Re:cycling

Bikes.  Lycra.  Olympics.

This has been a spectacular summer for cycling.  Not actually cycling, of course, it’s been bloody miserable weather and unless your cycle came equipped with those pontoon things that they fit to helicopters to allow them to land on water and get attacked by sharks, it’s unlikely you will have enjoyed cycling this summer.  Certainly, I get out on my bike now and again, usually when I want to make a short hop and am both to lazy to walk it and far too tight to bother paying for parking at the other end and certainly again, this year, I began to question being too tight to pay for the optional rear mudguard on my bike, as the spray from the rain thrown up by my rear wheel somehow managed to both hit the nape of my neck and soak my arse.

The spectacular cycling was mainly happening in the velodrome of the Olympic Park and in the streets around Hampton Court, where Team GB showed two things; that if you are one of the greatest cyclists in the world at the peak of your form, you are likely to be looking at the arse of the member of Team GB in front of you and thinking very dark thoughts indeed, and that if you wear lycra, you need to have the body of an Olympian underneath it.

Cycling is, apparently, the new golf.  This, I think, means that middle-aged men have something to get them out of the house at the weekend for a few hours and also something to spend vast sums of money on in order to have a better time doing it.  I have no idea where carbon fibre comes from but I do know that bikes made out of it are very expensive and, presumably, whoever owns a carbon fibre mine spends most of their evenings rolling around in cash, hookers and coke.

The worrying words in the paragraph above are ‘middle-aged’.  In isolation, not a cause for concern.  Let me throw in another word.  Lycra.

I know, I know, we all thought that the practice of wearing lycra as a surface layer finished in the eighties, at the conclusion of which it was tossed in the huge cultural skip along with ra-ra skirts and rolling up the sleeves on your jacket.  Apparently not so.  Middle aged men are wearing lycra to cycle.  The result…have you ever seen sausage meat being squeezed into its skin?  No?  Lucky you.

Because the reality is if you want to be a champion cyclist, you have to be superhuman.  This is why the only people who should appear in public wearing lycra are those with super-powers, or the sort of people who have got up at four in the morning every year since they were eight and spent all day practicing pedalling.  By which I mean Olympians.

Because to be a champion you need an unhealthy degree of obsession.  You may think all you need is enough steroids to make a racehorse break the sound barrier and more blood bags than a vampire banquet, but not so.  You also need a bike so advanced it makes a Formula 1 car look like something that clowns pile out of in the Big Top.

Middle aged men will proudly show you their carbon fibre bikes so light that they can pick up with one finger, after they have unscrewed the GPS system, the water bottles, the on-board defibrillator and so on.  This is a far cry from the bicycles of my youth that gave so much joy, machines that appeared to be made out of scaffold poles welded together and were practically indestructible, or at least child-proof, which is practically the same thing.  These same hearty beasts of burden in grown up form propelled district nurses around and were often to be seen with bags of groceries suspended from both handlebars as stately matrons returned from the shops.

The Olympics came to London to inspire a generation.  They did.  In this case, it’s the generation of blokes over forty who walked past the Harley showroom and straight into Action Bikes for some serious kit and some very tight pants.

Bikes today are so light they have to be tethered to railings to stop them floating away.

Olympic glory

The best way to explain a visit to the Olympic stadium in London is to compare it to a pilgrimage, and in particular the effect that seeing a cathedral and a crowd for the first time would have on a rural medieval mind.

It's that profound. Entering the Olympic park is exciting enough, as more and more people join a mass all travelling in the same direction, but getting up close to the Olympic stadium is something else. It's immense, the culmination of every stadium ever built, from a circle scratched in the dust to the Colosseum to Wembley, distilled, rolled into one and constructed on the scale of the gods. It's like Karnak with a running track.

And appropriately, it has it's myths. Like the transport system is crowded. Far from it, travel to and from the park was smooth and easy. And that the airport style security would take two hours. All I can say is that I wish security at Gatwick was that friendly and efficient. The troops were fantastic. No doubt about it, these guys seen close up have moved beyond the status of troops and are now officially Warriors, and are obviously enjoying the novelty of having kids wanting photographs with them rather than being shot at by angry bearded men.


The same goes for the police. Most police spent their time lending their helmets to small children to have their pictures taken in. The mounted police horses showed great patience as they were continuously patted and the police were presumably thinking that this was a lot, lot better than a year ago, when people were throwing things at them. Things that were on fire. Even the police snipers on the roof of the Holiday Inn were probably having a good time. I hope they were in a good mood anyway.

Inside the stadium, the atmosphere was such that one suspects that there is actually a noble gas called 'euphoria'. I was giddy to the point of nausea with excitement, the early start and the altitude that our seats were at (second to back row, meaning you don't miss a thing happening on the track or field, or indeed anywhere below cloud level).

