which ends, of course, with bitter disappointment and self-loathing, no matter how vigorous the final spurt.
3 UP The Italian national team’s speed suit
Cycling is all about cultivating an air of mystery; the less you know about a rider, a team or a DT Swiss anodised nipple, the more you want to know. So well done to Cycling Weekly for running a blurry photo of the Castelli San Remo aero skin suit which the Italian team will be wearing at the World Championships in Copenhagen. We should all fool ourselves into believing that the hi-tech outfit is so fast you can barely see it – for the day when a more detailed photograph emerges showing how the design allows you to easily answer a call of nature will be the moment that the spell is broken.
2 UP Green
As a predominantly text-based outlet, this blog cannot claim to know much about colour or design, but we are nevertheless concerned by road.cc’s report that the hue du jour for bikes next year will be green. It’s such a conspicuous colour that having lots of green bikes cluttering up the visual landscape will surely be the equivalent of PUTTING EVERYTHING IN CAPITAL LETTERS. WHAT A – sorry, didn’t realise the caps lock was still on – what a pain.
1 UP Hurricane Katia
Sombre faces at the Tour of Britain on Monday as the 130km stage from Kendal to Blackpool was cancelled to avoid Hurricane Katia transforming the peloton into a human version of a record-breaking domino-toppling display. “In my 30 years of organising cycling events,” said downbeat race director Mick Bennett, “I have never once had to cancel a stage before it even started, so this is not a decision that has been taken lightly.” All of which makes it sound like this wasn’t a great day for the ToB. But it so was! Because the United Kingdom has finally stepped out of the shadows of road racing’s European heartland. Forget the snow-smothered Gavia and the mud-covered cobbles up the Kopp – our proud sceptred isle can now boast that it has hosted a stage so bloody dangerous nobody was actually allowed to race. And our country achieved this milestone by utilising a mainstay of British life: godawful weather. So thank you, Katia – you may from the west coast of Africa, but you will always be British to us.
5 UP Todd Gogulski and Steve Schlanger
First things first: if you didn’t catch Sky’s Chris Froome winning stage 17 of the Vuelta on Wednesday, then head over to Universal Sports to see the Kenyan-born Brit’s all-out, gutsy double attack on the Peña Cabarga, and to marvel at the all-out, gutsy double attack of US commentators Todd Gogulski and Steve Schlanger as they attempt to out-yell each other. The OMG-gasm at 3min 20sec – “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!” – is a sound to marvel at. You don’t get this from Phil and Paul…
4 DOWN Dahon
What’s the worse that can go wrong in the world of collapsible bikes? A stiff Sturmey-Archer lever? Misplaced bicycle clip? Scuffed Birkenstocks? Well, if you think that’s the case, you’ve obviously not heard about the internecine battle of the Hons. Dr David Hon, founder of Dahon, began pursuing Josh Hon through the courts after his son and estranged wife Florence started a new company called Tern. In August Dahon senior failed to stop Tern trading, and last Thursday a court in Munich made a preliminary injunction forbidding Dahon from selling two of its 2012 range in Germany ahead of Eurobike. So it’s Dahon vs Dahon. And you know what that means, don’t you? Yes, it’s a DYNAMITE! Files pun explosion! Because things have taken a Tern for the worse. It’s a case that could go Dahon and on. Hopefully, one side will do Dahonourable thing. Or it’s Dahmagedd-on. One company could even fold. (FOLD, you see. Because they’re folding bikes, yes? Oh please yourselves…)
3 UP The bike tree
“Boy went to war in 1914 – left his bike chained to a tree.” That, at least, was the story of a seemingly poignant photo doing the rounds on Twitter – until someone pointed out that tree trunks grow thicker, not taller, so the bike was probably placed up there by some prankster on a ladder. But does that make it any less awesome? No, chums, it does not. In a strange way, the bicycle looks like it naturally belongs there, the colour of the rust melding into the hue of the tree’s bark. And it’s a practical joke which has taken up to 70 years to reach its conclusion – a dedication to tomfoolery which this light-hearted blog wholeheartedly admires. So bravo, mystery bike planter, whomsoever you may be…
2 DOWN Damon Rinard
What would you say to a porky rider looking to justify the purchase of an aero road bike? If you’re Damon Rinard, race engineer at Cervélo, your answer to BikeBiz magazine consists of just two words: “Thor Hushovd.” So Cervélo reckons the muscular, powerful Norwegian is “porky”, eh? Dear oh dear – no wonder he’s off to BMC!
