The Life of Brian 9

 

5 Dec 2007

 

What a year!
As we head towards the end of the year, let's have a quick look back. The last twelve months have seen some truly amazing achievements and some real evidence of the progress we are making as a sport. Here are just a few of the remarkable things that have made this a year to remember:

• We have broken the 21,000 member barrier (plus added a further 10,000 affiliated through our Everyday Cycling initiative). Strongest growth is at the younger end - contrary to national trends in sport
• Great Britain dominated the World Track Championships, winning 7 Golds, including 3 for the brilliant Victoria Pendleton (right).
• A British rider in his first year as a professional, Mark Cavendish, has won more races than any other debutant for many years
• The Tour de France came to London and Great Britain gave the world's greatest sporting event its best-ever start.
• With 5 starters in the Tour, the biggest British contingent for many years, another young British star, Geraint Thomas, the youngest rider in the race at 21, finished the race at his first attempt.
• Shanaze Reade won Gold at the BMX Worlds Championships to go with her Gold from the Track Worlds - only a handful of riders have ever won medals at two different disciplines.
• Fort William put on a superb World Mountain Bike Championships, attracting huge crowds, with four medals for our downhillers including a first-ever Junior Gold for Ruaridh Cunningham (centre, right).
• Our team at the World Disability Cycling Championships swept all before them, winning 13 Gold Medals.
• At the Junior World Track Championships in Mexico, our team of just four riders won two Gold, three Silver and one Bronze medal.
• The World Road Champs produced the first men's medal for forty years, with Jonny Bellis taking Bronze in the Under 23s.
• Our top road series, the Premier Calendar, has started to grow again, with all the events covered on British Eurosport television.
• 4,000 riders took part in the first ever Great British Sportive over the route of the Tour de France stage from London to Canterbury
• Manchester Velodrome, the world's best used track, received a stunning new surface which seems set to be even better and faster than the original.

I'm sure you can think of some that I have missed. So many people have contributed to this remarkable year - riders, staff, volunteers, ordinary members and friends - and I want to say thank you to every single one. As always there are some things that we can do better and we'll work hard at those things next year, but let's be clear - we are a strong and competent organisation, our sport is thriving and the future looks even better.

Winter woes
Well, just as I feared, I've hardly been able to get out on the bike these last few weeks, what with meetings, catching up on jobs around the house, and all the things that get delayed during the summer. So I thought I'd sign up for the gym, and I've been going twice a week since October, in an attempt to keep a semblance of fitness.

I've been doing 10 minutes on the exercise bike to warm up, then 10 minutes on the cross trainer, a bit of running on the treadmill, followed by some weights and trunk curls, that sort of stuff (no, not exactly the scientific approach, I know), followed by another 10 minutes on the exercise bike, and a warm down.

 

Right, Brian training last winter - image: Chris Sidwells

So when I did get out on the real bike this weekend, I have to say I was a bit disappointed to be going like a donkey. Obviously I'll have to start upping the intensity levels.

Election fever!
OK, I suppose fever is putting it a bit strongly. But National Council, British Cycling's Annual General Meeting is always the scene of enthusiastic and earnest debate and discussion, and this year was no exception. There's a full report elsewhere on the website, but I'd like to congratulate Bill Owen, Charlie Jackson and Tony Barry on their re-election to the Board. All three have made a major contribution to the sport, as organisers, sponsors, officials and indeed as competitors over the years, and will no doubt continue to do so in the future.

Thanks also to everyone for supporting my re-election as President. The sharp-eyed amongst you will realise that there were no other candidates, but I strongly deny this has anything to do with my visit to Cuba earlier in the year. Despite what some people may think, Fidel Castro is not my role model and British Cycling is not a one party state. Rumours that potential candidates have been arrested and imprisoned in windowless rooms beneath the National Cycling Centre are of course untrue. I am assured that there are some windows.

Cycling Weekly sees the light
I've bought Cycling Weekly, or Cycling as it used to be known, every week since 1965. I suppose I always will. Over the years the magazine, like British Cycling, has had to change to reflect the modern environment and sometimes some people haven't liked those changes, again not unlike British Cycling. Generally there has been a good relationship between the two organisations though, in my view, on some of the most important issues the magazine sometimes seems to have wilfully misunderstood the things that British Cycling has been doing. In the early days of Lottery funding and the WCPP, there was the famous comment about "more coaches than Wallace Arnold", for instance.

At last, however, it seems that someone understands the strategy that we have been pursuing for the last ten years or so. You may have missed this piece on the Cycling Weekly website, and I don't think the piece has appeared in the magazine yet, so have a look if you have a moment or two: www.cyclingweekly.co.uk

So it seems there is hope yet. But then they have to go and spoil it by publishing a "Big Interview" with that well known hero of cyclists and, er, egg farmers everywhere, Edwina Currie!

 

Back to the roots
I always attend the annual North West Xmas lunch and prize presentation at Scorton Priory, which goes back many years and seems to have been organised for as long as I can remember by Doreen Mallinson. Together with husband John, Doreen is a real stalwart of our sport, working almost every day of the year, it seems, for one or other branches of our sport.

Ivor Armstrong and Bill Greenhalgh of Cycling Development North West are two more people up here in the North West who put in massive amounts of time and effort organising events, running coaching sessions and so on. Where would we be without people like them? Most amazing of all, at the end of another year, with another event successfully completed, Doreen thanks everybody else! No Doreen - we thank you.

So that's my message as another great year comes to a close. To Doreen, John, Ivor, Bill, and their equivalents all across the country - you are the essential ingredient, without which cycling in Britain simply would not work. Thank you.

 

Have a good Xmas and New Year everyone, and I'll hope to see you out on the bike or at an event in 2008, a year which looks set to be even bigger and better for our sport.

 

If you want to send me any feedback on any of the above or any other topic, please e-mail me at info@britishcycling.org.uk

Happy cycling!

Brian Cookson
President