CYCLING CAPTURES THE PUBLIC IMAGINATION ONCE AGAIN
In late 2012 I was riding through my local lanes when someone shouted, “Go on Wiggo!” out the window of a Fiat Panda. While I’m sure this was meant as the pinnacle of mockery — I was, and remain, far from the figure of a Tour de France winner — it was in fact heartening that a star of the cycling world had crossed over to that extent.
Fast-forward to 2018 and I pull up at my house at the end of a ride just as a couple of friends, who know absolutely nothing about cycling beyond what I’ve bored them with other the years, arrive. “Oh, here comes Geraint Thomas,” says one to the other — yeah, my friends are hilarious. Here we go again, I thought.
Cycling captured the public imagination again this summer. The clearest manifestation of this were the massive crowds that packed Cardiff city centre for Thomas’s homecoming parade after his Tour win — a little more than “my wife and dog”, he joked.
These moments are rare, as anyone who rode through the 70s, 80s or 90s will tell you, and yet Britain has enjoyed two of them within six years of each other. The only thing that made this year seem slightly less cycling-mad than 2012, besides the lack of a home Olympics, was the lingering sense that winning the sport’s biggest races was now commonplace. But it isn’t — just ask the French.
Whether this year will inspire a generation in the same way as 2012 is obviously yet to be seen. But considering the trough that British cycling started the year in, with the ongoing jiffy bag scandal and Chris Froome’s salbutamol case, it’s a serious achievement that it reached that height at all. Vern Pitt, features editor