Looking back at the this year’s thrilling Tour de France are Lionel Birnie of Cycle Sport magazine and Alex Murray, London cyclist, amateur road racer and blogger at chasingwheels.com.
Image by Neil Stevens, part of a series of illustrations for this year’s Tour, available to buy at Crayon Fire
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Pity Lionel Birnie. For the cycling journalist and regular Bike Show contributor, following the Tour means being stuck in a smelly Skoda with three other hacks for 5+ hours a day, living out of a suitcase, sleeping in tatty hotels with paper thin walls (if he manages to find a hotel room at all) and getting fat eating junk food (all the more galling in the land of haute cuisine). He’ll get a few fleeting glimpses of the racing, but mostly he will be stuck in traffic jams, waiting around in the press centre and trying to get a few moments of face time with knackered or nervy riders who’d rather express themselves on twitter than submit to the questions of a seasoned sports journalist.
For the rest of us who are not part of the media caravan, and thanks to the efforts of a legion of Lionel Birnies, we are spoilt for choice. Here are a few suggestions for getting the most from following the three week festival of cycle racing, the world’s biggest annual sporting event on its grandest stage. Continue reading
In the studio is Bike Show regular ‘Buffalo’ Bill Chidley, who brings news of London’s burgeoning bicycle polo scene (note imminent rebranding as ‘urban bike hammer ball’). The London Open 2011 is on 30-31st July. Steve Evans, a bicycling paramedic from the Liverpool Century RC, gives some excellent practical advice on how to provide immediate post-collision assistance to an injured cyclist. Steve’s free first aid guide for cyclists is available from the Rough Stuff Fellowship. Also featured is long distance cyclist and bearded wonder James Bowthorpe, around 18 hours into his 24 hour non-stop bicycle ride in a shop window. Phew!
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David Millar, the British road racer, one of the best riders in his generation, had it all. His first day of racing in the Tour De France brought him an impressive stage victory over Lance Armstrong and he was instantly a celebrated figure in the professional peloton. But a few years later, it all fell apart as he was unmasked as having used banned performance enhancing drugs. He was disgraced and banned from competition for two years. Many thought it was game over.
But David Millar has returned to professional racing as an anti doping crusader. His recent performances have shown it’s possible to win without doping. He has written a book about his life, his travels to the dark side and what he believes to be his redemption.
In an extended interview with The Bike Show, Millar talks about the past, present and future of professional road racing. His book is out on 16 June, published by Orion Books. Buy on the link (right) and a few pennies will go to keep the Resonance FM on the air.
Picture credit: Team Garmin-Cervelo
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The summer season kicks of with an entertaining and borderline nerdy discussion of the past, present and future of the cycling jersey. From Bianchi’s 1950s classic celeste blue to Mapei pushed the dye sublimation process to its limits and divided fans in equal measure. We take the story as far as today’s trend for any colour as long as its black, and look to the sci-fi future of interactive jersey materials.
Richard Mitchelson's homage to the Tour de France, by Milltag
In the studio are three cyclists and jersey aficionados: Luke Scheybeler, designer and a founder of clothing company Rapha, Richard Mitchelson, illustrator, animator and Milltag designer (pictured above) and cycling photographer Camille McMillan, co-author of Le Métier.
Richard Mitchelson is also the designer of the excellent new Bike Show banner and iTunes logo. Hope you like it. We do!
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One of the highlights of the last season of the show was Kieron Yates’s feature Up the ‘Uts, looking at the historic 32nd Association of cycling clubs, whose membership is dwindling even at a time when cycling is booming. In the discussion that followed both Kieron and Nigel Wood, chairman of the Dulwich Paragon club, expressed concerns that the voluntarism of traditional clubs is being supplanted by a profit-driven motivation as cycling becomes ever more commercialised. Continue reading
Crusading, anti-doping sports journalist Lionel Birnie of Cycling Weekly gives his views on the latest revelations about professional cycling. You can read the 30,000-word transcript of Paul Kimmage’s interview with Floyd Landis at the NY Velocity blog. Mr NikBagTV presents the Lance Armstrong defence over on YouTube.
Plus an appeal to listeners in the European Union to write to their elected representatives in the European Parliament urging new measures to protect cyclists from lorries and heavy goods vehicles (HGVs). For more, visit www.seemesaveme.com
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