“What an odd thing to say” goes cycling: Motorists call for “road tax” and claim “roads are for cars” as predicted in response to viral TikTok trend video of kids cycling to school; Van der Poel returns to cyclocross; Darth Pogačar + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
ICYMI: British star Cat Ferguson escapes serious injury after shocking crash on “dangerous” descent at UCI cyclocross World Cup
'Darth' Tadej Pogačar
*Darth Tadej Pogačar isn’t real, Darth Pogačar can’t hurt you*
Darth Tadej Pogačar:
How to train for the heat of the Tour Down Under when you live in Denmark
Movistar rider Mathias Norsgaard giving us a masterclass on how to skip the (imminent) sub-zero temperature warm-up and get straight to Zone 4-levels of sweating…
.@MathiasNorsgaar é outro adepto do com estimulo de calor extremo pic.twitter.com/9NlIf7ZyMX
— O País Do Ciclismo (@opaisdociclismo) December 22, 2024
“Welcome back to the wizard of cross”: Van der Poel’s thrilling performance sees world champion dominate weekend CX action
I’m not going to wax lyrical about Mathieu van der Poel’s exploits this weekend, given that he’s about to do it all again in a few minutes, but the most succinct way to summarise it would be how Eurosport’s commentator put it: “Welcome back to the wizard of cross”.
Marking a return to the dirt and grime of cyclocross, the reigning world champion made his mark in the most spectacular way, winning the Zonhoven World Cup for a record fifth time on Sunday with a performance that looked too effortless, too stylish, too perfect… too Van der Poel.
The world champ doing what he does best 😎
Mathieu van der Poel takes the 𝑾𝑰𝑵 in Zonhoven 👑#CXWorldCup pic.twitter.com/EenG6LV20l
— Eurosport (@eurosport) December 22, 2024
He even managed to sneak in some showboating to enthral the spectators!
Today is the day 😍
Mathieu van der Poel starts his cyclocross season today in Zonhoven. 🌈
🎥: jurgenvdbroek pic.twitter.com/TkaHYzanjN
— Lukáš Ronald Lukács (@lucasaganronald) December 22, 2024
After crossing the finish line a minute and a half ahead of Thibau Nys, Van der Poel said: “One of the best [race] and maybe the one I didn’t expect, so it’s really nice.
“I did a different approach to my first race, a bit less, interval and more like endurance rides to try and get through this busy period, a bit fresher than I did last year, but yeah, I felt really good from the beginning actually.”
“Also the technique was, was really good today, so I’m happy.”
Third-placed Joran Wyseure, in fact, admitted that there was nothing to be done about Van der Poel after the Dutch rider sailed into an early lead thanks to his thrilling bike control on the steep, sandy descent, adding that he could barely even see the World Champion.
“Watching? I didn’t see him much, haha. I saw him pass by once after a hundred meters and then he was already gone. It is simply phenomenal how he rides around here, without much cross-specific preparation. And we have been training for months,” Wyseure said. “But it is super nice for the sport that he is at the start and will ride some races this winter. There were a lot of people.”
Is this the bonafide coolest picture taken of cyclocross… ever?
Gaëtan Flamme, take a bow. The French cycling photographer has outdone himself with his photograph taken at the UCI World Cup race in Hulst on Saturday, titled ‘The Wall’.
Hang it in the Louvre!
Violent bike thief who bit cyclist's nose and shouted “Do you know who the f*** I am?” gets prison sentence
Albania to host Grande Partenza for Giro d’Italia in 2025
It’s finally confirmed: the first three stages of next year’s 108th edition of the Giro d’Italia are set to take place in Albania.
The first Grand Tour of the new season kicks off on Friday, May 9 with a medium-mountain stage starting in Durres and finishing in Tirana, offering a “mountain stage in the city” and featuring 1,800 metres of climbing spread across 164 km. The next day, riders will start where they finished the previous day, taking to the streets of the Albanian capital for a 13.7km individual time trial — an important stage for anyone looking to grab a commanding lead of the maglia rosa.