1 DOWN Leopard
The name is extinct – so farewell, then, to that strange, contradictory beast called Leopard. The matching scarves, “epic” black-and-white landscapes, a brief attempt to push a fashion line – it all seemed to be a considered, sophisticated marketing strategy, but the whole project from conception to launch was actually a seat-of-the-pants rush job. Leopard’s detractors saw the team as the epitome of corporate dullness crushing the spirit of professional cycling – and yet it aroused huge passions from many (including a defiant and ultimately wide-of-the-mark piece from Velocast) when reports suggested a merger was imminent. And then, late on Monday night, came the final nail in the coffin of Brian Nygaard’s branding: the team that was originally meant to be about “smart, young riders” announced that it is merging with RadioShack, the semi-retirement home of the Armstrong era’s elder statesmen. An interview with Nygaard in the latest edition of SportsPro magazine, published prior to the merger, serves as an unwitting epitaph to the Leopard story (see page 90) – and the Dane admits he “couldn’t care less” if we all pronounced the name “leppard” rather than the prescribed “lay-o-pard”. But The DYNAMITE! Files only wants one question answered: what will be the fate of the light blue strip across the front of Leopard’s jerseys, which, when worn by the team’s portlier fans, appeared to be a middle-aged moob tube? That design feature must stay, if only for the sake of our amusement.
5 UP Scarborough
Readers of the Scarborough Evening News are revolting. Through the medium of the paper’s website, a handful of scathing Scarborians have made it perfectly clear that they do not want to see Cannon and Ball or any other light entertainment act of yesteryear playing at a local venue called, apparently without irony, the Futurist. But, you may be thinking, the stars of “video best seller” Boys In Blue are surely the best entertainment that a northern seaside town can attract these days. Or maybe not – for if you look into the distance, you will see a colourful, 396-legged beast approaching the seafront. Yes, chums, the Tour de France, the actual Grahnd Boo-cull itself, is coming to sunny Scarborough! In 2016! Well, that’s the idea anyway, and apparently Mark Cavendish has backed the plan. The Manxman will no doubt be touched by one reader’s concern for the riders’ well-being: apparently “the thought of how much damage the cobbles on the Marine Drive could do the cyclists’ delicate bottoms is best not dwelt on”. Ouch.
4 UP (not literally, of course) Peta Todd’s bum
Dwelling for a moment longer on the delightful topic of rear ends, Cav was quick to point out on Tuesday that his pin-up girlfriend Peta Todd was unhappy that he tweeted a picture of her bending over in a pair of shorts. In these sorts of situations, the fella involved usually realises his error and swiftly deletes the offending photo – but it’s been up for three days now, so maybe she wasn’t that angry after all. The DYNAMITE! Files recommends having a butcher’s at the pic – purely, of course, to judge for yourself whether it’s a bit pervy or not. And if you decide it’s the former, we hope you are thoroughly ashamed of yourself.
3 DOWN Ghulam Murtza
Ugly scenes below the line of the Telegraph and Daily Mail websites, where the “haven’t-the-police-got-anything-better-to-do” brigade slugged it out with the “law-is-the-law” mob following the unusual case of 26-year-old Ghulam Murtza. The taxi driver was fined £100 for transporting his two-year-old son Armaan on his mountain bike, which seemed unfair as the two-year-old was in a safety-approved child seat, albeit secured with additional duct tape which may have made the contraption look a bit Heath Robinson. In the words of the East Staffordshire police, was he simply “well-meaning but misguided”? Maybe. But one thing’s for sure: if you’re going to pose for a photo to show that your son is perfectly safe, it’s not a great idea to have his helmet on back-to-front, loosely secured and at a slightly wonky angle…
2 UP Bikes with guns
What did the prognosti-
cators of 1910 think our modes of conveyance would be in the year 2000? According to an intriguing set of drawings which The DYNAMITE! Files stumbled upon this week, the answer is electric skates, aerial boats lifted by twin balloons, and trains that look a bit like houses. Sadly, to judge by its omission, the humble bicycle will have died out, although there would have been motorbikes with machine guns, which would’ve made the daily commute more interesting. Particularly if you were cut up by a heavily-armed car.
