Tour of Britain the Lazy Way

It seems that we are in the midst of the greatest time to ride a bike in London. Not only are cyclists starting to be allowed to go the wrong way down one-way streets but also the centre of town was closed on Sunday for the Skyride, which has been going on for a while but seems to be more popular now Sky and Kelly Brooke are involved. All of this seems to have been spurred on by the excitement of the Tour of Britain and the fact that as a country we finally have something a bit sexy that we’re good at. Cycling makes colourful and dramatic television and the rise of world class riders from the UK is certainly helping. There’s even a certain amount of mainstream media coverage over the new Sky professional team due to be up and rolling next season, with the names of the athletes involved becoming minor household names (although often as in a cousin you’ve met twice and know nothing about).

So, time for a confession. Neither of us made it to either the Skyride or the Tour stage. We wanted to. And wanted to bring you exclusive opinions and feel from the centre of London. And make you feel part of it if you, in fact, also couldn’t be there. Sorry. However, we can now bring you entirely exclusive coverage from my sofa. No where else on the internet will be doing this for you, so you are, indeed, privileged. The coverage may only be damaged by the notes I made (yeah, see, proper journalism) being still on the floor in my lounge. Not here, at work, where I’m writing this.

The event kicked off with lunch, settling back onto the sofa and flicking through the recorded programmes to find the Tour of Britain coverage. To be honest I saw more than I would have if I’d been there. Last year we did make it and it’s hard to get an overview of what’s going on as you watch the cyclists flash past. At least from the sofa I could see all the moves and all the implications. The views were also better.

It was pretty exciting. The route was the same as previous years and took in major sites, while the racing was fast and contested with sprints still counting for overall position and so raced for hard. There were breakaways

And corners

In the end Merlo won the stage and Baussen-Hagen won the overall GC, after a stunning four consecutive stage wins. The press coverage can only be good for GB cycling and the drama of an up and coming name in the world scene coming of age will stand the Tour of Britain in good stead for the future. From the comfort of the sofa I was able to work back through the last few stages as well (although watching a stage race in reverse order is slightly odd, like knowing the end of a story before you open the first page) and enjoy a first win for Ben Swift as well as some very strong racing from future Sky team members. Quite frankly it looks like British cycling is in great shape, and at a grass roots level London is doing plenty to try and support it with mass-participation events and new initiatives.

At least we don’t live in Scotland where they’re talking about taxing cyclists. How you’d ever make this work in practice I don’t know, and will they be trying to tax kids riding around on bikes for fun? It seems all a bit counter-productive if the overall idea is to get more people being more active and out of cars.

Oh and sorry there was hardly one mention of commuting there.

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