Finally, the Baltic excursion of the Corsa Rosa will conclude with another medium-mountain stage on Sunday, May 11, a 160 km loop starting and ending in Vlora with 2,800 metres of elevation gain.
“Every race we were both in, I’d pass him and say, ‘Hey Lance,’ and he’d just stare straight ahead, angry and grim”
“When Christmas comes, there’s only one Santa Claus — he wears rainbow bands, and he’s winning of course”: Mathieu van der Poel soars to another victory at Mol
Despite Laurens Sweeck managing to stay on the world champion’s wheels for the first three laps in Mol, Van der Poel with his trademark burst of pace that fans (of both road and cyclocross racing) are used to seeing now, pedalled away from the Belgian rider to open a gap.
Another day of Mathieu van der Poel making cycling look easy 🫡 pic.twitter.com/gkAzlVJMu8
— Eurosport (@eurosport) December 23, 2024
And once he was gone, you know there was no catching him…
Another comfortable win at the Superprestige Mol-Zilvermeercross means Van der Poel is now two for two, with Michael Vanthourenhout finishing third, more than 90 seconds behind the leader.
A victory so dominant it had Jez Cox reading poetry on live television!
To my old English teacher, Miss Jones at Haydon School, who told me I wasn’t good enough to be in English top set.
I just read my own poetry live on TV. Merry Christmas! pic.twitter.com/rDnhCAOfSy— Jez Cox (@JezCox) December 23, 2024
Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado also makes it two for two, winning Mol after Zonhoven
Ahead of the fireworks at the men’s competition at Mol, there was a familiar face at the top spot in the women’s race, as Fenix-Deceuninck’s Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado crossed the finish line to a barrage of confetti to make it two wins on the trot and her ninth win of the season so far for the former world champion.
Sur la course féminine du 🏆 #Superprestige de Mol, 🇳🇱 Ceylin Del Carmen Alvarado s’est imposée devant 🇳🇱 Lucinda Brand et 🇳🇱 Inge van der Heijden#cx #veldrijden #cyclocross pic.twitter.com/Z9XF1tEgE5
— 🚴 Les Rois du Peloton 🚲 (@LRoisDuPeloton) December 23, 2024
Baloise Trek Lions’ Lucinda Brand finished 34 seconds behind, while Inge van der Heijden came third almost a minute down.
After the race, Alvarado said” “I heard that Brand had fallen, but she wasn’t running that far at that point, so I thought for sure she would still be able to catch up. She didn’t, so that was the moment for me to open the throttle.”
“My start was of course a shame, but there’s nothing you can do about it. I was able to finish it with two victories, so that feels good.”
“What an odd thing to say”: Motorists fulfil clairvoyant campaigners’ prophecy by commenting “roads are for cars” and demanding “road tax” from children cycling safely on viral TikTok video
A local cycling campaign with just more than 200 followers has managed to make it big on TikTok, after posting a video of a ‘bike bus’ showing children cycling safely with parents and attracting thousands of comments from raging anti-cyclists who seemed to do exactly what was predicted in the video.
Bike buses are organised cycle rides that follow a set route where people can join or leave at any location, with loads of local cycling campaigns organising them on the weekends to encourage children to ride their bikes on the road safely in a group and reduce the risk of coming into contact with motorists.
The video which has been viewed over 240,000 times builds on the popular TikTok trend (don’t ask why) of using Geraldine James’ dialogue “What an odd thing to say!” from 2010’s Alice in Wonderland movie, with the campaigners writing the text: “We think children should be able to travel safely to school without the need for cars”, followed by a satirical depiction of “strangers on the internet” responding: “I hate this! Roads are for cars only!” finally culminating in the punchline: “What an odd thing to say!”
And as they say, life imitates art — life, being TikTok comments, and art being a TikTok video, strangers on the internet did end up commenting lots of stuff along the lines of “I hate this!” and “Roads are for cars only!” — even demanding “road tax” from children. In fact, two of the top comments simply read: “Road is for car” and “Roads are for cars” — you simply couldn’t make that up.