1 DOWN Bangers
Be honest: you love a good sausage now and again. Not even the image of Christine Hamilton sticking one in her gob can put you off. But apparently the traditional banger would be one of the gastronomic pleasures denied to you if you practise the trade of a professional cyclist in Italy, because strict Italian team bosses really do take the biscuit, as well as the jam tart, the chocolate chip cookies and the cake supplies, and then lock them all in a big cupboard marked “NO FUN”. In a remarkably candid entry in his Velonation blog, Ben Greenwood revealed on Monday that the Italian team he rode for in 2007 made him disturbingly weight-obsessed, and the regime of constant dieting, like all authoritarian regimes, ultimately became a farcical game of cat-and-mouse. “One time,” recalls the Rapha Condor Sharp rider, “the woman who cooked for us did us sausages as a treat. During dinner the [team] president arrived, so our cook shouted at us to hide the sausages quick before he saw them.” Which must surely count as the most literal and least enjoyable game of “hide the sausage” ever played.
5 DOWN GreenEDGE
Imagine what you could do with 20 years of planning and a projected budget of 14 million quid a year: put a jaunty hat on the moon, perhaps, or stage Siegfried and Roy, live from the lost city of Atlantis, with giant, laser-eyed sabre-toothed robot tigers. Or, if you’re Australia’s nascent cycling project, cobble together a website that resembles a Powerpoint presentation for middle managers being delivered in an out-of-town Ramada Inn, and fill it with meaningless business-speak gobflappery. “The edge never stands still because we don’t allow it.”“Be first. Be best. Inspire. Give back.” “The edge in cycling is green.” GreenEDGE: the cutting edge of spirit-sapping dullness. GroanEDGE. Fingers crossed that all-round good fella Stuart O’Grady, a man not averse to partying shirtless with a bottle of vodka in each hand if David Millar’s fascinating autobiography is anything to go by, can liven up proceedings when the team is officially launched…
4 UP “RadioSharck”
On the subject of uninspiring teams, the knacker’s yard of American cycling’s elder statesmen briefly enjoyed the vaguely predatory moniker “RadioSharck” on Saturday thanks to the Spanish channel responsible for writing the TV captions for the Vuelta. Sadly, it was back to RadioShack for the next day’s results, with all the teams’ names replaced with their logos to prevent another butterfingered typing error. Spoilsports!
3 DOWN Garmin Vector
Standing by a Flemish road last year waiting for a race to pass, The DYNAMITE! Files made a reasonably amusing quip about Plastic Bertrand. It is not necessary to relay the comment here; suffice to say, it was greeted by a confused silence from our British chums, followed by a swift admission that they had never heard of Belgium’s most famous musical export. So having learned the hard way that Planet Cycling is sometimes unaware of wider popular culture, this blog would like to offer a small piece of advice to Garmin: please don’t hail the benefits of your new power-measuring gizmo as “similar to going from 2D to 3D”. Because 3D is a rubbish technological wheeze which is turning punters away from cinemas, while the Vector – regardless of what one thinks about the expense of power meters – looks like it will be totally amazeballs in its compactness and ease of fitting. Hope we’ve been of some help, fellas.
2 NO CHANGE The London School of Economics
The world of numbers is a confusing one for this humble, word-loving blog. On the one hand, it’s probably a good thing that bike-related sales experienced a 28 per cent increase last year, and that cycling now generally seems to be a “sustainable trend” in Britain. On the other, the report by the LSE which identified this “step-change in the UK’s cycling scene” was commissioned by British Cycling and Team Sky’s paymasters, and it was written by a cyclist from the seemingly unconnected field of “innovation and productivity”. So if someone cleverer than The DYNAMITE! Files could take a look at Dr Alexander Grous’s report and tell us if its findings stand up or if it’s a load of PR flimflammery, we’d be much appreciative. Cheers.
1 UP The Valparaiso Cerro Abajo
This item was going to be take issue with renowned cycling-basher Matthew Parris, who had another pop at cyclists yesterday (here’s a screengrab of his column if you’re not inclined to shell out for the privilege of going behind the Times paywall). But, frankly, Spain’s annual Tour de Motorways has set the tone for a dull old week, and it would be nice to end it with something exciting instead. So we’ll simply point out to Matthew that scoffing at “lurid spandex garments and absurd minimalist crash helmets” is a bit silly when you’re riding past them on an electric bike (translation: a mobility scooter for the able-bodied) while wearing a frigging pith helmet or a Bertie Wooster-style tweed hat. And now, having dispensed with that minor irritant, let us savour the thrills contained in a clip of an obscure downhill race in Chile called the Valparaiso Cerro Abajo, which was tweeted by that notorious adrenalin junkie, er, George Monbiot on Wednesday. This must be the only race in the world where stray dogs are a routine part of the course. Totally barking. Enjoy!
