The good

I finally landed some Olympic cycling tickets today. No tickets for the men’s road race viewing areas on Box Hill but at least some for the Sunday to watch the womens. First cycling tickets I have even had a sniff of despite “investing” a significant fortune in the lottery for the velodrome tickets last year.

The bad

Being forced to cough up to stand on a road and watch cycling. I know I’m late in my rant, but at the time all this blew up I was working for CTC and it might not have been politically acceptable for the CEO of a rival/partner (delete as appropriate)  body to our racing organisation to go ballistic over the fact that he couldn’t take his family to the prime spot for cyclists at the Olympics. No such constraints now.

How could anybody involved not know it would be a problem? Why not move the course to somewhere that can be watched by real cycling fans who were frozen out by all the corporates at the Velodrome? They had time. Only in Britain would cycling be reduced to this. Imagine telling the population of Paris that they wouldn’t be able to watch the cycling if they had won the blasted jamboree instead of us.

I love Box Hill – it is a great spot, I have cycled, walked and mountain biked round it. I know it needs to be preserved. So move the race, not remove the people.

The downright bloody stupid

Thanks to the CTC newsletter popping into my in-box on Friday I was able to give my new Brussels colleagues the benefit of some public ranting.

“Train companies to ban cycles during Olympics”.

Thats it. Every train operator who serves any station remotely useful for getting to the cycling has banned bikes for the weekend. I live 30 miles from any viewing point. I had hoped some younger relatives and also less “cycle-mad” adults would be coming out with us to enjoy their only chance to sample 9 billion pounds worth of our money. Chance of a lifetime? Fat chance!

Probably get a lawyer’s letter now for using the word “Olympic” without permission. Perhaps “Olymprics” could become the new name for the officials?