(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I was a kid I saw brief news updates in the sports section. When they were done talking about the traditional sports: football, cricket and so on, they had a few seconds dedicated to speedway, and I thought: yeah ok they ride motorbikes in circles on dirt and slide them, big deal. The only team I heard about was the Poole Pirates. I ended up watching them live at Eastbourne a couple of weeks ago. I’ll get to that in a sec.

As it turns out, that was a bit hasty of a conclusion to make. Eurosport, one of the only channels I watch, recently acquired the rights to the Speedway Grand Prix series. So I thought why not give it a go and see what it’s all about. I’m really glad I did. Speedway GP is an elite level competition featuring the best riders in the world, and they compete against each other individually. Almost all other Speedway competitions are team based, where you have 2 guys from each team in each heat and therefore tactics can come into play. Because of the lack of tactics, you get what are probably the best Speedway races in the world and it’s fantastic to watch.

Rather than go into detail about the rules and how it works, which you can find out easily yourself, I want to just talk about how fantastic it is as a spectacle. It’s fast, loud, exciting, is a great spectator motorsport because you can see the whole track from any location around it and it’s easy to understand what’s happening.

Watching a couple of Grands Prix on TV got me hooked, and when we got the chance to go and watch a live meeting with the team I’ve heard about as a kid against the most local team to me, I jumped at the chance. It was cool that we got to go and see the same guys I saw on TV up close roaring past me at 60 or 70 mph only a couple of metres away. The sound of the engines roaring and popping was intense, I got a bit of shale in my eye once or twice, and every lap they went past I exhaled methanol but who cares. It was awesome.

On TV you just don’t get the sense of what it’s like up close. The rumbling of the engines as they rev on the start line and the amount of speed that they go past you on the front straight with before they slide into the corner with no brakes is addictive.

If you have Eurosport or better yet, if you’re within reasonable distance of a local team, either here in the UK or elsewhere I urge you to go and check it out. You might get drawn in as I’ve been.

When I was a kid, I had a pair of cheap aggressive skates. I never really tried to get good, and even though I could keep my balance OK, I never learned to do any tricks. Instead, simply dismissing the sport as too easy because the wheels are strapped to your feet, like snowboarding and unlike skateboarding.

Watching vert skating especially looked to me at the time like cheating. It was so easy to do I thought. Looking back now and watching the sport, you realise that the things which I and many kids unfortunately seen as making the sport easy, actually give the sport its uniqueness among extreme sports. Few other sports in this genre allow you to use your whole body to emphasise tricks. Some of the grabs you’ll see from vert skaters are some of the most spectacular and stylish you’ll see. The extensions of the grabs, combined with the speed and therefore height that the skaters achieve is something amazing to watch.

Equally, spinning tricks are obviously easier to control as the skates are attached to your feet, but this just offers more room for experimentation and style. In the same way snowboarders can do incredibly complex and stylish rotations on axis skateboarders can’t achieve, the same is true here. The speed and angles of some of the spins are extraordinary. Watch the Yasutoko brothers, Takeshi and Eito and you’ll see what I mean.

Put simply, skateboarding, like BMX are more technical sports, while aggressive skating has more of a natural flow and freedom to it when done well. I like all of these sports and essentially all extreme sports to some extent, but the simplicity and style of aggressive skating makes it stand out. If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere with a lot of smooth surfaces and nice grind spots, then you can have a great deal of fun. Plus, it’s a lot less daunting to newcomers. If you fall on a trick, you’ve got no big bike to get tangled up in and even though you can’t bail out if you get it wrong, it’s easier to start smaller on skates than you can with a board due to it’s less technical nature.

With all this said, I think when you consider the progression the sport has seen in the last few years, as well as the fact that with more TV presence, what more could be done. I definitely think that ESPN should strongly consider reinstating inline back into the X-Games. It’s one of the founding extreme sports and I think it deserves its place back on the biggest stage. Progression of tricks would go through the roof if the sport was given a second chance.