5 UP Kurt Asle Arvesen
You’d never guess who we saw down the road the other day. Kurt Asle Arvesen. Yes, THE Kurt Asle Arvesen – how many Asle Arvesens are there, fer chrissakes? Kurt Asle Arvesen, Norwegian multiple Grand Tour stage winner, was briefly outside Tasty’s kebab and burger bar by the roundabout at the junction of Fulham Road and Fulham Palace Road on Sunday. Yes, alright, he was participating in the London-Surrey Cycle Classic at the time, and the chasing pack was about to thwart his brief, last-gasp attack six miles from the finish. But still, one of the most accomplished cyclists in the world, with dozens of other pros in his wake, transforming an unremarkable corner of south-west London into a glorious rush of speed and colour – it’s like seeing Green Lantern and Superman having a pint down Wetherspoon’s, or walking through King’s Cross station and stumbling across the Hogwarts Express. Transforming the quotidian into the quite extraordinary: this is cycling’s peculiar magic, lost on the quibblers and whingers who took issue with having a test-run for next year’s Olympic road race in their backyard. But let’s not let their presence cloud our opening item – we’ll come back to them later, paying particular attention to one portly Irish TV presenter and a curious twist provided by one of his telly chums…
4 DOWN Ted Baillieu
On the subject of extraordinary images, The DYNAMITE! Files can well imagine an old, creaking wooden ship conveying Cadel Evans across the seas like an exotic spice to deliver him to his homeland. In truth, however, the gap of almost two weeks between the Cuddlator winning the Tour de France and his triumphant return to Melbourne on Friday could probably be explained by the round of criteriums and sponsor-related obligations that are usually part of a champion’s lot. That 12-day period appears to have been long enough for local politician Ted Baillieu to dispense with the notion that yellow is a hard colour to wear, especially if you’re standing next to a man who earned the right to adorn himself with that same hue by winning the hardest race in the world. But Ted Baillieu’s yellow shirt and yellow tie combo has now set a fantastic precedent: if, in 12 months’ time, Nick Clegg isn’t standing outside number 10 in a gold lamé suit shaking the hand of new Olympic champion Mark Cavendish, then it will be a major breach of protocol. Mark our words.
3 UP The Assos gatecrasher
Returning to the festival of fun that was the London-Surrey Cycle Classic, it is fitting that the Olympic route encompasses Richmond Park, the unofficial home of London cycling. It is a democratic arena which welcomes the young and the old, the whippets and the whupped alike – so well done to the anonymous, Assos-clad fella who somehow smuggled himself into the peloton to proudly represent the body shape of the less sporty park user. Not even the stares of the nonplussed pros could diminish his jollity. Bravo, sir!
2 UP Cav and Millar’s little secret
What was the “INCREDIBLE news” Mark Cavendish received from David Millar shortly after the Manxman won on the Mall? Has Millar’s autobiography reached the top spot in the Waterstone’s chart? Have the two raconteurs agreed to do a series of head-to-head banterthons, in the style of Alas Smith And Jones? Or is the Scotsman really having Cav’s baby? Here’s our theory: the Manxman is off to Garmin-Cervelo because Sky was unable to match Jonathan Vaughters’ offer of an unlimited supply of his favourite sausages. You heard it here first, chums.
