The Sadness of being a British Cycling fan....

Victoria Pendleton said her 'heart sank' when she read the Parliamentary report latest revelations about goings on at Team Sky .  I understand exactly how she feels.  I am an enthusiastic cyclist myself and a huge fan of the sport, and have been for more than 30 years now.  I think professional cyclists are the hardiest bunch of sports people out there, especially the Tour riders and the Classics specialists.  Their bravery is only matched by their incredible resilience and I have the utmost respect for them all.  The grand tours are spectacles unlike anything else in world sport and I still desperately want to believe in what I'm seeing.

The thing about most sports fans is that we can put up with an awful lot and my love for cycling will carry on undiminished; of that I have no doubt, and that is because I have to, I must believe that the majority of the peleton is not living in the grey, murky areas frequented by those that would destroy the sport.  I need to continue to believe in the dignity of cycling, that there is still honour in the peleton because without that belief it all comes crashing down.

That said, it is precisely that respect I have for these amazing men and women, that makes this whole episode hurt so much.  I am a Brit and the past decade of cycling excellence on both the roads and the track have filled me with pride.  When I'm out on my bike, suffering on a mountain or being blown to a standstill in the face of a biting head wind, my thoughts invariably turn to my heroes for inspiration and if those heroes happen to be Brits then it is oh! so much better!  With renewed energy and vigor, my cleats straining as I depress my pedals, inspired by thoughts of 'if they can do it, then so can I,' I fight on, work through the pain and it feels good.  It feels right.

However, in dark times like these my thoughts and feelings return to the halcyon days of Lance Armstrong, a previous hero of mine; a majorly flawed hero as it turned out, and I remember how I defended him, almost unto the last; 'it cannot be true!  This is Lance Armstrong!'  And then I recall how I felt, as if I'd been kicked in the nuts when the house of cards Lance built came tumbling down.  I can only describe it as 'mourning.'  I was in mourning for the loss of someone who had been with me through so much, even though I'd never met the man, he'd been with me, egging me on, telling me to fight and persist on so many occasions that when it all fell apart I felt as if I'd lost a training partner.  I was sad, for myself, for all the others who felt like me, sad for the sport, and sad for him that he felt the need to lie and cheat above that of telling the truth and winning (or losing) with honour.

Then came our Brad, a man who I have written about on my blog here, describing him as, in my opinion, the greatest British sportsman ever.  His achievements are unparalleled across so many disciplines in cycling that I felt we should never see his like again.  So many of his later successes gained, in part, through the guidance and leadership of Dave Brailsford, the cycling guru who revived British cycling, breathing new life into it's comatose form.  And these successes, under the flag of Team Sky's sponsorship, were achieved in the wake of the Armstrong debacle and after much fanfare about the teams high minded ethics and clean, drug free competition that it championed, were a revelation.  My heroes were reborn, this time under a cloud free sky, and what was more, they were British.

As Brad's time ended, the Froome era began.  A period of unrivalled success in the Tour and then last year in the Vuelta.  I was on cloud 9.  Then came the adverse test results, the samples taken as it happens, two days after Froome and the Vuelta had passed through the village in Spain where I live!  I still had my Team Sky, 'Come on Froomey' banner flying in my garden when it all came to light!

And now, after the jiffy bag scandal, comes the latest bad news about Wiggins, Brailsford and Team Sky.

I was watching Paris-Nice yesterday and it felt like I was once again watching a funeral cortege pass me by.  I was numb.  There was no enjoyment to be had.

Okay, I understand that the cases against Froome, Wiggins, Team Sky and Brailsford are , as yet, unproven, but really, is that the point?  The sense of being let-down by my cycling heroes, yet again, is palpable.  Right or wrong, for me the point is that they have risked so much.  Their reputations.  The reputations of their team mates, their friends, their families.  The reputation of British cycling and British sport as a whole.  It wouldn't feel so bad if they hadn't held held themselves up as paragons of drug-free virtue.  But they did!  And because of that they should have made sure that, in a sport as tainted as cycling is by its history, they were spotless all the way down the line.  Did they really think that just because they said they were clean that the doping agencies would go look elsewhere?  No, their high idealistic stance invited close scrutiny and they should have been cleaner than clean as a consequence.

