Don’t we all love an ill-informed TV panel discussion about cycling?
Over the years, we’ve been treated to plenty of frothing bike-themed gibberish on morning shows and news debates, from Richard Madeley, Timmy Mallett, and Howard Cox going at it over cycling number plates to Judge Rinder chatting cycle insurance and Mr Loophole’s biweekly tour of any TV or radio studio that will have him.
But, like they do in most things, the Australians have upped the ante this week, airing their own panel discussion/diatribe about cycling that was so bizarre – and frankly, so unwarranted – that it would leave even Madeley, Piers Morgan, and Mike Graham blushing (alright, maybe not Mike Graham).
On Sky News Australia’s ‘Sunday Showdown’ segment, where a panel of five broadcasters and contributors get together to shout ‘real news and honest views’ at each other while laughing hysterically for no reason, they decided to show a dashcam clip of what host Caleb Bond described as a “crazy near miss” on Main South Road in Adelaide, involving two car drivers, a lorry driver, and a cyclist on a recumbent tricycle recently.
Describing the footage, Bond said: “So, you have the bloke on the recumbent cycle riding on the side of the road, the car behind him has slowed down to wait for an opportunity to overtake, and the truck – which is obviously running up his arse – has had to hit the brakes and nearly hits the oncoming vehicle.
“Well, the driver of that car, who was nearly hit by the truck, says that bikes should be banned from that stretch of road – which opens up another question: Are there other places where cyclists should be banned, especially if they wear Lycra and have large guts?”
Crikey. That escalated quickly. So, let me get this straight. A lorry driver is driving up another motorist’s arse, and ends up on the other side of the road, and almost into an oncoming vehicle, because the car in front slowed down slightly.
But, in the warped world of Sky News Australia, it’s the cyclist’s fault?
Don’t worry, though – it gets worse.
“What the hell was that person thinking riding… it looks like a kid’s toy, these trikes,” says co-host Caroline Marcus, who obviously came prepared with research about recumbent cycles and their uses.
“I’ve ridden one around Centennial Park in Sydney, you don’t ride one on a 100kph road frequented by huge trucks, and buses, and cars. It is an absolute danger to everyone on the road,” she continued.
“We see it in Syndey all the time, with these insane bike lanes everywhere. If the cyclists are going to have those bike lanes, there have to be roads that are just for the big vehicles too. And if you want to ride on them, get a car.”
Shout, shout, shout, laugh, laugh, laugh
But surely that’s as bad as it’s going to… No, wait, the old white man in the corner’s about to pipe up. It’ll get worse.
“Not some, ban all bikes from all roads, forever – simple solution. It’s the only intelligent solution,” says the obviously hyper intelligent Kel Richards.
“You can never have bicycles mixing with steel traffic, it can never be safe. But they think they’re so morally good, because they’re saving the planet remember, and they’re safe because they’re in Lycra.”
Ah brilliant, we’re back to Lycra. Not that it would take long for the ‘discussion’ to drift back to recumbents and how they’re so morally repugnant, of course.
“Can we at least just start by banning those bicycles in particular?” asked another overly confident, ill-informed, shouty male panel member. “They take up a lot of road, and what goes through a person’s head to think, I want to get fit but while lying down?”
Please, please, could someone, anyone, at Sky News Australia give Wheels for Wellbeing a ring before letting their presenters come out with this ableist nonsense?
“I’m actually quite a keen cyclist, or at least I used to be when I lived in Berlin, where it was very safe to get around on a bicycle, because there was a co-operative spirit on the roads,” adds the final panel member, to gasps from her co-hosts.
“But I don’t think that works in Sydney, where drivers have much wilder ideas about how to use the roads. And I do think that’s a case for bicycle lanes – I know that’s not always a popular argument around here – and I’m delighted to see lots of new bike lanes.”
Finally, some common sense. For a moment, at least.
“But there are clearly some areas where bikes should not be, and that video was one of them, obviously,” she continued, before bringing up “dangerous” e-bike riding delivery couriers, who she nevertheless admitted she feels sorry for, thanks to their navigation maps often directing them towards motorways.
“Maybe we need a bike app, which says this is somewhere you cannot go.”
Or maybe all Australians should just be given a remote, so they can turn off Sky News and not have to listen to this rubbish. Real news, honest views, my arse.
Pioneering bike subscription service Buzzbike will close its service on Friday, with the company set to wind down by the end of the month, another victim of the economic headwinds affecting the entire cycling industry at the moment.
Founded in 2016 by former Apple marketing executive Tom Hares and KPMG management consultant Andrew Nunn, Buzzbike offered members a Netflix-style, all-inclusive, flexible subscription service for both normal bikes and premium e-bikes, the first of its kind in the UK, with single speed city bikes available for £18.99 a month and urban e-bikes for £59.99.