1 DOWN Zora Suleman
Never heard of former breakfast TV gawp magnet Zora Suleman? You’re not alone, because The DYNAMITE! Files was also unaware of her existence until she interposed herself between the considerable bulk of her chum Eamonn Holmes and the righteous ire of tweeting cyclepeople. The row began when sofa-dwelling Eamonn blamed “flamin Olympic bikes”, rather than his inability to plan ahead and make alternative travel plans, for preventing him from driving to a village fete. “Keep sport in a stadium,” he grumbled from a traffic jam on the A3 – presumably with his engine turned off, otherwise that tweet, made from his BlackBerry, is technically an offence. Given that he recently succeeded in banning mentions of his weight from a BBC comedy show, his petulance on this occasion was perhaps not entirely out of character, and he was soon rewarded with robust responses from bike racing fans all over the country (most of them retweeted by Surrey League organiser Ken Prince.) It was pointed out to the Sky presenter that he might not be singing from the same hymn sheet as his employers, who are sponsors of the British cycling team, and many people would expect a public figure to support one of the few events Britain has a chance to win gold in next year, even if the trial run does interrupt his Sunday afternoon drive. And, of course, stadium sports are a regular cause of traffic anyway, as anyone who lives near a London football ground can attest. But it was glamourous newsgatherer Ms Suleman who provided a bizarre denouement to proceedings by claiming she had been “inundated with calls” from irate members of the public who had not heard about the road closures and diversions. Well, no one claimed there wouldn’t be a few people who had escaped the reach of the TfL publicity machine, which had warned of delays for weeks. But “inundated”? Even the Daily Mail, hardly the most bike-friendly news outlet, could only attest to “some” drivers being put out. So which news outlets were “inundated” with calls? None, it seems: after being pressed, Zora admitted she is currently unemployed, and then deleted the offending tweets – although you can still see them here and here. Let’s just hope Eamonn appreciated all the hard work she put in sticking up for him!
5 UP A dog in a jersey
Look! It’s a dog wearing a British National Champion’s jersey! And his name is Bradley Waggings! Or Grrr-aint Thomas! Or maybe – ha ha! – Ni-collie Cooke! That’s right! Look at the picture of the doggy which Cycling Weekly tweeted! Not at the news – the doggy! Don’t even think about bike shops being looted, races being called off at Crystal Palace and Hillingdon or that chap from the Telegraph getting knocked off his bike and robbed – just LOOK INTO THE LOVELY, CALMING, UNTHREATENING GAZE OF THE DOGGY! Bad thoughts gone away? Equilibrium restored? Good. Now we can get on with our usual weekly whimasathon…
4 UP Nicolas Sarkozy
The burden of the pretend pro, or “no-fessional”, is a heavy one. While their chums are stuck in an office, perhaps reading a sporadically amusing cycling-related top five run-down to help them get through the day, these aspirational amateurs must focus on one thing and one thing only: cranking out huge mileages, and perhaps tweeting or blogging about it afterwards. But the scope of their obliviousness – which mainly involves paying no attention to a dwindling redundancy fund and an irked spouse – pales in comparison to that of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who last week ignored the entire eurozone almost going down the crapper so he could go for a pootle on his reasonably-priced B’Twin. To restore British honour, The DYNAMITE! Files is calling on David Cameron, our own pedalling premier, to lead an Armstrong-style Twitter ride through the locality of the next inner-city conflagration while it’s still going on. It is the only way to show the French that we are better than them at blind indifference.
3 DOWN George W Bush
Staying with World Leaders On Bikes News, issue 25 of Rouleur contains a brief appraisal of George W Bush’s crash history, courtesy of an admirably frank exchange between two staff members at Trek’s Wisconsin headquarters. “Bush had, like, eight [bikes] come through,” reveals paint technician Patrick Sullivan. “He just kept wreckin’ ’em. He’d take ’em round to his ranch and stuff, and I dunno how the hell he does it. I haven’t ever wrecked a bike in my entire life. Maybe he fell a lot.” Well, the former US president always did seem to be a few spokes short of the proverbial full Ksyrium, so maybe he was as clumsy with his Treks as he was with his words. Or perhaps he did what some careful owners of carbon dream machines would secretly love to do if they didn’t have to pay for them: ride the bike into the ground and then simply get a new one. We’ll just have to wait for Bush’s memoirs before this mystery is solved.
2 DOWN Pendragon – Le Col – Colnago
“Eritrean Halie Dawit was refused a visa, while Libyan Ahmed Belgassem was stuck in his revolution-affected country.” Not the sort of sentence you usually get from Cycling Weekly, and not the type of thing you expect to happen to riders signed by a British racing team. But apparently that was part of the “catalogue of circumstancial [sic] situations” that affected Pendragon – Le Col – Colnago, which announced yesterday it is disbanding at the end of the season. If only The DYNAMITE! Files had a few quid to keep the south-west squad going – then, one day, we might get to read about, say, a plucky Afghan tearing it up around Smithfield, or an Egyptian standing on the podium of the Tour Series. We can but dream.
1 DOWN Artcrank
An urgent announcement for “velophiles” everywhere: mobs of confused, pitchfork-wielding lunatics have been known to drive paedatricians from their homes, so for the sake of your own safety, you may want to find a less unusual term to express your bike lust. In the meantime, an organisation called Artcrank is selling some nice posters next Friday at Look Mum No Hands! which, according to the event’s promotional blather, is the home of all things velophiliac. It’s possible, of course, that the American organisers are living up to the “crank” part of their name by using the made-up word “velophile” in the hope that it will be adopted by a café full of gullible twerps. And, hey, anything could happen after necking a few Slags (the Look Mum unofficial house beer) – although you’d have to be really sozzled to make sense of the Yanks’ assertion that “bicycles now ply the busiest areas of the city”, as if there were once swathes of central London where cyclists never rode. “Riding a bike is like an invitation to be creative,” says founder Charles Youel – a bit like writing a press release, it seems. (The DYNAMITE! Files is going for a lie down now. It’s feeling a bit Artcranky.)
5 DOWN 5,000 green bottles
Cycling does funny things to colours. Yellow is generally the colour of cowardice, but in the two-wheeled world it’s the hue of a hero’s vestment. Similarly, green means young or inexperienced, which is in stark contrast to the status of elder statesmen Robbie McEwen, 39, and 38-year-old Stuart O’Grady, who are both reportedly on the verge of signing for the seemingly inappropriately-named GreenEDGE (and, by the way, if no sarky blogger has dubbed the incipient Australian team GreyEDGE yet, then The DYNAMITE! Files would like to be the first to do so). But there can be no doubt what the same colour indicates to the good people of Wiggle and Gatorade: following the traditional marketing definition, “green” means producing lots of plastic rubbish nobody really wants or needs and shamelessly attaching it to an eco-friendly endeavour, which is what the two companies did in a prominent double-page ad in Cycling Weekly. Apparently you can own one of 5,000 specially-created bottles if you buy some of the aforementioned energy drink from the online retailer, but they “support” the Sky Rainforest Rescue project so that’s OK. Slightly muddled thinking there, but what do you expect? If you read the first sentence of the blurb below the jerseys, they also seem to think that the Tour de France is still going on…
4 UP Keepcup
On the subject of green issues, Keepcup plopped into the recycling bin of The DYNAMITE! Files’ consciousness this week. “We love bikes,” boast the Australian makers of the reusable coffee receptacle, pointing to their ingeniously designed delivery bicycles. Hopefully, then, the bike-loving caffeinistas will eventually get round to designing a version of the Keepcup that actually bloody fits in a bottle cage, instead of being jammed awkwardly at the top (as pictured above). One slight bump and you might experience what accident investigators might call a latte/tarmac interface. Messy.
2 UP powerBIKE
They cannot fight it. At some point, every average wannabe-pro will surrender to the distant thud of David Guetta luring them to their local gym. And it is here, among the baggy shorts, sweatbands and non-wicking fabrics, that they shall face their most daunting challenge: prove you are superior to your fellow spin class attendees by wearing the dorkiest outfit in the room. With his shades and his aero helmet, the chap pictured above is clearly the King of the Spinners – but he is also taking gym snobbishness to teeth-clenchingly unbearable levels by recreating the experience of riding a cobbled Classic. The pedalling version of the now-ubiquitous Power Plate can recreate the juddering sensations one might usually associate with the Muur or the Koppenberg, and the makers claim you get a better workout than an ordinary spin bike because the rider’s muscles are working to counteract the vibrations. Which may be true, although a shonky, second-hand aluminium Ribble and a crappy road surface would be a more cost-effective way of doing the same job as a powerBIKE (RRP: £2,995).
