Post by thevon on Jul 26, 2008 20:36:02 GMT 10
CYCLING CHANGES
Big night for cycling tonight, with the chance of Cadel Evans being the first ever Aussie to win the Tour de France. Huge. Hey it's been nice to hear of some of you guys keenly following the Tour. Sean and Jeff both stay up watching it, and I’ve seen comments from others like Steve Cuz. It's great, and at the same time a strange thing. I'll tell you why. Sorry about the off-topic subject. As you know I don't mind a good rave.
My earlier serious obsessions involved riding and racing enduro dirt bikes, then later we both got into sailboarding in a big way. Living at Thursday Island for a couple of years was the highlight of our sailboarding exploits, with such strong winds for much of the year. (I'm sure if I lived there now I'd find some great slope spots up there and maybe DS too!) I even wrote some articles for “Freesail”, the sailboarding magazine.
When we got moved to Toowoomba, we tried hard to keep up the sport but it was hopeless for sailboarding. I bought an old bike from a neighbour for $50 (which was too much!) and started riding. Boasted about it at work; met a guy who rode a lot, we all got to be mates, and J and I accompanied them on a 2000km tandem bike tour to Daintree. We moved to Redcliffe and after 6 months I thought I should get back on the bike a bit, met up with the local club ride and got dropped but kept trying then joined the club and started racing. That obsession lasted for about 13 years! Bramble Bay club, Caboolture club, Broncos then Hamilton. Got a few State medals, and my daughter took it up and ranked 4th nationally for 3 years.
I really liked pushing myself hard in training so I did well in the races, for the limited training I could manage. It was hard, so surviving a race gave you a huge feeling of achievement, and it was a great stress-relief valve too. But back in 1994 when I started racing and for years after, riding racing bikes was not at all popular. When I told people “I do cycle racing” their eyes seemed to glaze over and they showed no interest at all! If they did show any interest, it was to say “It just seems such a dumb sport!” or something.
When you were out riding you rarely saw anybody at all out riding a road bike. Bike shops usually didn’t stock any road racing bikes, maybe just one or 2 and you could order them. A lot of guys’ bikes were custom made. There were no articles about bike racing in the paper or magazines. It just wasn’t popular. For years we’ve had Aussies racing in Europe where they’re famous. Front page material, big salaries, watched on TV, recognized everywhere but not at home. We used to have discussions about what it would take to make cycling popular, but it seemed futile.
Back then, we had a few guys in our club whose bikes were equipped with Dura-ace or Record groupsets. They were the young, serious, unbelievably fast guys who rode A grade in the club and did the big Open bike races and State Championships. Guys like me wouldn’t have dared put Dura-ace on their bikes. You would have been considered a total w@nker! We used to wear training tyres all week and put on thin tyres for the races.
I don’t know what changed but cycling has become popular. It’s become mainstream. A few years ago analysts were calling it “the new golf”. Lance Armstrong’s 7 Tour wins probably lifted cycling out of its European enclave, where it’s as popular as Soccer. Everyone’s taking up riding. On weekend mornings there are so many groups out riding I just can’t quite believe it. Bike shops are stocked to the hilt with gleaming road bikes, even the cheapest of which would blown our minds only 10 years ago. Incredibly high-spec bikes are being bought by many riders who never intend to race them. Some guys are going on the Saturday morning “coffee shop ride” wearing $3000 Carbon Zipp wheels and ultra-light $120 tyres on their 6kg machines. I just don’t get it. Cycling isn’t so much about the hard training, slogging up hills, developing endurance. It seems to be more about stopping at the coffee shop gazing at your expensive bike.
However the pro Euro riders aren’t part of that scene. It’s an incredibly, unbelievably tough sport. Almost nobody makes it to the professional ranks. In my time with racing I knew some incredibly good riders and thought they’d become pro’s, but none of the ones from Brisbane ever did, and only 1 or 2 of the ones Joanna raced at Nationals did. Some tried racing in Europe and came home and got a real job. Almost everyone quits at some point. It’s just too tough, too dangerous, and such a small chance of success for which you have to sacrifice everything. Your whole life has to be 100% cycling from what you eat to when you sleep to when and how you train. It really demands everything, and even then you probably won’t make it. You can’t describe how much those guys can suffer.
Well dear reader as you can see the glider obsession doesn't leave much room for cycling, and I don't miss it much. But I still get the jitters watching the Tour. It will be a huge deal for Australian cycling if Cadel makes up the time on Sastre in tonight's time trial and wins the Tour. But whether he wins or not, he and all the other riders are almost superhuman to have reached the elite position of being a pro rider and riding in a Tour. It’s been a long road.
