From Team Sky’s success in the Tour de France to the emergence of Strava and Zwift and Lance Armstrong confessing to doping … there’s been a fair bit happened in cycling over the past decade that you couldn’t have predicted in late 2009. Here’s our selection of 10 of them. Disagree with our choices? Anything to add? Let us know in the comments.
1 – Two of Great Britain’s gold medal winning team pursuit quartet at Beijing 2008 would go on to win the Tour de France
Chapeau, Sir Wiggo and G. A shame that Ed Clancy and Paul Manning couldn’t make it a full house.
2 – Team Sky would win the Tour de France six times in seven years – with three British riders
Remember the reaction when Dave Brailsford said they’d win the Tour with a British rider within five years? What’s more, they were all founder members of the team. Our launch coverage didn’t even mention Chris Froome or Geraint Thomas.
3 – The world’s biggest sportive – and its richest one-day race – would start and finish in London
Have you ever managed to get a place through the ballot for RideLondon-Surrey 100 though?
4 – Strava, or it didn’t happen would become a catchphrase – and Strava art would become a thing
Strava? Sorry, what’s that? Merry Christmas
5 – Someone would ride round the world in fewer than 80 days
Mind you, if you had predicted that one, Mark Beaumont would have been a decent shout and, as it turned out, bang on the money.
6 – An annual, non-stop race across Europe would have people around the world watching dots on a computer screen – and a woman would win the latest edition
Mike Hall has sadly left us, but the legacy he left with the Transcontinental Race he founded has dot-watchers gripped each summer – and especially this year, as Fiona Kolbinger became the first female winner.
7 – A rider would get caught using a hidden motor in competition
There have been other instances of mechanical doping at lower levels of the sport, but otherwise, with the UCI stepping up testing it’s all gone pretty quiet since Belgian U23 rider Femke Van den Driessche’s copped a six-year ban in 2016.
8 – You’d be racing total strangers from your own home with a turbo trainer and computer screen
What’s more, you could even try and qualify for national eRacing championships (where the men’s winner would get busted for cheating).
9 – Rapha would be worth £200 million – and sold to the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune
Love it or hate it, that was the price tag on the 2017 deal that saw the North London-based clothing business bought by an investment firm controlled by Steuart and Tom Walton.
10 – Lance Armstrong would be banned for life and stripped of seven Tour de France titles
Okay, maybe you did predict that – but without the 2009 comeback and a very pissed off Floyd Landis who, his own career in tatters, went public on his former team leader the following year, would Armstrong’s fall from grace and subsequent confession have happened? We doubt it.
2 thoughts on “10 things in cycling you’d have been thought mad for predicting 10 years ago”
Who would have predicted that
Who would have predicted that Lance Armstong was a total douchebag & bully that wouldn’t hesitate to ruin careers & lives of decent people?
No wait….
Burtons ’12’ to be broken,
Burtons ’12’ to be broken, though to be fair given the huge advantages for modern riders it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise but it was one of those legendary milestones.
Same with Tommy Godwin’s 365 day mile record, though being broken by riding ‘bents on zero ascent courses that are shileded or wind assisted every day still leaves a bitter after taste. However his weekly mileage record set whilst on the ride is still yet to be broken despite Guinness claiming some johnny cum lately has, but is well short!
Worst of all is that it would be mad to predict that plod/justice system could get so much worse in attacking people on bikes whilst at the same time systematically failing to protect society, more soecifically people on bikes, from killers nd those that maimed people on bikes using a motor vehicle!