Customers were also provided with a lock, along with on-demand maintenance and theft protection through the Buzzbike app.
The company partnered with the likes of PayPal, Spotify, and Disney, and also challenged the government’s Cycle to Work scheme by being the first to enable employers to offer the same tax incentives on a cancellable, anytime subscription basis.
However, despite achieving record revenues in 2024, and serving over 20,000 subscribers throughout its eight years in London and Manchester, the collapse of parent company Signa Sports United (the former owners of Wiggle) put Buzzbike in a perilous financial situation, eventually leading to its demise this month.
“We have taken the very tough decision to close the business due to escalating costs and difficult economic conditions that have impacted the whole bike industry,” Hares and Nunn said in a statement this month, which confirmed that customers will be able to buy their bike and lock outright when the subscription service closes on Friday.
“It is with a heavy heart that Andy and I share the news of our business winding down,” Hares added in a separate statement.
Buzzbike CEO Tom Hares
“We are immensely proud of the role we have played in transforming the UK micromobility landscape, the innovative technology we have developed, the bikes and e-bikes we have designed, and the incredible partnerships we have forged.
“Most importantly the 20,000 members who have rediscovered their love for cycling through our service. We still believe that cycling can address many of the challenges facing our cities, but unfortunately, the difficult macroeconomic conditions and the collapse of our largest shareholder have made it impossible to continue.
“We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to our amazing team, suppliers, shareholders, and members for their contributions throughout this remarkable journey.”
I’m sure Eliot, Wordsworth, Frost, or Dickinson would have given anything to come up with a line as profound as ‘For the lanes sit empty, mile after mile, But, oh, those council folk ride in style!’
Beautiful, moving stuff. And yes, the anti-cycle lane lot are getting odder by the day, I agree.
> “They’ll carry on with their cycle crusade, while we’re stuck in the mess they made”: Local paper publishes bizarre anti-bike lane poem protesting council’s “new crazy scheme”
Hold on a second, is that you Sylvia Bike Plath?
I’ll get my coat…
Meanwhile, somewhere in the Netherlands…
Paddy’s road to nowhere (alright, Glasgow) continues today, with the Chopper-riding charity cyclist tackling the longest day of the whole challenge, 67 miles from Preston to Kendal.
Before heading to the Lake District, and those Chopper-killing hills, he managed a quick stop at Blackpool Promenade, where it was just revealed that he’s already raised almost £325,000 for Children in Need.
Fair play all round.
Things we really love to see:
It’s been a long road to recovery for the British road race champion, who fractured her neck and hand in the horrendous crash which marred the final ten kilometres of stage five of this year’s Tour de France Femmes, and ultimately scuppered Demi Vollering’s hopes of a second consecutive yellow jersey triumph.
But with Georgi now back on the road, things are looking up for another successful spring classics campaign in 2025, where the 24-year-old will be hoping to build on her third place at this year’s Paris-Roubaix.
Speaking of suffering a lot indoors for no real reason…
Come on Valtteri, just read a book next time you’re bored.
Fancy getting your head kicked in on Zwift every Tuesday? (No, that’s not a trick question.)
Well, just in case you’re up for a midweek suffer fest, we still have a few spaces in our two Zwift Racing League teams (B and C) for the upcoming season.
Racing starts tonight at 6.45pm GMT. So if you’re interested, plonk your details in at this link.
Trust me, we need all the help we can get…
He may have only just officially retired this week, but Mark Cavendish has wasted no time adapting to post-racing life, reportedly setting up a new role for former Hour Record holder Alex Dowsett as Astana Qazaqstan’s full-time performance engineer.
With Cavendish himself now set to step into an ambassadorial or managerial role at Astana, the 39-year-old has been seemingly busy on the recruitment trail, lining up fellow retired Manx pro Pete Kennaugh for a sports director role at the Kazakh squad, with the news that Kennaugh is swapping his punditry role at ITV for a stint in the team car expected to be confirmed soon.
And now, Daniel Benson has reported that six-time British time trial champion Alex Dowsett will now follow Cavendish and Kennaugh to Astana, joining the team in the newly created role of performance engineer, after helping them out on several occasions this year.
Dowsett, who retired from the pro peloton in 2022 after racking up 15 victories on the road during a 12-year career, including two stages at the Giro d’Italia, was viewed as one of the most thorough pros when it came to aerodynamics, tech, and clothing, which contributed to him briefly holding the Hour Record in 2015.
The 36-year-old helped Cavendish throughout this season, on the way to the former world champion’s record-breaking 35th Tour de France stage win, while he also worked with Alexander Vinokourov’s son Nicolas in the wind tunnel ahead of the Zurich worlds.