1 UP Bare heads
Fantastic news for the helmet-averse: a poll of 1,427 doctors in the British Medical Journal has revealed that most medics do not want to see crash lids made compulsory as they fear it would put people off cycling. Natasha Austin, 24, of Maida Vale, concurs in the vox pops at the end of the London Evening Standard‘s story: “I don’t wear a helmet and I use Boris bikes. If it were compulsory I might cycle less because then you would have to carry it around.” Now, as one of the few remaining impartial media outlets on the World Wide Whinge, The DYNAMITE! Files wishes to avoid getting into the thorny issue of compulsory helmet usage. But Natasha, sweetheart, a helmet weighs less than the keys in your pocket, and you could always strap it to your bag. You also have to walk to get to your Boris bike, and you may be unable to park it at your destination, which means you are experiencing more hassle on a regular basis than most cyclists do. So don’t think of it is a helmet – treat it as your own personal Crown of Indifference, a proud symbol of how nonplussed you are by minor inconveniences, and wear/carry it with pride.
5 DOWN “Ablerto” Contador
It was the Tour where he revealed himself to be a mere mortal – but before Cadel and the Schlecks humbled him at high altitude, Alberto Contador’s godlike status seemed unimpeachable, particularly to the subeditors over at the Daily Telegraph. The penultimate paragraph of Brendan Gallagher’s pre-Pyrenees assessment refers to Bertie as “He” rather than “he”, and in keeping with each of the Gospels giving slightly differing accounts of the same events, the quotes from the man himself appear to be somewhat repetitive (“The stage went well, and that’s good news for my knee […] The stage went well, and that’s good news for my knee.”) And God only knows why he’s referred to as “Ablerto” in the picture caption. Heavens above!
4 UP (too far up) Shorts
The drama of stage nine, which saw plucky Thomas Voeckler take yellow after a car walloped Johnny Hoogerland into a barbed wire fence, overshadowed a far more serious development: shorts are becoming far too short. The two breakaway men have been sporting the high-up-the-thigh look for a while now, with Hoogerland eliciting an “ooh-look-at-you” stare from Riccardo Riccò back in January, and Voeckler’s appearance causing a teammate to bite his lip at the Tour’s opening ceremony. But now they’re bloody heroes, so expect to see your more impressionable mates wearing the sort of shorts that would make a speed skater blush. Oh, the indignity…
Courtesy of the lip-smacking cyclinginquisition.com
3 UP Nicknames
Some say “Bo-AH-son Hagen”, others “BWA-son Hagen”, whereas Mrs Dynamite, referencing the sort of films young Edvald’s home region is perhaps most famous for, prefers to pronounce it “Boobs-and-hard-on”. That always gets a laugh in our famous soundproof bunker, although it’s obviously far too rude to become common currency among less rakish cycling fans. Similarly, her name for a certain high-shorted Dutchman – “Johnny Sexylegs” – is unlikely to catch on now that the horrific image of his lacerated pins is indelibly etched on everyone’s mind. But The DYNAMITE! Files thinks it has stumbled on a nickname for Thomas Voeckler that can sit next to modern classics such as “Cuddles” and “SMASH”. The little Frenchman licked his lips en route to taking yellow, got a bit mouthy with Hoogerland’s Dutch fans booing him on Alpe d’Huez, and he has a quintessentially Gallic gob shape, so The DYNAMITE! Files shall henceforth refer to him as… Le Mighty Bouche.
2 UP Viewing figures
Terrible news for anyone still hoping that the Tour de France would remain a weird, esoteric sporting event: watching grown men suffer for three weeks has apparently become a ratings hit, with UK figures for the final stage almost equalling its 1980s Channel Four heyday. Snobs looking to defect to another pain-filled sport may want to try The Spartan Race, which apparently involves running through flames and tugging a boulder on a rope. Like, epic!
1 DOWN The points competition
As you might expect, this blog is overjoyed that Mark Cavendish, our favourite tweeting cycleperson, has finally claimed the emerald prize that should have been his two years ago. But as for the concept of the green jersey itself… well, it’s great that the competition is now weighted in favour of winning stages, but you can’t make intermediate sprints any less uninteresting by renaming them super intermediate sprints and throwing a few more points at them. And let’s be honest: how many fans actually know the number of points up for grabs in a stage anyway? It seems perverse that the competition featuring the fastest, most thrilling finishes should rely on a dull, arcane number-crunching system to decide the winner. So here’s a radical idea: ditch the intermediate sprints altogether, give the maillot vert to the rider who wins the most sprint stages, and call it the Stage Winners’ Jersey. If there’s a tie, the rider who has consistently finished the highest wins. Otherwise, the points competition is, well, a bit pointless.
Call me a principled fool, but I wouldn’t spend my money in a shop that’s been linked to organised crime. So after months of hearing quite a few eye-popping rumours about Prologue in East Sheen from fairly reliable sources, I decided to do a bit of digging on the interweb.
