The Cycling Purist- My Grandad

Early in 2004 a friend of mine handed me a book with the promise that it would knock my socks off. It took me a while to get round to it but a few months later, with nothing better to do, I thought I'd see what all the fuss was about.

At the time, the name Lance Armstrong meant absolutely nothing to me and everything I could tell you about professional cycling would fit on the back of a fag packet. The book was the best selling 'It's Not About The Bike', an autobiographical account of Armstrong's journey to the top of the cycling world, from his diagnosis with stage 3 (advanced) testicular cancer at the age of 25, through his recovery before going on to win the Tour de France in 1999 aged 27.

Within a few days I had finished and as promised, the book did indeed 'knock my socks off'. Armstrong was superhuman and my new hero, I would tell anyone who'd listen about this incredible Texan who'd stared death in the face and was now one of the greatest athletes on the planet. I was hooked onto the cult of Lance and wanted to know everything there was to know about my new idol's sporting endeavours.

Within a couple of years of becoming a disciple of Armstrong I had read enough David Walsh and Paul Kimmage to think perhaps he wasn't all he was cracked up to be and I'd gone off Armstrong in a big way, however, by this point it didn't matter what I thought about Lance. I was planning my spring and summer around cycling. The aesthetic beauty of the sport, the history, the tactics, the drama, the personalities. Everything about cycling seemed a world away from growing up in football mad, suburban England and the terraces of Craven Cottage where I had stood watching Fulham every other week as a kid and I loved it.

Thomas Voeckler

The one frustration I had with my new obsession was the lack of people to discuss and speculate the latest goings on in the peloton with. The one exception was my grandad, whenever I was able to get up to my grandparents home in north Wales he would break from his crossword to discuss the most recent race he'd seen, from Paris-Roubaix to the TdF, if cycling was on TV he would watch it. One thing I couldn't understand was his lack of recall for riders names, he would only remember the names of riders who's style he liked (Thomas Voeckler was a particular favourite).

Grandad passed away in February at the age of 91 but right up until a couple of weeks before he passed he was pulling his old dutchie out of the garage and riding the 2 miles up to the village shop to pick up milk and a paper for grandma, I like to think he was pretending to be Voeckler, leaving every bit of energy on the country roads up to Hawarden, judging by his record of crashing he had a proclivity for a Voeckler-esque weave across the road every now and again as well.

This week I finished another brilliant book, 'Seven Deadly Sins:My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong' by David Walsh. Walsh meticulously lays out the full scale of Armstrong's doping and behaviour in the peloton over the years and describes how so many of us fell into the cult of Lance, refusing to believe that he was anything but the model athlete. It was another book I couldn't put down, however, rather than the glow I'd been left with after 'It's not about the bike' I was left feeling deflated by the sheer scale of what had gone on. Despite going off Lance several years ago I felt a strange sort of guilt and embarrassment for holding Armstrong in such high esteem and the thought that this man was the reason I fell in love with cycling in the first place was something that didn't sit particularly well in my head.

The frustration I felt continued for most of last week, the idea that the whole thing was a fraud, all these years I'd been watching a sport that was about as authentic as WWE wrestling. I considered the fact that perhaps professional cycling is going to be dragged so far through the mud and it's image tarnished so much that it would lose all it's shine, all it's romance, all it's beauty.

Alpe D'Huez

Eventually my thoughts turned to what grandad would have made of it all, the conclusion I've come to is this, he wouldn't worry about it.......and neither should I. He would have been looking forward to the start of the classics season. The reason grandad had a poor recall for riders names was that as far as he was concerned it wasn't the most important thing, riders came and went with incredible regularity, just like the sponsors. What grandad loved about cycling can be summed up in the cobbles lining the farm tracks from Paris to Roubaix, the snaking, smooth, tarmac roads that weave up Alpe D'Huez, the throngs of people lining the streets of the Champs-Elysses waiting for the peloton to roll into the finish line on the TdF.

Cycling is a unique sport with a magnificent history, recent generations have let the sport down which is a disappointment to us all, but as long as there is a movement to clean the peloton and remove the cheats there's no need to worry about cycling in the long run, the grand tours and the classics will go on, there'll still be plenty of amateurs ready to pick up the bike and emulate the stars of the day. My only hope is that the stars of tomorrow will be cleaner than the stars of yesterday.

Grandad