The best way to describe the Olympic experience, seeing an Olympian in action? It's like watching your team go a goal up in the last minute of play in the final, it's like your favourite band hammering out the opening chords of your favourite song at the gig, it's being pushed into your seat as the airplane accelerates down the runway, it's pure, unadulterated exhilaration. With added cheering. And it's like that all the time.

The crowd's reaction to the athletes was incredible. As Mo Farah ran his 5000m qualifier, the crowd applauded as he passed and the sound circled the stadium like an audible Mexican wave, for twelve and a half laps of the track, building every time until on the last lap it was a constant cacophony of clapping, shouting, cheering and screaming. Mo qualified and I believe the correct sporting term is that the crowd went bananas.

There were also moments when the reaction of the crowd made one ridiculously proud to be British, like the athlete who pulled a muscle and limped home, helped across the finish line by 80,000 people cheering, or the woman competitor from Saudi Arabia, last in the race, first woman competitor from her country, and the reason the entire stadium erupted as she ran for home.

History was made. To be part of that, to be making that history is a privilege and the crowd knew it and embraced it and applauded, cheered and shouted it. It's no wonder that Brits have been using the word 'proud' unironically.

And when the crowd got behind the Team GB competitors, it lifted them, with Lynsey Sharp in the women's 800m doing the last 200m like a rocket, gifted wings by every raw hand and throat.

Team GB was also much in evidence on the front of every tee shirt and baseball cap and if anyone was in any doubt about who was supporting what team, the Union Flags worn as scarfs, capes or sarongs banished that doubt. Thank God that the Union Flag is such a design icon and looks fantastic on everything from socks to hats, imagine coming from a country that features some sort of fowl as your national emblem. We don't care how well you do in the games, there is no getting away from it that that your flag has a chicken on it.

And to put one argument to bed, rock music + athletics = fantastic! Anyone that has ever run with a running mix will appreciate that the right beats gets the heart pumping, and apparently it goes for the spectators too!

And of course, I had to visit the largest McDonalds in the world. It was...excellent. Oh god, the shame. I've not been to a maccy dees in twenty years but that cheeseburger tasted just the same as it always did (fries were a bit sweeter than I remember though), just as good as it always did, just as satisfying as it always did. Once through the door at the express lane a lovely young woman took our order on a hand held gadget and by the time we had paid it was ready. Out to the garden area, got a seat no problem. The place was heaving but super-slick and rather relaxed. It's also maybe reversed my prejudice about the golden arches that started with the McLibel trial and rolled on from there but now, maybe it's time to start wolfing down those big macs again. I still recall with affection the result of a big mac meal, with a greasy wrapper and that curious feeling of satisfaction and nausea that comes from inhaling 250% of your recommended daily allowance of fat, grease and clumsy slaughterhouse worker.

And the restaurant was great place to take a break, because the Olympic park was home to, what looked like, half of the population of the planet. The were people everywhere, including volunteers (happy to take your photograph) and folk with insulated backpacks peddling beverages - the beer comes in plastic bottles, how about that for a culture shock? No matter, I wanted to bribe one of them to follow me round all day like a mobile mini-bar. Maybe that's the way forward, not one bloke with beer and another with water, but one chap with overpriced beer, spirits and toblerone. And not just at the Olympics either, I think it could catch on in everyday life.

There is a lot to be impressed by when watching athletes that are doing things in front of you that you would normally associate with CGI, but one of the most impressive things is their focus. The pole vault, 5000m qualifying race and hammer throw are all happening simultaneously and each athlete is in a world of their own, oblivious to the incoming wildly thrown hammer or bloke falling to earth like an angel. It's this focus, I think, that makes an Olympian, the ability to separate yourself from the dross of everyday existence. It's probably this same quality that gets you up at five in the morning on a wet winter day to go on a training run.

The Olympic hype began the moment we secured the 2012 games and the build up has been on the hysterical side for months but nothing, nothing can actually prepare you for being in a place which, for a brief period, is arguably the most important place on the planet.

Just to prove the point, the only event that even came close in terms of human achievement this week happened on Mars.

Team GPB

The post box. Iconic, a masterpiece of design and the start of a journey for letters and cards and post-cards that bring joy when they eventually fall onto the welcome mat of their intended recipient. And red. Not just red but Red, post box red, heritage red, institution red.

Not any more, in a stroke of paint and absolute genius, the Post Office is painting one post box in the home town of each British Olympic champion gold. They look stunning, more stunning still is that such has been the success of Team GB that the Post Office are reportedly running low on gold paint.

Three things must immediately happen.

Somebody will have to be the first person to visit all the golden post boxes and post a letter in each one.

