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In 2008, we relaunched Derailed as a monthly magazine. Every issue would feature a headline article and then a scattering of the essays and silly nonsense that had made us popular. Back on Track was the first issue, and it was an apt subject matter: my part was written from the Zesdaagse Rotterdam. I was there alone running the live broadcast for Cycling.TV, lugging a desktop computer and monitor across the city each day so that I could plug it into the AV truck.
It was a pretty good gig. The race put me in an expensive hotel with all the riders and teams (I even remember texting Rebecca Charlton a discrete 2008-era camera photo of Theo Bos grabbing breakfast). I got all day to myself in Rotterdam. And I mostly had to press Start on the encoder, watch cycling in the velodrome for a few hours, then press Stop.
Back on Track
Published January 2008
Derailed is back. We keep soldiering on, pretending there’s actually more to say about pro cycling than just “There’s no future” and “It’s all shit.”
Each month we’ll do a different main article and theme, as well as some smaller bits and pieces.
Future issues will be better, hopefully.
Back on Track – Contents
- Back on Track
- Hour Record Roadies
- Top Five Cycling-Related Bands
- Commentators Versus…
- Team Photo of the Month
- Top Ten Worst Cyclists
- Things to Look Forward to in 2008
- An Injured Magnus Backstedt
Back on Track
TOWARDS THE end of the 19th century, European road cycling was experimenting with the long, tough courses that have gone down as part of the sport’s famous heritage; battles of the strongest will and toughest legs, a time when men were men and women died in childbirth. At least, that’s the myth. In truth, road cycling events only ever attracted attention the first time a landmark distance was completed — the sport of cycling had almost completely migrated to the boards of the velodrome.
The prospect of the developing sport providing a spectacle wasn’t lost, however. Crowds flocked to view the latest demands placed on riders, especially in the fast, custom built tracks in England, where races would last for a whole 24 hours and whoever could cover the greatest distance would be declared the winner. And it was a British journalist, Harry Etherington, who finally took the wearisome concept of a six-day walking race and applied the model to track cycling.
Such was the success of track racing that road racing drew from it to attach prominence to its events. Cycling’s bastardisation began almost as quickly as the sport itself — the English track riders insisted that races only be held available to amateur (middle-class) riders (as opposed to their working-class “professional” counterparts), and utilised the symbiotic channels of the media and sponsors to manufacture unfair advantages over their continental rivals.
When European road cycling finally gathered mainstream attention, it was by reproducing the lessons learned from track racing — namely, taking the format of multi-day endurance events. The Paris-Brest-Paris was the race that first encapsulated the “Tour fever” that would eventually take over France, and the Frenchman Charles Terront emerged as the eventual winner. He became one of the most famous men in France as a result, and his admirers noted with excitement how he had cycled for three days and nights without any sleep.
Riding for such a long time was not an unusual feat for Terront, who was familiar with crossing the channel to ride six day events, but he had returned with more than just experience. By making full use of stimulants on the sport’s then grandest stage, Terront had brought the doping culture of British track cycling into continental road cycling.
Fast forward a hundred years or so. Britain leads the world in track cycling performance and also administers just about the only campaign for clean racing that isn’t sickeningly sanctimonious. Dave Brailsford cites his realistic expectation the team will be competitive for gold medals in 12 different cycling events at the 2008 Olympics. It’s an impressive target, but the fact remains that the Olympics mean very little to a pro cyclist, and provide star status only in countries that will allow it — compare the fate of Bradley Wiggins to Amir Khan in Britain following the 2004 games.
So why do the Olympics matter? Because medals mean government funding. Track is, in simple terms, carrying the weight of British cycling’s future. And the system isn’t one that we can even find any fault with — it’s focused on more than just perpetuating its own means of survival, actively funding both road and track at all levels. As a feeder into the sport, the model works perfectly, providing a safe environment for kids to ride in a country where only around 0.08% of all drivers aren’t inconsiderate arseholes.
At the moment, there’s a new rise in optimism surrounding track racing that extends far beyond the British model. Indeed, it’s six-day racing that’s seeing the greatest revival. The Zesdaagse van Rotterdam — six times longer than Revolution, with five times as many people and four times as many letters in the street signs — is notable for its immediate success coming out of a 15-year hiatus. More notable is the revival of US events, albeit far from Madison Square Garden, with a three-day in Las Vegas. And even London isn’t going to be left out, it seems.