Go Cadel!
Big night for cycling tonight, with the chance of Cadel Evans being the first ever Aussie to win the Tour de France. Huge. Hey it's been nice to hear of some of you guys keenly following the Tour. Sean and Jeff both stay up watching it, and I’ve seen comments from others like Steve Cuz. It's great, and at the same time a strange thing. I'll tell you why. Sorry about the off-topic subject. As you know I don't mind a good rave.
My earlier serious obsessions involved riding and racing enduro dirt bikes, then later we both got into sailboarding in a big way. Living at Thursday Island for a couple of years was the highlight of our sailboarding exploits, with such strong winds for much of the year. (I'm sure if I lived there now I'd find some great slope spots up there and maybe DS too!) I even wrote some articles for “Freesail”, the sailboarding magazine.
When we got moved to Toowoomba, we tried hard to keep up the sport but it was hopeless for sailboarding. I bought an old bike from a neighbour for $50 (which was too much!) and started riding. Boasted about it at work; met a guy who rode a lot, we all got to be mates, and J and I accompanied them on a 2000km tandem bike tour to Daintree. We moved to Redcliffe and after 6 months I thought I should get back on the bike a bit, met up with the local club ride and got dropped but kept trying then joined the club and started racing. That obsession lasted for about 13 years! Bramble Bay club, Caboolture club, Broncos then Hamilton. Got a few State medals, and my daughter took it up and ranked 4th nationally for 3 years.
I really liked pushing myself hard in training so I did well in the races, for the limited training I could manage. It was hard, so surviving a race gave you a huge feeling of achievement, and it was a great stress-relief valve too. But back in 1994 when I started racing and for years after, riding racing bikes was not at all popular. When I told people “I do cycle racing” their eyes seemed to glaze over and they showed no interest at all! If they did show any interest, it was to say “It just seems such a dumb sport!” or something.
When you were out riding you rarely saw anybody at all out riding a road bike. Bike shops usually didn’t stock any road racing bikes, maybe just one or 2 and you could order them. A lot of guys’ bikes were custom made. There were no articles about bike racing in the paper or magazines. It just wasn’t popular. For years we’ve had Aussies racing in Europe where they’re famous. Front page material, big salaries, watched on TV, recognized everywhere but not at home. We used to have discussions about what it would take to make cycling popular, but it seemed futile.
Back then, we had a few guys in our club whose bikes were equipped with Dura-ace or Record groupsets. They were the young, serious, unbelievably fast guys who rode A grade in the club and did the big Open bike races and State Championships. Guys like me wouldn’t have dared put Dura-ace on their bikes. You would have been considered a total w@nker! We used to wear training tyres all week and put on thin tyres for the races.
I don’t know what changed but cycling has become popular. It’s become mainstream. A few years ago analysts were calling it “the new golf”. Lance Armstrong’s 7 Tour wins probably lifted cycling out of its European enclave, where it’s as popular as Soccer. Everyone’s taking up riding. On weekend mornings there are so many groups out riding I just can’t quite believe it. Bike shops are stocked to the hilt with gleaming road bikes, even the cheapest of which would blown our minds only 10 years ago. Incredibly high-spec bikes are being bought by many riders who never intend to race them. Some guys are going on the Saturday morning “coffee shop ride” wearing $3000 Carbon Zipp wheels and ultra-light $120 tyres on their 6kg machines. I just don’t get it. Cycling isn’t so much about the hard training, slogging up hills, developing endurance. It seems to be more about stopping at the coffee shop gazing at your expensive bike.
However the pro Euro riders aren’t part of that scene. It’s an incredibly, unbelievably tough sport. Almost nobody makes it to the professional ranks. In my time with racing I knew some incredibly good riders and thought they’d become pro’s, but none of the ones from Brisbane ever did, and only 1 or 2 of the ones Joanna raced at Nationals did. Some tried racing in Europe and came home and got a real job. Almost everyone quits at some point. It’s just too tough, too dangerous, and such a small chance of success for which you have to sacrifice everything. Your whole life has to be 100% cycling from what you eat to when you sleep to when and how you train. It really demands everything, and even then you probably won’t make it. You can’t describe how much those guys can suffer.
Well dear reader as you can see the glider obsession doesn't leave much room for cycling, and I don't miss it much. But I still get the jitters watching the Tour. It will be a huge deal for Australian cycling if Cadel makes up the time on Sastre in tonight's time trial and wins the Tour. But whether he wins or not, he and all the other riders are almost superhuman to have reached the elite position of being a pro rider and riding in a Tour. It’s been a long road.
Go Cadel!
