There’s a well-ridden path that will be familiar to most riders who have immersed themselves in cycling.
We begin with a modest enough machine, convinced that it’s more than enough for our needs and won’t need to be replaced for many years. And of course strictly speaking that’s true.
But then the miles go up and the interest deepens and broadens to embrace lots of little cycling sub-cultures. And it becomes clear that the mid-budget sportive machine we thought would suffice for any cycling purpose doesn’t really cut the mustard for that crit race we seem to have entered. Or the time trial. Or the multi-day mountain epic we’ve got planned for the summer. Or the 300km audax we signed up for on a whim. Or the mixed-surface cross-country adventure ride…
Before you know it, there are three bikes in the shed and an increasingly pained expression on your partner’s face whenever you utter the words ‘bike’ and ‘shop’ next to each other.
Each new machine scratches the itch for a while. The shiny new featherweight carbon racer with the uncompromising frame geometry and super-stiff frame seduces you so completely that you genuinely think for a few blissful weeks that there will be no need for anything else.
But then the N+1 monkey is back on your shoulder, whispering sweet new-bike nothings into your ear. Before you know it you’re online again, skipping breathlessly from one online retailer to the next, ogling the hardware and reminding yourself that life is no rehearsal. You’re a good person. You work hard, dammit. You deserve to be indulged every now and then.
It could be so much worse. It could be sports cars or yachts or class-A drugs. And anyway, isn't this exactly what credit cards are for, right?
A victory at Paris-Roubaix would have been a fairytale ending to Bradley Wiggins’ five-year stint at Team Sky but on this occasion it was not to be.
The man who has done as much as anyone to transform cycling in the UK in the last few years put in a pretty heroic performance. When he briefly left the pack behind to chase down the breakaway group with 32 kilometres remaining there was a real sense of excitement that it might just happen – that his dream of signing off with Sky with a win at this most fabled of all Monuments might actually come true. It would have been fitting to score that final victory at a velodrome too – a nod back to his early track successes.
But let’s not be too downhearted that the dream didn’t come true. Wiggo was beaten fair and square by an incredibly impressive John Degenkolb, whose strength in bridging the final gap and then finding a winning sprint just minutes later deserves enormous respect.
Wiggins’ reaction was typically classy, honest and funny. He said: “I was pleased with the race, you know? Just to be able to attack in Roubaix. When I attacked, I was right up the back of the motorbikes and it was like I was 16 again, training on the mews outside my house, thinking I was it. That was nice. Something to tell the kids. 'Your Dad was shit at Paris-Roubaix but he was leading it at one stage!'
“I attacked with Sep Vanmarcke with five kilometres to go but by then it is bit like the Titanic when it is going down in the film and they are all hanging on, and people are falling. But I'm pretty happy. I've won the Tour, you know? I've had a good run.”
It must hurt not to have won the race he’s been dreaming of winning since he was a teenager but we hope Brad’s pain is soon replaced by a richly deserved sense of pride about five glorious years at Team Sky and a sense of keen anticipation about the next chapter with Team Wiggins.