Inline skating is something I tried when I was a kid, not taking it very far, I’ll admit, but it was something I enjoyed. I recently got back into skating in a big way, getting a couple of pairs of skates and really enjoying myself.

While I won’t get into fitness skating in this post, I will go into it soon, as well as other disciplines such as inline and ice speed skating, marathons, free-skating and roller-derby.

As with most extreme sports of this nature, there are many ways to set-up your skates for different styles or environments. Wheel sizes, number of wheels, frame shapes and more can all impact the way you skate greatly.

Rather than get into all of the different combinations and their pros and cons, I just want to get into what I feel is the future of the sport and inline skating in general. The larger your wheels, the faster you go. Powerblading is all about that notion. It takes the larger wheels of freeskating (80mm+) and combines them with the tough, rugged aggressive skates and frames that can take a lot of punishment. These skates typically have wheel sizes ranging from 55mm to 60mm with 65mm becoming steadily more common.

I think powerblading will remain a separate entity from aggressive due to the fact that aggressive skating is so grind focused, and 4 80mm wheels will make grinding extremely difficult due to the middle wheels rubbing the grind surface and sticking.

Most likely, powerblading will become an interchangeable term with free-skating. They will be similar skates but with some small differences in toughness / lightness and wheel size.

As far as aggressive goes, I think anti-rocker (two big outside wheels combined with two small plastic grind wheels) will become even more the go-to set up for most skaters. What I think will change about this set-up will be the wheel sizes. I think at least 60mm will be the minimum for this set-up soon and it’ll only increase from there to 65 and beyond. Whether you can get up to 80mm and still be able to grind comfortably is an interesting question and something the pros and experts will tell us at some point. There will come a point where the wheels just get too big to be beneficial. We’re around that point in speed and fitness skating right now with the 110mm wheels I would guess.

Freestyle set-ups work very similarly to anti-rocker ones in that they have the two wheels front and back and a grind space, albeit without the extra grinding help from anti-rocker wheels. That set-up style should also evolve to the big wheels.

Flat on the other hand is interesting. Riding flat in some ways you lose in terms of speed (smaller wheels), comfort and ease of grinding (wheels sticking), but you do gain control through having your feet lower to the ground. To me I don’t see the trade-off being worth-it for 90% of skaters. Plus, where I live the pavements and other surfaces aren’t smooth at all, and where you have bumpy surfaces, larger wheels offer far more comfort and speed.

I’m excited to see where aggressive skating goes. I don’t think powerblading is the future of aggressive inline, but I do think that a happy medium between these two styles of skates is probably where things are heading.

2012 Norco DH mountain bike (Photo credit: BikeRumor.com)

When you watch downhill, the world cup’s in particular where the courses tend to be the most technical and hard on the bikes, you often see guys losing a chain, having it jam or even break completely. It makes you wonder why they even run gears at all and don’t just go for a single-speed set-up.

The riders could try different gear ratios in practice and settle on one for the race. There don’t tend to be many pedalling sections in most courses anyway so you probably won’t lose much time even if you slightly miscalculate your gear. Plus, who has time to change gears when you’re hurtling down a mountainside trying desperately just to keep hold of the handlebars for 3 or so minutes?

By the time you actually find the right gear on your cassette you’re likely out of the pedal section and back into the technical parts or flat out downhill where your best bet is to tuck in tight and hold on.

This is true of FMB riders as well. It’s a gravity based sport so even though there are some pedalling sections in some courses, generally you don’t have to do much of it if you stay on course. I get why some tracks work better for short travel full suspension bikes instead of the generally preferred hard-tails but I can’t really ever see a situation where you would benefit from running gears. One brake is also probably enough for most FMB courses, but of course, not in downhill where you need two of the best brakes money can buy.

But to summarise, I want to see single-speeds in downhill racing. The bikes would be simpler, more durable and more beautiful too. If it’s not allowed in the technical rules currently, change it UCI.