This will then be the Golden Post Box Challenge. Like Monroe bagging or acquiring STDs you can eke this activity out for years if you so wish but records could also be set in doing them all in the quickest time, by public transport. I can already see the need for at least three different guide books and also a book that you get stamped every time you post a letter from a GPB. Purists will wish to visit them in the Order in which medals were won.

Finally a celebrity, preferably a comedian such as Al Murray, needs to front a television series where he visits each GPB. The format will either be Al on a bicycle wearing a flying helmet and taking a sideways look at whatever town he's visiting, or Al on a tandem wearing a flying helmet with the Olympian in question on the back and hearing Their Story. The flying helmet is, however, crucial.

Two wheels good

The men’s Olympic road race runs out from and then back to the centre of London but on Box Hill in Surrey it dos eight circuits of the Hill. This is the place to see the race.

Which is obviously what the thousands who lined the route thought. The crowd was divided into two broad camps, those who were there to get close to an Olympic event, and cycling fans. You could tell the cycling fans, they had come on their bikes, in lycra. Middle aged men should not wear lycra, no matter how sport appropriate it is, it’s not age-appropriate. The only way to make a middle aged bloke with a gut look worse than he would naked is to put him in a skin tight lycra tee shirt and shorts that are brightly coloured.

The event itself was breathtaking. Just as you have no appreciation of what a horse race is like until you have stood against the barriers and felt the ground tremble as the horses thunder home, so you have no idea of the speed and scale of a mass cycling road race until you’ve seen it up close, and it does get close, with cyclists passing inches from the tip of your nose and the wind from the rushing peleton rippling flags and banners as they sped past.

Encouragement came in cheers and applause for the riders, as well as good luck messages of encouragement scrawled on the tarmac. I’m not sure what they say about Britain in Iran, but when the Iranian cyclist, who was a little behind the pack on his own, goes home his image of the Great British Public will be loads of people clapping and bellowing ‘come on Iran!’. We may not like their nuclear programme, but we like a plucky cyclist.

Also starting to wonder if there is some sort of nickname index for how posh a sport is. Basically, if your name is shortened and ends in ‘…ers’, it’s a posh sport, like cricket (Tuffers). If it ends in ‘…o’, it’s a bit less posh, like cycling (Wiggo, Cavo). And if it ends in ‘..ker’, you play football.

Ping Pong

The only two sports that are called what they sound like are ping pong and canoeing. Ping pong isn’t even called ping pong, it’s called table tennis – what blatant crap, when was the last time you saw a table offer a choice of surfaces, grass, clay or that blue stuff that‘s probably made of rubber or something? It’s ping pong because that’s, sort of, the sound it makes.

Canoeing is so called because when you are rolled upside-down by a wave and are being swept towards some deadly rocks, the sound you hear when seventeen gallons of water are forced into your ears is: ‘canooooooooooo’

Problems present themselves. Many winter sports simply make that ‘shussshh’ sound.

But not when you listen closely. Skiing makes a ‘shush, shush, shush, shush, shush’ sound, speed skating makes a ‘shushshushshushshushshush’ sound. The four man bob sounds like this: ‘Aggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh’. The luge is quite different, not only is the pitch of the scream several decibels higher, it’s follow up with: ‘Fuuuuuuuuuucccccccckkkkkkkkk!’.

The great thing about renaming sports is that it pricks pretence. For instance, boxing. Boxing would be renamed ‘Oof!’. Boxing can be defined as two blokes knocking the hell out of one another, but the boxing federation spits people up by weight, so suddenly there’s bantam weight, seagull weight, vulture weight, heavy weight, yo momma weight and Of Course You Don’t Look Fat In That Outfit weight (women’s boxing). Still want weight classes? Okay, It’s called Oof! And you can differentiate by using different fonts and point sizes.

Formula 1 racing? Easy. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

To be good at sports you can’t rely on natural ability, or even magic boots. You can’t even rely on drugs anymore, not just because of the testing but because you just know that the bastard in lane two has managed to get some of the good stuff.

The situation is fast developing where just about everything we eat has some kind of banned substance in it, at least that’s how athletes facing a ban plead. Apparently their kebab, unknown to them, had ginsing root, steroids and some sort of horse stimulant in it. Unless they are able to pull a horse-shoe out of the chilli sauce bucket at the kebab van to substantiate this, it’s unlikely to get them off.

The argument that an athlete can accidentally take some sort of banned performance enhancing substance is, of course, complete tripe (100% steroid free tripe). If everyone is unknowingly chowing down on food adulterated with performance enhancing drugs, why is the news full of stories about everyone getting fatter? It should be about burger inhaling kids breaking the world record for the egg and spoon race on school sports day.* (Headline: ‘fast food!’).

Just about the only stimulant left to athletes is an iPod with some inspirational music on it (‘Gold’ by Spandau or the ‘Rocky’ theme), or a coach willing to stick a dab of mustard on the end of his finger and stick it up your arse at the start of the race. Even then the Japanese would have the edge: wasabi.

