SPORTING CHANCE
On cold, solo winter rides, John’s dreaming of a summer of collective cycling experiences
Around this time each year I can usually be found putting the final touches to some sort of annual sportive guide for this magazine. It was no different at the start of 2020, but by the time I’d returned home from an extended holiday in March, the simmering coronavirus crisis had reached boiling point, and by the time the 28-page guide had landed on your doormat, this season preview was rendered little more than recycling bin fodder. The whole cycle sport calendar, be it professional or amateur, was shelved with no clue as to when either would resume.
Fast-forward almost a year and, at the time of writing in the final week of January, while the pro ranks looks to have a largely uninterrupted schedule, there’s still no concrete sign of when our own mass participation cycling will be a viable proposition.
So, rather than agonise over the production of another sportive special that remains only a little more than theoretical, perhaps I should fantasise about what my dream season would involve. Yes, this is what it’s come to...
That said, although I write this from a moment in time where the definition of ‘mass’ is less 3000 pumped-up gran fondo riders and more three people from three different households convening at distance, there are, of course, reasons to be optimistic. The UK’s Covid-19 vaccine programme has gathered a head of steam, which opens up the prospect of scheduled events to take place as planned, particularly later in the summer. The first 2021 press release for a cycling event has just this second dropped into my inbox and the talk of Verona, sunshine, mountains, 2500 people and Valpolicella wine at the Alé la Merckx Gran Fondo (6 June) has got me all aflutter. It’s the sort of showpiece, full bore event that has always motivated me to get on my bike, never more so than my solo traipses through the mud-churned lanes of Bristol this winter
(and one such outing I write about in this issue’s Big Ride on p116).
An event like the Alé la Merckx is more of a reward at the end of a long spell of training, with more local, homegrown events providing the necessary stepping stones – and challenge in their own right. There’s some reason to hope that an event like the Cotswold Spring Classic (Easter Monday, 2021) will be able to go ahead and if it does, it’s the sort of nuts-and-bolts British sportive, complete with scenic route, medal, hot food, goody bag and Easter egg, where I would, in normal times, often baulk at the £35 entry fee to ride on roads I know. For 2021, they could add a zero on the end and I’d consider paying it.
The 2011 Fred Whitton Challenge in the Lake District was the first major sportive I ever completed for Cycling Plus – and the 2013 edition was the first I didn’t complete for them. I finished that one perishing in the back of a car, swaddled in a space blanket. In finishing two editions, however, I have some of my favourite memories in cycling and would do it again in a heart beat. The organisers are promising that with this year’s edition (9 May), should it take place, they want to deliver a Covid-safe event, complete with social distancing and reduced contact – something I’ve always found comes very naturally to me, as I slide out of the back at the country’s toughest sportive.
Should the sportive season resume, then it seems, realistically, most of us will be enjoying our very own tour of Britain – another stay-at-home summer. If the opportunity to head to Europe does present itself, then I’ll be at the 2021 Tour Transalp (20-26 June) in Italy, a carry-over from the postponed 2020 edition that I’d signed up to. I can dream, and should it become reality it’ll mean more sunshine, more mountains and more people – all the things that the previous year sorely lacked.
The longtime Cycling Plus staffer offers his take on all the comments and controversy on the frontline of the cycling scene
“Talk of Verona, sunshine, mountains and Valpolicella wine has got me all aflutter”