There’s something undeniable naff about folding bikes. Endearingly so, maybe, but naff none-the-less.

Naff. Naff. Naff.

I suppose, before I go any further, I should come clean here and confess that my feelings towards folding bikes are more than somewhat coloured by the fact my sister had one when we were children. It was truly a horrorshow of a bike – some sort of Raleigh, the cream finish offset delightfully by the white wall tyres on the tiny wheels. It had molded plastic grips that after ten minutes riding made your hands feel like you’d been holding on to a pair of curling irons. It was hard to make it “go” because the lever for the Sturmey Archer was stiffer than a teenager at a women’s beach volley ball tournament and even harder to make it “stop” thanks to a set of brakes that had so little power in them pulling the level felt like you were pressing a sponge against a jelly. It had also a basket.

And worst of all, my sister – being 2 years older than me – used to regularly kick my arse on it.

So, there, now you know. Phew, that feels better.

Anyway, despite this naffness – and my deep psychological scarring – the folding bike is now more popular than ever with quite literally 60 – if not 70 – percent of doorways on every train into London now made impassable by a folding bike. All of which might be a pain in the arse for commuters without their right trouser leg tucked into their socks, but is great news for the grandaddy of the folding bike - Brompton.

What’s not quite such good news for Brompton, is that the folding bike’s image problem is compounded by the fact that it’s also British built – a fact which essentially uses the unstylish, yet powerful, thumb of bad taste to shift the bike’s Sturmey Archer hub of naffness into third. Because, and I’m wildly generallising here, British manufacturing has struggled to do the whole “cool” thing, apart from a few exceptions, which means everything seems to be a little bit, well, naff.

Look! Alexei Sayle thinks so too:

“If the British had invented the Walkman, it would have been a teak box, covered in leatherette, with the headphones out of a Lancaster bomber”

Maybe it’s our pragmatism that makes us place function over form. Maybe we’re too rational and not emotional enough. Maybe we genuinely would rather be Richie than the Fonz. Whatever the reason, while we were out taking “country jaunts” on our drab Pashley’ Roadster Classic:

Our European neighbours, the Italians, were knocking out things of beauty like Coppi’s 1952 Bianchi:

What Are You Doing There?

But in the midst of all this naffness, almost behind our backs, something unusual happened. Something completely unexpected happened. Something involving Brompton turned out to be *cool* – the Brompton World Championships.

Obviously these *cool* Championships weren’t held in Britain. The first was held back in 2006 in Barcelona by the Spanish importer of Bropmton bikes. And despite not being able to find any reports or pictures, I like to think that each and everyone of those taking part were nonchalant chicos who whilst racing through the exotic streets of Barcelona each offer a casual “Hola, guapa!” to every girl they pass. Sounds like a reasonable, yet in no way over glamourised, and highly plausible description of events, doesn’t it?

Anyway, whatever actually took place in Barcelona Brompton liked what they saw enough to bring the event back home to the UK. And – would you believe? – in the process turned the World Championships from something that was exotic and cool into something slighly less so:

After You. No, After You. No, No…

With its strict dress code of shirt, tie, and jacket the Championship was moved to Blenheim Palace – the home of the most British of Brits: Winston “Bloody British” Churchill – making it a Spanish fantasy no more but a quintessential British affair. A celebration of British eccentricity and our spiffing sense of bally-well humour.

Of course, in reality, it’s also a cynical marketing event hosted by Brompton – preaching their “brand messages” to the converted. Quite literally peddling naffness to people who are quite literally peddaling naffness. But we’re all too terribly, terribly  British to mention that, aren’t we?

Maybe the quirky rules, the location, and the prospect of another day away from the family is a spot on recreation of your average Brompton rider’s experience of community by train/bike – but it’s not mine. So here are a few ideas I’ve had to make the event a little truer to the my train/bicycle commuter’s experience:

• Before the race, the competitors are held in a cramp, smelly, and searingly hot compartment with their face pressed into a stranger’s armpit for 45 minutes.
• Instead of clapping and cheering on the participants, the crowd geer and throw insults at the riders as they pass.
• Taxis pull out into the path of riders at various points around the course.
• The event is only held if it’s raining.
• To win the race, each competitor MUST hold open a door for someone – even though you’re the one with the bike – AND have shouted “Wanker!” at someone along the course regardless whether it was actually them in the wrong or not.

Let’s hope they bring these in for the 2010 event to make it proper British, innit?

Don’t I Know You From Somewhere?

Bringing a bit of the Spanish cool to last year’s Championships was ex-Pro Roberto Heras:

What was most startling about his participation in last year’s event is just how much of an improvement to your performance an effective doping programme can really make. With it, you can win a Grand Tour, with out it, you can only finish 2nd in a fold-up bike race.

And speaking of recovering drugs cheat not performing at their best, Floyd Landis finished 25th in the recent Tour of Utah:

After being beaten by Utah Jazz’s Deron Williams in a pre-race publicity time trail, Floyd Landis carried his form into the race proper, finally being beaten by 24 other riders. Jolly good show, Floyd.