According to Benson, Dowsett will focus on Astana’s equipment, and has already attended training camps which saw the squad fitted out with their new XDS Carbon bikes, after switching from Wilier Triestina.
(Zac Williams/SWPix.com)
After turning professional in 2011 for Team Sky, the 36-year-old from Essex picked up 15 victories on the road, including six British time trial championships. In 2013, riding for the Spanish Movistar team, the time trial specialist won a gruelling 54.8km rolling race against the clock at the Giro d’Italia, ten seconds ahead of then-reigning Tour de France champion Bradley Wiggins.
Seven years later, Dowsett repeated the trick at the Italian grand tour, this time in the colours of Israel Start-Up Nation (which he joined in the aftermath of Katusha-Alpecin’s collapse), with a rare victory on a road stage, attacking his breakaway companions to solo to what the British rider described at the time as a “career-saving” victory in Vieste.
In May 2015, Dowsett set a new UCI Hour Record of 52.937km, a mark that was surpassed a month later by Wiggins. Dowsett gave the Hour another crack in November 2021 but fell short of Victor Campenaerts’ then-benchmark of 55.089km.
Since retiring, he has raced a number of time trials in the UK, while raising awareness of the blood clotting disorder haemophilia, with which he was diagnosed when he was 18 months old.
Having watched Honor Elliott’s on-bike footage of this year’s Muddy Hell Halloween cyclocross race at Herne Hill (complete with her brilliant satirical take on Visma’s oversized and sartorially challenged TT lids), I’m now firmly of the belief that all ‘cross racers should be forced to wear fancy dress throughout the whole winter.
Go on, Eli Iserbyt, you know you want to…
Cyclists in Sheffield were warned to “be vigilant” after a dog walker reported finding “a length of wire-filled electric fencing mesh” strung tight and at head height near a popular beauty spot, which he described as “clearly intended to do harm”.
Read more: > Cyclists warned as latest wire trap “clearly intended to do harm” found on trail
It probably should come as no surprise that Australia – the land of mandatory helmets, shockingly close passing lorry drivers, calls to fine cyclists for drinking from water bottles, and even cyclist-attacking magpies– has previous when it comes to weird cycling discussions on national television.
Earlier this year, we reported on the live blog that Sky News (yes, them again) featured a debate on bike safety that included a retired New South Wales police sergeant and Ironman competitor who, despite providing some welcome balance to proceedings, nevertheless called for cyclists to “stay off the roads in the peak hour and use your common sense and find your places to ride, don’t put yourself in harm’s way”.
Responding to Glenn Corick’s slight deviation into victim blaming, host Erin Molan blatantly ignored all of his previous comments about looking after the most vulnerable on our roads and instead jumped straight into some good ol’ anti-cycling bingo.
“And the thing that frustrates me most – and while the safety of everyone has to be paramount – I was in the city yesterday… and we sat in traffic for twenty minutes for one road, one line of cars, and there were two bike lanes empty, not one cyclist in them,” Molan said.
“And that annoys me, that turns me off cyclists, who are really doing a wonderful thing by getting out there.”
What made things worse, of course, is that Sky’s segment – helpfully titled ‘Are Australian Cyclists Annoying Us?’ – came just a month on from the country’s only Tour de France winner Cadel Evans making an impassioned plea about the dangers of cycling on Australian roads, after two 16-year-olds were arrested as part of an investigation into a series of horrendous hit-and-run incidents in Melbourne.
The incidents, which took place in January, saw two cyclists mowed down as one of the car’s passengers filmed the collisions while “laughing”, before uploading them to social media. The two cyclists were seriously injured in the collisions, with one 51-year-old suffering spinal injuries and expected to need “lifelong” rehabilitation, while a 72-year-old was left with a fractured spine.
Shortly after the hit-and-runs left the Melbourne cycling community shaken, 2011 Tour winner Evans told a local newspaper that Australian drivers “lack awareness and concentration” and have “bad attitudes” towards cyclists, and that building more cycling infrastructure is just one part of the puzzle with “more education about cyclists’ rights to use the roads and longer, more comprehensive driver training” needed.
Evans isn’t the only Australian pro who has spoken out about the dangers of cycling Down Under.
During his epic, record-breaking Around Australia ride last month, Lachlan Morton revealed he was forced to “bail off the side of the road” thanks to extremely close passing oncoming lorry drivers, while in 2022 former national champion Brodie Chapman admitted that cycling in her home nation was “overwhelmingly fear inducing” due to the dangers posed by dangerous, “abusive”, and “volatile” motorists.
Are Australian cyclists annoying us? No, but terrible Australian drivers and dodgy TV anti-cycling news segments definitely are.
In case you missed it last night:
