August 20th, 2011.

Celebrating Cycling Success

I’ve just started writing a new book that I wasn’t really expecting to write. I did some sample spreads for the publisher, whose idea it was, got paid and forgot about it really, but no sooner had the Tour de France finished than the publisher contacted me to say we’re doing it. “Call it the Mark Cavendish effect,” he said.

That’s not the book’s title by the way. It just reflects the amount of interest in bike racing that British cycling success has created. So many people are cycling now, and they’re interested in the sport. Top British racers are becoming household names.

That was brought home to me when I did
a story with Geraint Thomas where we
met at the National Eisteddfod in Wales.
I needed some shots of him riding on
the road, but it took an hour to get him out of the place because people were wishing him well and wanted photos and autographs.

Another Team Sky rider, Ben Swift did his profile no harm, as well as helping to raise money for a very worthy cause and one close to his family, when he linked with some of the actors from Emmerdale who rode from the Woolpack to the Queen Vic on the Eastenders set, 224 miles in 24 hours. They did it for Macmillan Cancer Support,
and you can find out more on
www.teamemmerdale.com. I did one of
Cycling Weekly’s ride stories with Ben and
Rik Makarem, who plays Nikhil Sharma
in Emmerdale.

And the future of British cycling looks good too, with plenty of young champions coming out of the various national performance programmes. The British team had amazing results at the recent European under-23 championships and the world junior championships. Dani King and Becky James are two brilliant racers from that generation.

I caught them just after the Europeans, where they both won medals. Becky has been a world junior champion, and
Dani is a full senior world champion
already, despite being only 20. They’ll be
in Cycling Weekly soon, and have some
interesting things to say about how the
strength of British racers affects selection for the London Olympics

Another spoke in this success wheel is the number of former racers working in the performance system as coaches or helpers. I did a job with a Milk Race winner, Chris Lillywhite a few days ago. He’s a full time heating engineer but has started spending a lot of his spare time helping British Cycling at international events, passing on practical experience he learned the hard way.