After watching this, it makes me think twice about the use of the term Freeride in mountain biking. The FMB world Tour (F for Freeride) should be Freestyle, because this is the true definition of the term Freeride. It’s pure exploration and doing what only freeride / downhill mountain bikes can do.

It’s very different to BMX style trick contests on man made courses.

It’s not that I don’t want people to feel safe while they’re out on their bikes on our dangerous roads. It’s just I want to see more people riding, and I think a lot will be put off if they think that they have to dress this way to ride. It’s not cool, in fact it’s completely uncool. It’s not like I would care if people wore them when they went out walking. It wouldn’t make people think twice about walking in future. Cycling is different because it’s optional. I want people to think yeah that looks cool, I want to go and buy a bike now, not be put off by things like this.

Like I’ve said, I want people to feel safe on their bikes, and there is a time and a place for hi-vis clothing. You can get sleeker cycling jackets that do the same thing, but aren’t dorky vests. The other thing to note: they’re designed for wearing at night. To be honest, even at night you don’t need these things. I have a helmet with some reflective stickers on the back of it. They’re not obtrusive in daylight but they help at night. I have lights which I can attach to my handlebars and my bag to shine behind me. My pannier has a reflective patch on it. I have reflectors on my spokes, pedals and the seatpost to help as well. Unless I’m going out into unlit country roads at night, these things combined are going to keep me safe. No one can convince me that I’ll ever need a fluorescent yellow vest.

I’m certainly not that into fashion. I like to look good and occasionally make style statements of sorts like everyone else, but that’s really as far as it goes. However, it doesn’t take a genius to think of ways to stay visible during the day while still keeping your dignity. Wear bright clothes if you feel safer that way. If you’re a girl, a yellow dress for example. If you’re a guy, a bright T-shirt or whatever. Why not just buy a brightly coloured bike to begin with. A white bike will get you noticed for sure. Having said this, even if you wore completely black clothing, a black helmet and had a black bike I still doubt any driver with half decent vision is going to miss you in broad daylight. I mean black does contrast with the background when it’s daytime.

But my despair at the great cycling public doesn’t end with those yellow vests. I think it’s fair to say that 90% or more of the bikes I see out on the roads, are cheap, nasty and ugly looking pieces of junk. The good quality bikes I see are usually very old and battered. I mean yes, I do see some nice bikes out, but they’re very few and far between. When I do see one, I love the conversations that happen when I’m waiting at the train crossing and another rider comes up to me. I say “hey nice bike” and they say the same back to me. Then we have a great conversation about our rides, and it’s fun. You would never lean out of your car and say to the driver next to you “Nice car! Where did you get it?” and them replying with anything other than “You what mate?” before pressing the up button on their driver side window.

When you’re a cyclist, a proper cyclist with a proper bike, not a rusty piece of shit, you’re instantly a part of a huge community. I’m proud to be a part of it. It’s nice when someone coming the other direction nods and smiles at you, or when they compliment you on your bike and the customisations you’ve done to it. When people say to me “£300, that’s a lot for a push bike isn’t it?” the reality of the enormity of the task of educating people about cycling is hits me once again, and you think, am I ever going to stop seeing these junk bikes everywhere I go?

People keep saying that the huge success of GB in the Tour de France, World Championships and Olympic games on both the road and track will lead to massive increases in the number of people taking up cycling. Personally I’m not sure if I believe that. I just feel like the difference between sport and commuting / leisure riding on our congested roads is just too great. A lot of drivers don’t associate them at all and will see cyclists on the road as a nuisance even if they love professional cycling. I really hope that it does make a massive difference, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

As much as it’s kind of cool that it’s an exclusive club right now, I wouldn’t mind a bit if we increased the membership dramatically in the coming years. It’s about time. There are many other subjects to touch on, like helmets and whether they should be mandatory among other things, but I’ll have to come back to those another time.

