So this is Christmas?

What a hectic year 2009 was. I’m just off to Toulouse to meet Bbox team coach Marion Clignet to do a Pro Performance piece for Cycle Sport. While I’m there I’ll be getting down the final pages of my 2010 book, ‘Race for Madmen, an Extraordinary History of the Tour de France’. It will be published on May 27, 2010 and is a huge, 100,000 word look at the Tour’s history through the men who made it, who have taken part, and who won it.

Fitting in writing such a book around all the other stuff I do in cycling has been hard, but I’m not complaining because it’s a sign of the changing status of bike racing as a sport, and cycling as a form of transport and recreation, in the UK. Wherever you look at the moment two wheels and pedals are on the up.

Next year will be even better. Team Sky will be flying the flag for the UK at ProTour level, (congrats on finally signing Brad Wiggins by the way) our track racers will continue to dominate (even though the IOC have robbed them of events), and at home racing in the Premier Calendar and the Tour Series was good last year, but will have some real pro polish in 2010.

Anyway, got to get on. Happy Christmas, and to paraphrase Brucey's closing of a popular Saturday night TV series; keep cycling.