It seems they were not.

Regardless of how things turn out now, I can never feel the same about any of them.  In my head, as in everyone else's I'm sure, there will always be the questions if they go onto further success.  Once again I'm burying my heroes down deep and my ride today will be all the lonelier for that.  And I'm sad it has come this.  I know how you feel Vickie Pendleton.  I understand completely.

My Vuelta banner has now been cremated and another happy memory has become ash.


PS.  The UCI must, I believe share a portion of the blame.  As to how much...it is not for me to say.  They need to set and enforce a much stricter set of rules, such as, basic medical standards and record keeping for all team riders.  These should be, within reason, made available to us, the fans, who can then scrutinise and pick apart the way cyclists do the amazing things they do.  Transparency is surely the only way to go.  Cut out the grey areas, tighten the rules, cut off the rough edges and let's take cycling forward in a clean, honest and moral way.  If that mens that standards suffer for a perios, then so be it, it is a price worth paying.

Cycling must change if it is to survive as an international sport.  Every sport is nothing without the fans and the fans will be leaving cycling in droves if the negative revelations continue.

Is Andy Murray the Greatest British Sports Star Ever?

On the face of it, deciding if Andy Murray is the greatest British Sports Star ever was a relatively easy question to answer.  For me the answer is a resounding 'yes'!

No doubt there would be many out there who would disagree.  There are of course many outstanding candidates.  The two biggest hurdles though in examining a question such as this is how do you possibly compare individuals (even if they competed in the same sporting arena) across generations and secondly, across sporting fields?  And in truth, there is no viable comparative method that enables one to do so with any sort of validity; it really is a matter of one's own perception of a particular sport as well as cross-generational, sporting prowess, and my perception may be vastly different to the next guy's, and one can really only have an opinion if one has been around long enough to witness sporting achievement across generations and across various sporting arenas.  For example, I can't reasonably compare Andy Murray to Fred Perry, except on paper, simply because I didn't see Fred Perry play.  But what I can say for sure is that the game Perry played might be, in theory the same game that Murray now plays, but in practice they are vastly different.

Andy Murray winning this years Wimbledon Men's Singles

To be blunt, if not controversial for a second, when Perry played tennis was a game that was played by an elite minority.  It certainly wasn't a game that Andy Murray, had he been around in the 1930's, would probably have had a chance to play, let alone play often enough to be able to gain any sort of prowess.  He just wouldn't have had access to the courts, the money or the opportunities.  So tennis back then was a competition between (for want of a better word) gentlemen and so the level of competition, though undoubtedly high for the time, was limited by comparison.  That said, a player in any generation can only beat those against whom he competes and Fred Perry was thus, a great Champion, but that was then and he remains a Champion of the times and his talent, no matter how great, cannot be compared to that of Murray who competes in a world very different from that inhabited by Perry.  The levels of competition and professionalism that the best tennis players in the world have to achieve now is immense and literally bears no comparison to generations past, thus for me at least, Murray's achievement's in winning 3 Grand Slams (2 of course at Wimbledon now) in the modern game is a simply mind boggling feat and far superior to that of (with all due respect) Perry, especially given that Murray has been I would suggest, up against (arguably) the greatest players in the world of this or any other generation, namely Roger Federer, Raphael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.

It is hard to imagine there will ever be such a generation of greats in tennis or for that matter, any other sport, who will all be around at the same time with such rampant success.  At any other time time Murray would surely have won more than 3 Slams had he not had the misfortune (?) to be at the top his game at the same time as perhaps the three greatest players of all time.  This as much as anything leads me to say Murray is the greatest British star of all time.

But what of other modern British sports stars, and there are many to choose from across a wide range of sports, all of whom rightly deserve similar accolades for their sporting achievements.  Stars such as Steve Redgrave (rowing), Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome, Vicky Pendleton (cycling), Lester Piggott, Tony McCoy (horse racing), Joe Calzaghe (boxing), Mo Farah, Seb Coe, Paula Radcliffe (athletics), Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton (football), Adam Peaty (swimming), Jackie Stewart, Lewis Hamilton, Barry Sheene (motor sport), Ben Ainslie (sailing) are just some of whom one might consider in competition with Murray and all of whom, for one reason or another, I discounted.   Here's why....

Mo Farah

When considering this question I considered various criteria and within those various interim factors:

• longevity (level of achievement over time, consistency, competition over time)
• sporting arena (team sport or individual; injury risk)
• place in the British sports fans psyche (i.e. level of attachment or emotion) 

In considering sporting longevity (or success over time) one has to adjust ones expectations for particular sports; for example, in swimming for example, competitors usually come to the fore at a relatively young age (i.e. late teens, early 20's) and may have a career that lasts 10 years if they are truly lucky, whereas a jockey may begin at a similar age but can reasonably be expected to continue for double that time, sometimes longer, therefore in terms of sporting longevity expectations needs to be adjusted accordingly.

Ben Ainslie

In examining various sporting arenas and the success of competitors within that sphere one needs to look at different aspects of each sport and thus, each sporting star.  For example, in football it is relatively easy to determine who a great player is (and who is not) and to determine their level of success, but since it is a team game can one reasonably say that a great player would have been rated so if the team about him was not also a large part of the equation?  By that I mean, Leo Messi is arguably the greatest of all time, but would he have achieved the same levels of recognition and success had he not had an Iniesta, a Javi, a Puyol, etc playing alongside him?  So success in a team game is to a (larger) extent dependent upon the other members of the team than in say boxing, or tennis, where performance is purely down to the individual.  That is not to say that boxers and tennis players don't have teams because they do, but in the end the performance is down to the individual.

In some sports as well the chances of sustaining an injury (serious, career-ending or otherwise) are (arguably) more likely than in others; a boxer for example, is far more likely to sustain injuries than say an oarsman/woman during competition, and in motor sports those injuries may not just threaten a career but also the competitors life.  Would Ayrton Senna have gone on to become the greatest driver of all time had he not lost his life so tragically and so young?  But then a racing driver is far less likely to sustain a torn hamstring during training than say an athlete, so risk assessments across sports are very difficult to make and, I would argue, highly subjective.  

 

The final part of my analysis concerns a sports stars place in the British sports fans hearts, or how attached the public becomes to an individual.  For example, David Beckham is perhaps one of the most popular and loved British sports stars of all time, in spite of, relatively speaking, only limited success on the pitch. Whereas Chris Froome, a naturalised Brit born in Kenya, will have to work much harder to gain a foothold in the public's hearts, despite having won the Tour de France twice and may yet go on to become one of the greatest grand tour riders of all time.

Bradley Wiggins in Tour winners yellow jersey.

And so I come down to my selection process.  Despite all the wonderful names above only a few leapt out at me as possible contenders for the title of Britain's greatest sports star.  They were Steve Redgrave, Ben Ainslie, Bradley Wiggins, Mo Farah and of course, Andy Murray.

Taking each in turn I shall give the reason why they didn't make my final cut.  Steve Redgrave I discounted because his success was to a lesser or greater extent dependent upon his team members without whom he may not have achieved such recognition.  Mo Farah, who according to Brendan Foster is the greatest, I discounted because despite all of his success I believe greatness in athletics is largely measured by the number of records he breaks, and rightly or wrongly, Mo has always been a pure racer motivated by medals and not times, and so in my mind has never scaled the heights that he perhaps might have.  Ben Ainslie has never gained the place in British hearts that other sports stars may have simply because sailing is not perhaps an ideal spectator sport and so public recognition has passed him by somewhat.  And to a lesser extent the same may be true of Bradley Wiggins who (in my reckoning came a very close second to Andy and) has never gained the public recognition I believe he deserves because cycling, as a TV sport is not as viewer friendly as say tennis.

Wiggins is, however, in my opinion the greatest cyclist Britain has produced.  The range of his successes is truly staggering reaching across a multitude of track events at both Worlds and Olympics, as well as untold success on the roads culminating in his 2011 success in becoming the first British winner of the Tour de France and all this stretching over an international career that has lasted almost 20 years and is still ongoing.

But in the end he will never gain the same place in British hearts as Andy Murray simply because tennis is a much more approachable and armchair friendly sport than say an individual time trial event!

So by process of elimination I come to the inevitable conclusion that Andy Murray is the greatest sports star that Britain has ever produced.

What do you think?  Am I right or wrong?