Peter Sagan (Photo credit: Brendan A Ryan)

One huge star of this year’s race that I didn’t get into detail about in my first review is Peter Sagan. This rider has so much talent that calling him a star of the future doesn’t do him justice. He’s a star right now. To come into your first Tour de France and not only win your first road stage in convincing fashion, but then to end up with 3 stage wins, one of them on the flat against Matt Goss, runner up in the world’s last year and a great top-level sprinter, as well as the injured Andre Greipel, who fell twice earlier on that stage. It was an incredible debut Tour for Peter Sagan.

There was a slight bit of controversy though that could have tainted his domination of the points competition, and that was when Goss was heavily penalised for seeming to cut across on Sagan when they were sprinting for the minor placings and remaining points on a breakaway stage. Not only did the commiseurs switch the positions in the stage result, but they also docked Goss extremely heavily. A very harsh punishment in my opinion, as it all but put him out of the Green Jersey race. However, luckily it proved to be irrelevant as Sagan romped away from all of his rivals on the following stages, getting into breakaways to mop up points and at one point even surprising his fellow escapees by getting over a tough climb and only being denied the stage win by a very smart and opportunistic Luis Leon Sanchez. The Rabobank rider attacked the group right as Sagan was starting to take on a gel. After that the stage was gone as the rest of the group made him do all of the work to catch Sanchez and it wasn’t possible. Nevertheless, he still duly won the sprint for second place, effectively sealing the points classification.

If just to put the final exclamations on it, he finished 3rd in the penultimate sprint stage won emphatically by Cav, and then overtook Matt Goss just before the line on the Champs Elysees to get second, underlining his explosive speed even in the fastest of bunch finishes.

And finally, you can’t mention Peter Sagan’s stunning TdF debut without mentioning his victory celebrations. Some have accused him of being arrogant but I totally disagree. He’s certainly confident but you have to be that way to win in this type of environment. It’s clear to me that he’s just a born entertainer. He wants to give the fans something to enjoy and have fun with and he’s definitely done that. Seeing him do the run forest run celebration, and then watching his post race interview, you can’t help but laugh and smile with him. You need personalities in sport and he should be encouraged to keep being the way he is, and he’ll be a fan favourite for many years to come.

This year’s race has been fantastic. It always is in my opinion despite some calling this edition boring due to Sky’s controlling dominance in the mountains this year. I disagree and feel that great riding and teamwork is just as exciting as attacks depending on the situation. The race was won in amazing style by Bradley Wiggins who is clearly in the form of his life, and has been all season long, winning three prestigious stage races. No other rider has achieved the feat of winning all four of these races in one season. It’s an incredible achievement for Brad and the team.

Rather than go into all of the stories one by one, I’ll highlight some points that I’ve been thinking about most, as it would take forever to talk about everything I want to.

Will Bradley Wiggins work for Chris Froome in 2013?

I think Chris Froome deserves a chance at GC undoubtedly. I think he wants that chance at Sky but I have no idea on the time-frame he’s setting for this. He’s considerably younger than Brad so it appears that he has plenty of time, but in another year or two, his window may close significantly due to new talent emerging or guys like Tejay Van Garderen or Thibaut Pinot living up to their potential as yellow jersey contenders. If Froome ended up working for Wiggins again next year and getting on the podium again, and then never winning after that when he did get the support, it would be a travesty. It must be an awful feeling to know that you have to wait another year, and you may never get a better chance. Having said that, Bradley Wiggins is running out of years to win the tour again, so the argument goes both ways. Whether they continue helping each other as team-mates will depend on how much Brad wants to defend his title, and whether or not Chris is willing to work as a team-player again, and for how long. I just hope he stays in Team Sky, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Brad helping him to win next year if the route suits his team-mate. He just comes across as that type of selfless champion.

What does Mark Cavendish do next year?