Track cycling’s future is no more certain than its chequered history. A return to the golden ages when the velodrome’s boards were the domain of cycling’s heroes rather than the niche of specialists is unlikely, yet the revival itself is hard to deny. The same is true of the British model of youth development, which provides enviable results but whose long-term value cannot yet be evaluated. One thing is for sure, however: Track is back.
Hour Record Roadies
Of the all time greatest Tour de France riders, Bernard Hinault and Lance Armstrong are the only two riders not to have held the hour record. It is because of this that riders such as Graeme Obree and Chris Boardman not only ignited the competition in the 1990s, they also made a name for themselves by ranking themselves amongst the sport’s all-time greats.
Compare this to the fate of Ondrej Sosenka, who beat Chris Boardman’s athlete hour in 2005 to a luke-warm reception. His was a blast to the glory days of the competition, being something of a victory for technology and sports science, using a machine that magnificently exploited the UCI’s new rules. But Sosenka wasn’t catapulted to international fame in the same way that previous generations of riders had been so much as he was left as a mere footnote in the sport’s specific, niche press.
The hour record has been relegated from the most prestigious of all cycling records to become cycling’s equivalent of the novelty news item. Is the age of the sport’s greatest riders taking to the track for the ultimate test really over, or can the hour record yet be saved?
Top Five Cycling-Related Bands
5. The Delgados
Broody Glaswegian indie
4. Abdoujaparov
Occasionally country punk
3. Kraftwerk
German techno nonsense
2. Eddy Merckx and the Planckaerts
Totally made up
1. DJ Fausto Coppi VS. MC Bartali FT. Oscar Egg
Should be real 🙁
Commentators Versus… Serramenti PVC Diquigiovanni-Androni Giocattoli
What we’d say:
“PVC”
What commentators will say:
“Diquigiovanni”
What David Harmon will say:
“Serramenti PVC Diquigiovanni-Androni Giocattoli, the new name for the plucky Selle-Italia team of Gianni Savio, who’s put an awful lot of work into making this team capable of getting a wildcard entry into the Gio d’Italia after the disappointment of last year, home to one of my favourite riders, by the way, the 19 year old Andrei Grapskovski from Uzbekistan, he’s a really down to earth guy and a real talent for the future.”
Team Photo of the Month
Please welcome Team Flexpoint. We’ve skimmed the official website and it seems like they’re all over 18, so the whole front row should be fair game for the explicit fantasies we’re hoping you’ll make appear in our email inbox.
This is the kind of care that we really like to see being put into team photographs. Only one of the riders is actually looking at the camera, and the rest are a mixture of stupid, clinically depressed and goofy. Even the bike is wonky.
On the plus side, putting the uglies on the back row makes it much easier for us to say which ones we “would” with. Thanks Flexpoint!
Top Ten Worst Cyclists Ever
- Floyd Landis
- Floyd Landis
- Floyd Landis
- Floyd Landis
- Floyd Landis
- Floyd Landis
- Floyd Landis
- Floyd Landis
- Floyd Landis
- Floyd Landis
Things to Look Forward to in 2008
- Paul Sherwen elongating his already muddled sentences by insisting on referring to cycling as “the sport of professional cycling” and cyclists as “professional bike racers.”
- Tom Boonen dating a different rich 16 year old every month of the year. And not winning a single thing.
- Some jerk winning the least interesting Tour de France in years.
- Nine more months of us whining about Team High Horse and Johan Bruyneel before we give up and resort to doing more animals on bikes.
An Injured Magnus Backstedt
No sooner had the eight-foot Swede ridden head first into the Quick Step train and broken his collarbone than he was back in the UK.
Jumping on a plane might not be the first thing you’d expect someone to do after a hard fall, but his reasoning was sound — he planned to visit his own specialist doctor rather than rely on the healthcare of people he’d never met.
But for some reason his first point of call after getting off the aeroplane was the Cycling.tv commentary booth, where he provided surprisingly eloquent contextualisations of the racing. After that, he decided he had time to do an interview.
Then he was immediately rushed off to hospital, which really should’ve been as high on his list of priorities as not falling off the damn bike in the first place.
Cycling loves a hard man, and big Magnus proved his credentials (in a bit of a soft media-type sort of way).
Next month’s issue will be online on the 29th February
(and it’ll be much, much better than this one)
All content is free of copyright. Unless you’re from Future Publishing or IPC Media, in which case it’ll be £500 per word.