Responding to the Tourmalet-sized cynicism that’s developed in all of us since it was decided drug taking was bad for bike racing (despite the fact that everyone – inlcuding the soigneurs – were apparently doing it) and manifests itself as an endless moan, Bradley Wiggins was forced to release his blood test values.

Garmin-Slipstream put out his blood values for both haemoglobin count – the concentration of oxygen carrying protein in red blood cells – as well as, what’s becoming the de facto measure of cheating, his “Off Score”.

Now calling it the “Off Score” makes it sound a little more Terry Thomas – “Your Off Score’s really not on, you absoulte scoundral!” – than it probably is. Here’s how Garmin explain it:

The Off Score, which takes into account the relationship between haemoglobin and reticulocyte concentration is currently used as the reference point for assessing an athlete’s blood profile. Since reticulocytes tend to decrease when haemoglobin is artificially high, the combination of a high haemoglobin and a low reticulocyte raises the Off Score.

Not quite as funny as it first sounded, I think you’ll agree. Maybe closer to some of Thomas’ later work but certainly not up there with Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or Monte Carlo or Bust.

Anyway, much was also made of Bradley’s weight loss in the build up to the Tour – in the 9 months prior to the Tour he lost 7 kilos. Which although might not win him the crown of “Weight Watchers Slimmer of the Year” it’s no men feat for someone who’s not actually a fatso. Of course, for the anti-doping cynics out there this is a hard fact to believe – and Bradley’s partly responisble for this. Judging by the account in his autobiogrphy Bradley used to be an almost Flintoff standard drinker and his cake consumption is estimated to be the same as that of a single woman in her early 40’s.

Which is why Garmin have been forced to release Bradley’s cake and beer intake levels for this year’s Tour:

At first glance, you might think that this is simply a pathetic attempt at humour, very badly done in Microsoft Paint – you’d be wrong, though. It was actually done using Adobe Photoshop.

As you can see, during the whole of the Tour both his beer and cake intake were very low. There’s only a slight blip plotted on the cake line when Bradley accidentally ate half a croissant. No-one is quite sure how this happened, although it’s currently believed that a member of Saxo-Bank may have spiked his porridge with it. His consumption levels stayed constant until he hit Paris and, as clearly shown above, beer imbibment rose markedly and he Katona’d it on the cake front before returning to a more normal level.

There we have it, categoric proof to support Wiggins’ weight loss based performance increases. We can only hope this will be enough to satisfy the doubters or, at the very least, stop them moaning on and on and on for a couple of weeks.

So hot on the heels of the first drug revelations from this year’s Tour comes the first drugs use denial.

Mikel Astarloza is reported in the Guardian as saying:

“…he had no idea how he tested positive for the endurance-booster EPO in a sample taken before the race.”

Obviously, just as performance enhancing drugs have no place in pro-cycling, so casual racism made popular by 1970’s comic creations have no place in cycle blogging but am I the only one who thinks that Astarloza is trying to channel Fawlty Towers’ Manuel by essentially claiming “I know nothing” possibly in the hope that we’ll see him as a hard done by idiot ignorant of his crimes rather than a filthy drugs cheat. Initial reports that Astraloza also claimed the rat he’s keeping as a pet was in fact a hamster were later revealed as nonesense.

I didn’t do it!

Just like a child with chocolate round his mouth denying he ate the last biscuit, the motto of the doper is “I didn’t do it”. In the most high profile of recent cases, Floyd Landis, took his “I didn’t do it” as far as the CAS. In claiming he’d no idea how he’d become “super spunky” over night, he rather disturbingly added that his high testosterone levels were “produced by my own organism” despite those levels being more than twice those of the 1980 East German Women’s Olympic Shot Put team combined.

So despite his denial, it’s not looking good for Astraloza.

He is, of course, innocent until proven guilty so the anti-doping vultures circling above the ailing Astraloza will have to wait for the results from his B sample before the can descend and peck his eyes out. Even if his B test does come back negative to clear him of these charges there’s still a 50:50 chance he doped. And let’s not forget that when the US sprinter Marion Jones was cleared of EPO use thanks to a negative B sample back in 2006, it turned out to be the dope smoke from the fire that eventually ended her career.

And it seems that Astraloza has been around enough to realise this:

“The damage has been done, I’m innocent and I’m being accused of something I haven’t done. This is a very serious situation.”

I bloody well knew it!

Most worryingly for me, the Astarloza affair has revealed a side effect of the witch hunt against the dopers that’s far worse than doping itself: it’s turned me into a cynic of near Kimmage proportions. When I heard a rider had been suspended for doping my first thought was “I knew it was too good to be true” and on reading Astarloza’s denial all I could think was “Well, you would say that.”

Having said that, I’m not quite at the bitter, forgotten, old Lemond level of showering Contador’s parade with “VO2 Max” flavoured piss – we should celebrate the class of his win with out putting our hands over our mouths and muttering to ourselves “unless you’re a drugs cheat”.

Becuase if we suspect everyone who achieves anything in cycling of cheating, what future will there be in the sport at all?