Once it was clear that HTC Highroad was folding at the end of last year, it made sense that Cav joined Sky for 2012 for multiple reasons. Due to the strong cross-over between staff in British cycling and Team Sky, he would be stepping into a familiar environment full of friends and people he had worked with in his early career. Not only this, but it would mean that in an Olympic year in which he’s considered among the favourites for gold in London, he’ll be riding all season with three out of the four men who would be on the GB team for the games. It was the perfect match for this year and so far it’s gone well. Even though he had to settle for 3 stages instead of his normal 5 or 6 at the tour, he’s won three of the best tour stages of his career including being lead-out by the yellow jersey winner on the final stage in Paris to win his fourth in a row there. Not to mention being a part of and contributing in other ways to one of the most successful teams in Tour history.

However, once this season is over and done with, does he really want to do another tour with Sky and play second fiddle to a predominantly GC based team? I’m sure he’d love to see Bradley or Chris win more tours and to be a part of future success in a British team. But if he wants to win more stages and be a team leader with a strong train as he has had in the past, he’ll undoubtedly have to switch teams. Not to mention win the Green Jersey again, which I think it’s been proven in this tour is extremely difficult when you’re riding on a predominantly GC orientated team when you’re a pure sprinter. Peter Sagan won on a predominantly GC team, but his ability to win on uphill finishes gave him a huge advantage as he gained so many points there, and just had to consolidate his lead on the pure sprint stages, which he did better than anyone could have expected. He even won a flat out sprint against Matt Goss and a battered and bruised Andre Greipel.

If Sky had a full complement of riders to focus on GC then you would have to think that they would be even stronger in future tours. Let’s not forget that they lost Kanstantsin Suitsou early in the race and he would have been a fantastic domestique in the mountains. If you combine him with potentially two extra climbers in place of Cav and Bernie Eisel then you would have an almost unbeatable team to help Brad or Chris. Cav being in a separate team would probably help himself and Team Sky. Sky would of course miss having him winning big stages for them, but their job overall would be much simpler and allow them to focus solely on the GC and stage wins in TT’s and summit finishes as well as a few uphill sprints for Boasson Hagen.

We saw in the Tour how important a strong lead-out train is with Greipel’s 3 stage wins. He was well positioned in all of those and in two of them he had to be paced back to the front. Once after miraculously avoiding crashing with Farrar and the second after he was slightly distanced after a climb before the finish. If any sprinter deserves a full lead-out train it’s Mark Cavendish and he’s certainly not going to get it at Sky.

There will be a number of aspects weighed up that determine whether or not he switches teams. How much he enjoys being a part of Team Sky, whether or not he can find a team that will give him a full lead-out train like he had at HTC and his desire to win as many sprints as he has in recent years. With being a team leader comes huge pressure, and no guarantee of the kind of success he’s enjoyed in past tours. Would it be worth leaving a team he’s extremely happy in to only win 3 stages with a foreign team? Maybe if he feels like a burden to Sky but I doubt he does.

At the end of the day, I’m struggling to see how Mark could be a team leader in any of the top World Tour Teams next year. Everyone has a GC contender and I think the only team that could fit him in would be a team like Omega-Pharma Quick-Step. The team does still have a GC rider in Levi Leipheimer but it would be the closest thing to what Andre Greipel has at Lotto. He has Jurgen Van Den Broeck on the team with Yelle Vanendert for the mountains but still has most of the team devoted to him.

The bike manufacturer a team uses may also play a part. It’s been said that Cav favours Specialized and it’s easy to understand why. He’s won on Scott, Pinarello and more but with Specialized producing some of the best bikes for sprinting and with him winning his world title on a Venge, you can see why he might want to be reunited with that machine again.

Overall, Quick-Step would probably be the best potential destination, but even they can’t offer him what he had at HTC Highroad and that probably mean’s he’ll stay where he is. Especially as a team would have to buy out the final 2 years in his contract in order to sign him.

What do the rest of the Sprinters do now?

