Cycling Weekly

START LINE 29.11

- SIMON RICHARDSON Editor simon.richardson@ti-media.com

After 20 years working in the cycling industry, and a few more than that as a cyclist, I thought I was pretty knowledgea­ble. That was until

I started looking at kids’ bikes. Definitely something I hadn’t paid much attention to.

But my hand has been forced. My two-year-old is surrounded by cycling at home and naturally wants a bike. I’ve therefore been researchin­g bikes where the words ‘carbon’ and ‘Di2’ are just meaningles­s sounds. On the recommenda­tion of colleagues I’ve gone for a balance bike — I’ll let you know how it goes and I promise not to be a pushy parent.

You’ll be glad to know she’s already started to embarrass me. If you’re a regular reader you’ll know that I fell off my bike a couple of months back. This translated to, “Daddy. Oww!” in toddler talk. But now every time she sees a bike she says, “Daddy. Bike. Ahhhhhhh [as she mimics falling down]. Oww!”

So now people think I fall off my bike a lot. At first I started to say how she’d got it wrong, that I don’t fall off my bike all the time, it just happened this once until I realised that such a vociferous defence wasn’t helping much.

Maybe I’ll get ‘Daddy. Bike. Oww!’ printed on a T-shirt.

MY HIGHLIGHTS THIS WEEK

06 Brammeier and Pidcock flying high 34 Crash-detecting helmet SOS system 60 Dr Hutch and his love of penny farthings

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