Full text.Cyclists have got a wheel loose
By Sarah Sands
(Filed: 31/07/2004)
When John Kerry poked his head through the grey curtain of the
campaign plane, the correspondents paid attention. One journalist
asked: "How are you?", and Kerry replied: "Fabulous." Kerry had
something he would very much like to tell the press corps. It was that
he loved cycling and was eager for news of the Tour de France.
The subliminal message was this: cyclists are good people,
sensitive, sunny, free-spirited. They literally have bigger hearts. In
life, you are a cyclist or you are a motorist. The reason why Boris
Johnson is so loved by liberals owes much to his being a cyclist. He
is quite shameless about this. In his forthcoming novel, the main
protagonist - a Tory MP dogged by scandal who fails to notice a
terrorist attack taking place in front of him - is redeemed by the
fact that he rides a bicycle.
By comparison, Jon Snow is regarded as a treasure by Conservatives.
The fact that he is the Che Guevara of television news does not put
them off. His autobiography this autumn promises to be a remorseless
Marxist tract, but he has nice manners and is a familiar figure at
Westminster briefings, padlocking his bike to railings. A fact that
everyone knows about Snow is that he once missed an edition of Channel
4 News because he fell off his bike.
The great beneficiary of the cyclists-are-nice convention is Jeremy
Paxman. If he drove a TVR, he would epitomise the arrogance of
television. But cycling is goofy and unassuming. It is
anti-establishment.
I once accused Boris of treachery towards the former editor of The
Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore, for referring in a column to being
splashed on his bicycle by Moore's chauffeur-driven car. Boris could
not see his offence. Well, I said. Who comes out well from the story
and who badly? The quickest way to escape censure is to jump on your
bike, which is why royalty and aristocracy particularly favour this
form of transport.
Cyclists themselves are sometimes fooled into believing their own
propaganda. The other day, the Blairite journalist Tom Baldwin cast
doubt on the story that Jonathan Powell had confided to Boris at the
traffic lights that "Gordon Brown is like the guy who thinks he's
going to be king but never gets it." Why would Powell confide in a
Tory shadow minister, asked Baldwin. But cycling transcends politics
and Powell may have been overwhelmed by camaraderie. He thought he was
shielded by the peleton.
The Left-wing commentator Stephen Pollard made a similarly dangerous
assumption earlier this week. "Who cares about Lance Armstrong?" he
asked. "Cycling is as dull and quaint as curling."
Well, excuse me, but what would a policy wonk on the Atkins diet know
about the torment that propels cyclists? Boris, Paxman and Snow are
three of the most troubled men I have met. Beneath those schoolboy
exteriors is an abyss of melancholia. That is why they keep pedalling.
The young (now middle-aged) fogies were similarly misjudged. I still
see reproduced a photograph of A. N. Wilson wobbling along Doughty
Street. His large blue eyes are not nostalgic pools; they are missiles
of intelligence.
What of the man described by Pollard as "winner of the world
narcolepsy yellow jersey for utter tedium"? Members of Opus Dei would
flinch from the self-inflicted punishment of Lance Armstrong. He
described the cycling impulse in his autobiography. "Cycling is so
hard, the suffering is so intense, that it's absolutely cleansing. The
pain is so deep and strong that a curtain descends over your
brain… Once someone asked me what pleasure I took in riding for
so long. Pleasure? I said. I don't understand the question. I didn't
do it for pleasure. I did it for pain."
When Jonny Wilkinson prepared for his World Cup kicks, his face was
set in beatific concentration. When Armstrong pulled ahead at the end
of each stage, his face was a snarl of agony. Only runners are more
competitive than cyclists.
Cyclists are essentially solitary people. Sometimes I ask my husband
whether he would like to join me and the children on the school run.
He shakes his head, swings his leg over the saddle and calls back: "He
who travels fastest, travels alone."
Motorists are companionable. They fill their car with little mementos,
sweet wrappers, water bottles, pairs of socks. It is nesting. If they
have nobody to talk to, they can sing along to the radio. They are
constantly interacting with other cars, sometimes ramming them, but
more often trying to help with elaborate mute signals about tyres
being flat or car doors open.
The other day, I saw a driver chatting respectfully while turning
round his head every few seconds to his back-seat passenger. I thought
he must be a chauffeur and then realised he was addressing a tiny baby
in a car seat.
But cyclists are a lane apart. Their whole existence is a time trial.
Sometimes they are merely self-righteous, but they all have the seeds
of sanctimonious militancy.
Reclaim the Streets is a manifestation of the cyclists' personality.
Their mission statement reads: "Any souls who are fed up with the
chain of cars, oil, war, pollution are invited to come along …
the car system steals the street from under us and sells it back for
the price of petrol. It privileges time over space, corrupting and
reducing both to an obsession with speed or in economic lingo,
turnover."
This is not economic lingo: these are livelihoods, you whippety,
illiterate hippy-terrorists. Inwardly righteous, outwardly sweaty and
fetishistically obsessed with Lycra, they carry their passions on
their sleeve, wandering round offices and homes with bits of wheels
and jester shoes.
If you wanted soft-centred sweetness, you are far more likely to find
it in a mighty-muscled man driving a Hummer. Why do they want to drive
a tank if it isn't because they have the hearts of cherubs