The good news is that the shop, in its current incarnation under Mark Henley, is perfectly legit. I’ll continue being a customer, and so should you if you value having a decent, friendly local bike shop. The allegations of wrongdoing stem from its two original directors Andrew Neave and Paul O’Connor – both of whom stood down in March and have nothing to do with the business anymore, according to records at Companies House and an assurance I received on the London Dynamo forum from the present Prologue team (you’ll need to be a Dynamo member to access that link).
A final point to note: everyone I’ve spoken to thought that Bruce Berkeley, who ran the shop, was only the manager. In fact, “David Bruce Berkeley” was also a director. Companies House shows his position was terminated in February.
Anyway, I hope that clears everything up. To reiterate: Prologue is a nice shop with helpful staff, and the present predicament of Neave and O’Connor shouldn’t have any bearing on how the business is perceived. I wish the current team at Prologue all the best.
It’s Tour time, and that can mean only one thing: everyone is making light-hearted observations about cyclists, regardless of whether they like cycling or not. Not me, though. I’m all out of funny this week, thanks to a chronic lack of sleep, an influx of extra-curricular work and probably the biggest IT disaster I’ve ever experienced in an office environment (you don’t want to know – trust me). So I won’t be joining in with the TdF ROFL-fest, thankyouverymuch. Instead, like Romain Feillu frantically running backwards while trying to flag down a team car, I am going to draw attention to myself by going in the opposite direction. That’s right: in the grand tradition of the internets, I shall now take a serious, analytical look at a phenomenon and then blame it all on a convenient scapegoat.
My Big, Serious Analysis relates to the circulations of three cycling magazines over a decade-long period. I spotted the figures sellotaped to the wall of a certain well-known cycling brand’s office more than a year ago, so I immediately took a photo and promptly forgot about it until I found the picture languishing on our hard drive last week. I’m not going to tell you which office it was, but anyone can probably get these figures quite easily. I should mention, however, that I don’t have an association, paid or otherwise, with any of these magazines.
That's it – squint. Or click to make it bigger. It's up to you.
I’ll ignore the mountain bike mags on the right as I don’t know a ruddy thing about them. What interests me are the three road titles: Cycling Plus (Men’s Health on wheels), Cycle Sport (professional cycling news) and Cycling Weekly (a mishmash of the two, with a dash of domestic racing coverage). At first glance, their fortunes seem as divergent as their subject matter. By 2009, Future Publishing’s Cycling Plus had more than doubled its circulation of 2000. The industry’s technical term for this is: HOLY CHRIST. By contrast, IPC’s Cycle Sport lost almost a quarter of its readership in the same period. The industry’s technical term for this is also: HOLY CHRIST. Yet perhaps more surprising is Cycle Sport’s sister mag Cycling Weekly, whose figures have held remarkably steady. So much for its supposed terminal decline – but you can’t believe everything you read on internet forums, can you?
But now look at what happens in 2006. C+ experiences an annual year-on-year increase of only 0.61% while CS loses a whopping 10.53% – but CW goes up 7.16%. All of these are record numbers for the period. So what the flipping hell happened in ’06 to cause these weird jolts?
Well, it was the first full year of Lance Armstrong’s retirement 1.0, which probably explains why CS’s decline only begins in ’06 (sales were steady up until then, with a healthy rise in ’04). But it was also the year Floyd Landis, er, finished the Tour in the fastest time. Post-Tour editions proclaimed him the winner, but he had already tested positive by the time the copies left the printers. (If I remember correctly, even C+ put Landis on the front – an unusual move, given that its cover stars are usually anonymous amateurs.) The internet had made bike mags seem out-of-date before, but never quite so conspicuously, and I think some readers, particularly those of CS, may have been turned away for good. But perhaps some of them also picked up CW more frequently to find out the latest on the twists and turns of his case, which would at least explain the magazine’s biggest annual circulation rise during the decade.
So there you have it. Everything is Floyd’s fault. And Lance’s. Or maybe not. Perhaps it’s fairer to say that big cycling stars can have wildly varying and unpredictable effects on each magazine’s circulation – and there’s nothing mags can do about it unless they choose to ignore them. Which is what, by and large, C+ seems to have done.
The DYNAMITE! Files 