The likes of Matt Goss, Mark Renshaw and Tyler Farrar have some thinking to do. Goss is in a better position as he is near the top and is certainly an able sprinter, even if he does keep coming second to Cav in big races like the World Championships last year. But at least he’s winning stages and his position as an elite sprinter is secure after only one season into it, having worked for Cav at HTC last year. He’s got plenty of time to improve and get some TdF stage wins, as he’s younger than most of his main rivals except Sagan.

Renshaw and Farrar have more to ponder. Renshaw has had a win this season in Turkey, albeit by the narrowest of margins over Goss, but Farrar has struggled for form all year, not registering a single win. It was frankly a bit embarrassing that Eurosport interviewed him before the Champs Elysees stage because he’s clearly not got the speed right now to win a sprint against the top 3 or 4 guys without them crashing or being held up somehow.

He should probably be asking himself what the problem is. Whether it’s that he’s just having a poor season or whether he just doesn’t have the speed and tactical nous to be able to win grand tour sprints against the top fast men. I think a change of training, or maybe even a change of riding style are in order. He has to change something because in the world of sprinting, winning is mandatory. I’d like to see him and Mark Renshaw get some big wins, but before that, they just have to start winning anything convincingly. The Eneco Tour would be a great place to start unless we see something shocking at the Olympic Games before then.

There’s so much to talk about from this year’s race. I may post more thoughts so stay tuned for possibly more soon.

For people who follow cycling like I do and have an interest in almost every form of riding, the best way to describe it is to say it’s essentially what Four Cross is to BMX Racing but instead to BMX dirt jumping. It’s not so smooth, clean and perfect like BMX has always been.

The tricks are very similar. Almost everything you can do in BMX is done in this sport, just with larger bikes, larger wheels and disc brakes. You can even do tail-whips and bar spins, but they’re achieved in a very low tech way. While you can fit the bikes with a gyro or just ride them brakeless as BMX riders do, in FMB most riders simply run a longer and more flexible brake cable than usual and just let it wrap around the head tube as you ride. It’s a very caveman like approach and it certainly adds to the feeling I get of this sport being something of a gimmick, but it does the job.

I was wondering for a while why a lot of these guys are riding this style now. Does it have something to do with the X-Games dropping BMX Dirt? Did some of the riders in FMB not make the cut in BMX and this is a kind of second rate sport? I certainly don’t think the latter is true but there could be an element of truth in the fact that BMX dirt may be going out of style a bit. BMX in recent years seems to be moving more towards sealed surfaces. Technical street riding is more popular than ever and because BMX bikes need smooth surfaces to work their best, most woodland where dirt tracks are created are easier to ride on larger bikes with bigger wheels. This change is also reflected at X-Games, where BMX Street has been divided up into two distinct varieties. Park which is full of big ramps and transitions, and street which comprises more rails and smaller boxes, and encourages more realistic street riding.

I think another reason for the rise of FMB is the bikes themselves. They’re now strong enough to withstand the punishment of this type of riding, especially the wheels, where in the past BMX and it’s strong 20 inch wheels dominated the trick riding scene. While some riders do still ride gears, full suspension and two brakes, the majority now ride a dirt jump geometry hard-tail with a rear brake only, and a fairly stiff front suspension to go along with a singlespeed BMX style drive-train, complete with small chain-ring. Because of this, the bikes are so reliable that they can take a pounding and not have problems as you would have traditionally had with a mountain bike. You get a more comfortable bike to ride and don’t lose much of the strength and durability of a BMX.

I think that when you look at the sport and the bikes, it makes sense that dirt jumping is going down this road. The bikes are far more comfortable and faster to ride with larger wheels, frames and a bit of give in the front end with short travel forks to take a bit of the sting out of hard landings.

I’m definitely now a fan and I’ll be checking out some contests on red bull tv when they’re on, and I’m hoping the sport gains enough traction to maybe get a spot on the programmes of the Dew Tour or maybe even the X-Games. I don’t think either are beyond the realm of possibility in the next few years.