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Live blog: Car passenger filmed pushing woman off bike, Brief history of the bicycle from the BBC archive, Meghan and Harry’s baby bags a Trek, High jumping on a cross bike is a thing + small girl on pink bike (with stabilisers) races police car + more

All today's news from the site and beyond.....
21 February 2019, 18:47
A brief history of the bicycle from the BBC archive

Cracking piece of vid from the BBC archive (but you guessed that) - a 56 year old piece on the history of the bicycle in Coventry.

Top marks to the intrepid reporter who rides a succession of original early bikes including a bone-shaker, a penny farthing, and a succession of trikes – note the trailing microphone cable behind him as he rides along the road - chapeau! Also note the lack of traffic - interestingly back in 1963 what struck the reporter most about Coventry’s roads was the lack of bicycles - 10 years earlier they’d have been full of them he tells us.

Rather scarily some of the stuff he's talking is only 20 years further back from 1963 than 1963 is from now. 

21 February 2019, 11:40
A lavish but actually useful baby shower gift for upcoming Royal baby...

A certain right-leaning tabloid's stalking of The Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry has revealed that their child will have a brand new Trek kid's bike to get around on thanks to a generous/very rich guest to Meghan's baby shower. 
It’s not the first time the Royals has been lavished with a bicycle… back in 2011 Boris Johnson presented Prince William and then fiancée Kate Middleton a £500 tandem ‘Boris bike’ ahead of their wedding back in 2011 – which received criticism as he insisted that TfL funded the cost of the bike. If only spending a few hundred quid of public money on a bike was our biggest Boris-related financial problem nowadays…

If you're thinking of getting your nipper's first bike or have enough cash to buy one for someone's baby shower too, you can find some info on the very capable Trek Wahoo plus 16 more of our best kid's bike picks in our buyer's guide here

21 February 2019, 12:39
Video of woman being pushed off her bike by car passenger surfaces on Twitter

The shocking clip shows a man lean out of a car window and push a woman into a hedge. 

We spotted the original footage yesterday evening when it was retweeted by Twitter user Ivan Brasso. The post he was retweeting was subsequently deleted - but not before Irish website Sticky Bottle grabbed it and posted it again.

We're unsure if the woman was ok following the incident, although in the comments someone claims the police have been informed. The offender's face is reasonably clear. 

Shockingly some on Twitter are openly expressing their amusement at the clip, including the 'person' below who when asked how he would feel if this was his mum replied: "I’d have disowned her long ago for being a cyclist!". We'll be following up to see if the offender is brought to justice. 

21 February 2019, 12:14
Meussen wins CX high jump at CX Masters in Waregem

You know the cyclocross race that we told you about in yesterday's blog? Well, Tom Meussen won the famous (in Belgium) high jump competition, equalling the competition record of 80cm!

Retiring British rider Helen Wyman won the Women's race with Belgian National Champion Toon Aerts winning the Men's event.

21 February 2019, 10:57
Now THAT is a rad paint job!
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#opencycle #cookpaintworks

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21 February 2019, 09:06
Chris Froome pulls out of UAE Tour

Froome said he underestimated the efforts he put out during a couple of hard weeks in Colombia, and Sky's team will now be led by Michał Kwiatkowski and Gianni Moscon for the UAE Tour. 

21 February 2019, 08:27
Capture.PNG
Would you care if your bike got stolen? (spoiler... yes)

On Tuesday's blog we ran a poll asking you if you would actually care if your bike got stolen - being as a fair few of you will have some level of insurance and will be able to get some sort of replacement, we thought it was feasible some of us might not be too miffed if we had to get a brand new replacement should a thief strike. 

Well it seems you all love your bikes insured or not, as a whopping 93% said you definitely wouldn't like your pride and joy stolen! Just 2% said they weren't bothered, and 5% said it depends on the bike and the insurance level. It seems the decision of the British Transport Police to shut down their bike theft unit in London and the south east will prove to be an unpopular one, then. 

21 February 2019, 08:40
ice cycle crit
The Ice Cycle Crit laughs in the face of health and safety

We've just caught wind of this barmy event held annually in Massachusetts, where participants race a crit on a completely frozen pond. Racers dressed their tyres with hundreds of screws and studs in a (sometimes futile) attempt to stay on their bikes over the multi-lap course. Check out the Facebook event page hosted by Berkshire Bike and Board to see more photos. 

21 February 2019, 08:49
Future champ?

Look at her go! 

On a day when there hasn't been loads of news about to put a smile on our collective faces - this certainly does the trick (okay, a small girl on a pink bike racing a police car probably doesn't count as news but we're willing to stretch the definition for this one). Aside from the fact she gets up to an impressive clip, this young cyclist also displays masterful control of her bicycle - particularly tricky given it's got stabilisers on plus as anyone who's daugther(s) have ever had a similar bike will know those sort of pink Barbie bikes are flipping hard to ride. 

Arriving at road.cc in 2017 via 220 Triathlon Magazine, Jack dipped his toe in most jobs on the site and over at eBikeTips before being named the new editor of road.cc in 2020, much to his surprise. His cycling life began during his students days, when he cobbled together a few hundred quid off the back of a hard winter selling hats (long story) and bought his first road bike - a Trek 1.1 that was quickly relegated to winter steed, before it was sadly pinched a few years later. Creatively replacing it with a Trek 1.2, Jack mostly rides this bike around local cycle paths nowadays, but when he wants to get the racer out and be competitive his preferred events are time trials, sportives, triathlons and pogo sticking - the latter being another long story.  

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7 comments

Avatar
Todd66 | 5 years ago
3 likes

Of course it would be more odd if an American friend of our American Duchess attending a baby shower held in New York would even know about UK based bike builders.

I'll just stick with the happy thought that someone decided a bike was a good idea.

Avatar
jova54 | 5 years ago
0 likes

Surely as they are Duke and Duchess of Sussex there are a couple of home (Sussex) grown bike builders that could have filled this niche.

Avatar
burtthebike | 5 years ago
1 like

Great that a royal kid is getting a bike, but rather a pity they didn't go for the best, Islabike, and they are homegrown.

Avatar
srchar | 5 years ago
1 like

I've resigned myself to always being portrayed as an inhuman weirdo to be mocked/derided by mainstream (and let's face it, most niche) news outlets.  Drivers are herioc individuals battling substandard roads, heavy traffic and bad weather.  Cyclists are sub-human parasites who don't have to deal with any of those hardships.

Avatar
burtthebike | 5 years ago
4 likes

The vid of the woman being pushed off the bike is horrendous and I trust it has been reported to the police.

What it does show is the insidious effect of the msm portraying cyclists as scum, sub-human and different.  Just like they do with immigrants, socialists and any other out group, but since lying about women, coloured people and gays became illegal, they like to set up other groups they can get their gullible, easily led, readers to hate instead; classic, deliberate msm hate creation .  This behaviour is the result.

There are hundreds of examples on here demonstrating only too clearly the complete lack of respect from other people to cyclists, as if they aren't real people, not worthy of consideration, and it doesn't matter if they are killed.

Not sure what we can do about it, I've certainly tried to get the msm to report fairly, but with very few exceptions, unsuccessfully, especially with the BBC.

Avatar
Rick_Rude | 5 years ago
0 likes

Don't think i'd care if my old Boardman mtb was stolen. The chainrings are on the way out, one of the threads is stripped in front disc mount, the front wheel is now buckled and I blew the seals on the forks.

I would actually have an excuse for the +1 equation.

Avatar
Grahamd | 5 years ago
4 likes

Heartwarming video of the kid and the police, need some of that over here.

 

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