‘It’s all very well taking a big chunk, but you’ve got to swallow it.’
10
Attention Seekers!
What is it in the human psyche that makes us seek notoriety? And how is this to be achieved in the absence of luck or talent? Often this doesn’t make for a dignified spectacle, especially when it comes to cycling. And so it is that we find Kevin the greengrocer from Bideford dressed in a lime green mankini running alongside elite athletes and emphasising the silky smooth legs of our heroes by displaying a pair of jiggling hirsute buttocks. He might be having fun. And at first he did raise a smile. But Kevin is not alone. The acid green mankini has been seen many times. Now even the addition of a ginger wig does not make it special. After many such visions, up many a mountain, this is a sight that has become bloody irritating.
There aren’t any other major sports in the world where the spectator can get so close to their heroes. Cycling’s arenas are the open roads that snake their way up alpine mountains and through everyday public streets. We have no need of Wembleys, Camp Nous and Maracanãs: we have the world to play with. Access to this world is free. There are no tickets. You only have to turn up with your trestle table and fold-up chair and ‘Robert est ton oncle’, you’re in the thick of it. Up close and personal. There is nothing like this sort of access in any other sport. This is a cycling fan’s privilege. Everyone is within touching distance of the superstars of the sport. And the unwritten contract that allows this to remain the case is that nobody is supposed to touch the competitors or affect the racing. Sadly, some of the fans are starting to get a bit too involved in the action itself. This is a problem.
The show-offs turn up in their myriad forms. And while I’m not a fan of CRS-style policing, I have a smidgen of sympathy for them when it comes to dealing with these idiots. I have to confess there have been some off-mike moments when we shout out in sheer joy as an outrunner in a dinosaur suit is run over by a police motorcycle. ‘Oooh, I hope that hurts. . .’
When spectators start to have a negative influence on what happens in the race, then things have gone seriously wrong. Sure, there are the careless and accidental incidents such as untethered dogs bringing riders down. Handlebars getting caught in spectators’ bags or camera straps. I can almost accept this as a product of the mass participation that makes cycling so great. But deliberate interference? No.
There are various forms of interference that I call out on air. You may have heard, ‘Get out of the way you idiot,’ or such like. Occasionally I’ll go into detail about how the morons are harming the race. This is a genuine concern for the health and well-being of the riders. The perfect example of this is the havoc played out by those I call the Flare Boys.
What on earth is the idea – other than to create a spectacle with the instigator centre stage on his bit of turf along the course? What is it that motivates a ‘fan’ to take a powder flare along to a cycling event? They have been banned in many sports. You can be arrested at a football game for setting off such a smoke bomb. But not in cycling, where the governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), has failed to act.
The impact of phosphoric smoke pulled deep into the billowing lungs of a climbing cyclist is simply dangerous. I know I sound like an angry headmaster: ‘What are they thinking? Morons!’ But, I mean, how does their morning start off?
‘I’m off to the cycling, love!’
‘OK, honey, don’t forget your powder flares!’
This on-air exchange with myself on the matter raised a few laughs on social media, but I was serious. Properly livid.
I was asked once if I thought I could have been held responsible for incitement. There was a fan running alongside the riders when another spectator lamped him, taking him clean out. It was a move once referred to in wrestling parlance as ‘a forearm smash’, and aimed squarely to the jaw. His legs went up in the air and he went bang to the ground, disappearing in his own smoke bomb. My thoughts remain my own on this, but I was seen to smirk.
Dutch Corner on Alpe d’Huez is perhaps a distillation of the extraordinary. Even driving through in a car you can hardly breathe from all the orange flares being deployed there. Maybe their name, Distress Flares, is apt . . . but it is the rider in distress. They’re breathing so deeply on these peaks, desperately trying to oxygenate their blood, and they really don’t need coloured smoke microparticles sucked into the depths of their lungs. It’s an extreme irritant, and riders like Chris Froome who have a history of respiratory problems must actually hold their breath when they’re going through particularly thick clouds of the stuff. Once a rider does that, especially when they’re at their absolute max going up a mountain, the knock-on effect is huge.
So when I see some idiot setting off a distress flare next to the peloton, I go nuts. I think they should be banned and I say so on a regular basis on air. To what effect? Well, thankfully, at the