*A nostalgic aside, I recall that at my primary school the starter was always the caretaker, because he had a pistol. As a child I thought nothing of it but now realise that it was obviously some revolver he’d probably prised out of the hands of a Jap in Burmah after a machete fight, and that sports day organisation meetings probably went thus:

Deputy Headmistress: And for the position of Starter this year…
Caretaker: I have a gun.
Deputy Headmistress: Yesss, I’m not sure that’s appropriate.
Caretaker: I have a gun.
Deputy Headmistress: Maybe the children would prefer something less…
Caretaker: I have a gun.
Deputy Headmistress: Just because you have a starting pistol does not mean…
Headmaster: (Smiling benevolently, filling pipe) That’s not what he means Marjory.
Caretaker: I have a gun.
Deputy Headmistress: Oh.
Headmaster: Our Caretaker will be Starter. As usual. Next?

I thought all school sports days had a caretaker with a WWII sidearm starting races. To this day I can’t really run unless I have the smell of gunpowder and the screams of an accidentally shot badger to encourage me,

Superhuman

In the build up to these 2008 Olympics, the tele viewer was left in no doubt whatsoever that China was a very naughty country. Worse than battering monks (God alone knows how they managed that when everyone knows you never fuck with a bald guy (have these people not SEEN Westworld?)), worse even than rolling tanks over shoppers, China has stopped journalists accessing the entire internet!

That’s right, journalists can’t download porn where a girl sits on a cake (have you seen that?) so the most sophisticated criticism of China was of the county being the equivalent of a moustache-twirling villain tying a girl to some railway tracks. That’s not the outrage, the outrage is that the oncoming steam train, yea, burns fossil fuel yea? Yea? Will nobody think of the penguins?

The opening ceremony was, to be fair, a terrifying endorsement of all we had feared. Note to all superpowers: if you want to make yourself look non-threatening and cuddly, don’t have thousands of your citizens doing the same thing simultaneously, flawlessly. The last time westerners saw footage like those drummers all beating together in time was of soldiers goose-stepping in B&W newsreels. However, if the message is: ‘even our percussionists are terrifying’, then job done.

The build-up and the opening ceremony were all about making regimes look good. This did not work. Politicians never look good, not standing next to normal people and never, ever, standing next to fit people. Politicians have suits that don’t quite fit them and have shiny arses to their trousers and shiny elbows to their jackets – that’s because they spend all day sat at their desk with their head in their hands thinking ‘what the is going on with the economy?’ or ‘why the fuck did I pay that hooker with my visa?’.

Then the games started.

The Olympics is sport broadcasting for people who hate sport – no, correction, the Olympics is when sports other than football make it onto television and the world is reminded that sport can be thrilling and athletes can defy belief.

Russia’s territorial ambitions are as nothing compared to BBC sport, which has annexed just about every digital channel it owns to provide saturation coverage the way that Bomber Harris arranged for saturation coverage of many German cities at the end of the War. You’re never more than a click away from watching somebody do something incredibly dangerous at high speed. Have you seen the canoeing? The only way they could make that sport more exciting is to let lose sharks and crocodiles into the stream and have the canoeists beat them to death with their paddles.

The athletes are amazing. All those mornings of getting up in the dark to go training. All those evenings of going to bed early when all you want to do is get off your tits and party. It all pays off, because suddenly you’re having the time of your life. Win a medal? Great! Get knocked out in the first round? Great – you can now spend two weeks getting pissed, eating chips and cheering on your team-mates!

What’s really cheering is how all the team GB athletes are such ambassadors for their sport and their country. And the teens – bloody hell. First of all you have to check your perving credentials at the door when you remember that the girls doing synchronised diving are in their teens – and also because their Dad has probably spent the last few years of his life really getting into shape to beat the hell out of perverts.

Most of the teens you see on telly are hoodie rat-children, carrying knives, talking jive and looking like there are well on their way to evolving into morlocks. These people are anti-chavs. Bright and enthusiastic. No wonder we never see them though – they do their training before it gets light and they are in bed by eight.

Best of all are the BBC commentators. Just as you sit at home, thinking ‘how can she do a somersault and land on that beam?’, the commentator screams ‘that’s AMAZING, how does she do that? Magic leotard?’ Possibly, or steroids if it’s a foreigner.

12 days of Christmas – Looking forward, looking backwards

I’m quite looking forward to 2008. Certainly, it’s good to know that, for instance, there will be no more Star Wars films at the cinema to piss on more of my childhood memories. Good to know too that the Olympics will be happening during the night, meaning that you don’t have to watch any of the tedious crap. The only events worth watching will be the sailing, and only then if they bring in a rule that allows you to launch broadsides.