The Week on WalesHome.org: our ignored success
Reflection — By WalesHome on July 12, 2010 9:33 am
Dans le zone a le Tour
WHAT an unlovely summer of Welsh sport we have on our hands. Excluded from the World Cup and beaten by the Springboks and All Blacks. Even the England and Wales cricket team went down to perennial whipping boys Bangladesh on Friday. You’d think, therefore, that the surprise emergence of a world-beating Welshman in the most prestigious event of his sport would attract some attention. Alas, our observation earlier this year that cyclist Geraint Thomas could walk through the streets of his home town of Cardiff unnoticed looks as if it will still be the case when he returns from the Tour de France having worn the white of the best young rider and come within 20 seconds of the coveted yellow jersey. This achievement is all the more remarkable given that Thomas was only drafted into the race to support Bradley Wiggins’ bid for overall victory. An Olympic track gold medallist he may be, but until last week Thomas was an also-ran in the demanding world of professional road racing. Not any more.
Cycling is on the increase in Wales. We have never had a tradition like France or Spain or Italy, not least because of our more inclement weather. But, despite top-end bikes now costing as much as a family car, it is a sport with humble, working class roots. And if the environment can be wet, the mountains provide some of best cycling terrain on these islands – a topic we’ll return to in the next couple of weeks. With the British Grand Prix, World Cup Final and Premiership build up dominating the back pages it is perhaps no surprise that Geraint Thomas’s achievements were crowded out. But, with the 24 year-old joining other two-wheeled talent like Nicole Cooke, perhaps we might want to read a little more about this sport in the future.
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AMs depart Cardiff Bay for the summer next week, but before they go our mystery writer Willy Nilly has promised two more generous pen portraits. It may be the last we hear of Dylan Thomas’s nosey postman until the autumn…unless he pops up to profile other notable public figures who gain prominence during the summer months. You never know.
*** This is an extract from The Week on WalesHome.org – a weekly newsletter available to all readers. To subscribe, simply add your name and email address to the box on the right ***
Tags: cycling, Geraint Thomas
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4 Comments
What about the Welsh professional cycling tradition before the First World War with such greats as the Linton Brothers and Jimmy Michael from the Cynon Valley? Arthur Linton in 1896 won the Bordeaux to Paris race and was crowned ‘Champion Cyclist of the World.’ Professional cycling satisfied two great passions of the Welsh working class: a love of sport and gambling. Before 1914 many professional cycling events even drew bigger crowds than rugby games.
Sounds like a piece I would read. Can you two contrive something among yourselves?
Quite right, Jeff. We never meant to suggest Wales had no tradition of cycling – merely that it does not compare to that of France, Italy and Spain, where the sport remains far more popular and, even today, more community-based. Geraint Thomas’s Team Sky is still relatively unusual in being sponsored by a mega media corporation. Look down the Peloton and you will see flooring manufacturers, dairies, and bottled gas distributors backing many of the other teams. Last year I rode some of the peaks that the Tour goes over tomorrow to not infrequent cheers of “allez, allez, allez!” from the locals. Hard to imagine that happening in the Beacons.
For those who are interested, the great Arthur Linton was honoured with a blue plaque last year by my former employers of Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council. The plaque itself can be found at 218, Cardiff Road, Aberaman. It is the only blue plaque in the UK to honour a cyclist.
Much more here.
You could argue that the demise of cycling in Wales was another outcome of the interwar depression. Cycling must have been very popular because I have a posed photograph of my grandfather who was born in 1878 on a bicycle. It was taken in about 1910. We shouldn’t also forget the role of the cycle in warfare pre-1914 when someone had the brilliant idea of using bikes as a method of getting infantry quickly into battle. The 4th Welch regiment, which was a territorial battalion based in the Mid Glamorgan valleys, was a cyclist battalion.