Here’s a roundup of some of the top comments with hundreds of likes on the platform…
“Great idea go at 2mph in the middle of the road when everyone is trying to go to work. Dossers.”
“I mean you can, once you pay insurance, tax and a travel duty (fuel) like us drivers too.”
“It’s good kids cycling to school, but how on earth are you supposed to overtake when you take up the whole side of the road and it’s such a long group.”
“But none of them are insured, and unable to stick to a safe speed. Driving slow can also be dangerous when others behind aren’t expecting that. How is that safe?”
“This is more likely to get them hurt, to be honest.”
“Keep your hobby in the park.”
Perhaps one person, going against the grain, summed it up better than I could: “Drivers are like miserable coworkers. Can’t be happy with anything but their way and will try to bring you down with them both emotionally and physically.”
Dan Brothwell, chair of Bike Worcester, told Worcester News: “There is no such thing as road tax. Roads are funded by general tax and I think it shows people’s ignorance that they think that the vehicle emissions duty they pay is a road tax.
“I own an electric car and I pay nothing in vehicle emissions tax, just like a cyclist wouldn’t.”
He added: “We have bike buses all over Worcester helping children get to school. The only thing that makes them dangerous is drivers breaking the law.
“At rush hour in Worcester, we travel at the same speeds as vehicles so we are not slowing anybody down.”
In April 2025, Worcester is set to host the third annual World Bike Bus Summit, with previous hosts being Barcelona and Frankfurt, and Brothwell added: “We want to have bike buses running to every primary school in Worcester and beyond. Anyone who wants to start a bike bus can do so by getting in touch.”
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Latest Comments
@Rendel Harris You know damn well what I mean, Rendel. The bikes here are just a nice angle to make their point about how tech has changed over the years. They could have easily used two other bikes for exactly the same purpose. They chose these because they already had an article that looked at the old bike in depth, and because Seixas' bike is new. You keep cherry-picking, to try to win this silly argument on semantics, but the intro actually says it quite clearly: "We compare Jaan Kirsipuu’s early-2000s AG2R race bike with Paul Seixas’ latest machine TO CHART A QUARTER OF A CENTURY OF TECH PROGRESS". The article is not ABOUT these bikes, it USES these bikes to illustrate that tech progress, hence, the article is about that tech progress.
@Sreedlums That's hilarious, the article is literally about two Decathlon Tour de France bikes and comparing them. It says that everywhere, in the headline, in the subhead, in the body text. It says it's "a good excuse to look back at how Decathlon’s top-level race bikes have changed over the last 25 years", how on earth can you get from that to "this article was *not* about these two bikes"? Go on swearing black is white all you want, but you are totally wrong.
@Sriracha They have got what makes bicycles be recognized by the public as bicycles, and what motorbikes haven't got - pedals, that's why.
@Rendel Harris Oh wait, so now the article is only about Decathlon's TdF bikes? Because that's in the headline? That's funny, because in your previous comment you said "I think if you look really hard you can see this is an article about how Tour de France bikes have changed",. So, which is it? You can keep cherry-picking snippets of text, but it doesn't change the fact that this article was *not* about these two bikes, nor was it about TdF bikes. This article took these two bikes as examples of top road bikes of their time, to take a broader look at how road bike tech has changed in 30 years. And my original comment was about exactly that; road bikes then and now.
@Sredlums Did you miss this bit? See the words "Tour de France bikes" there? Easy to miss, only being in the headline and all...
@Rendel Harris Except of course, Rendel, it is not. This sentence is in the intro of this article: "We compare Jaan Kirsipuu’s early-2000s AG2R race bike with Paul Seixas’ latest machine to chart a quarter of a century of tech progress", and this is the sentence with which they end the article: "Would you like to have a soft spot for bike tech of the past? Or is it best left to history?". Nowhere does it say they are looking only at bikes from the TdF. They honed in on these two specific Decathlon bikes to compare bike tech then with bike tech now.
@Sredlums Well, Sredlums, I think if you look really hard you can see this is an article about how Tour de France bikes have changed, so if you were talking about road bikes in general (which you did not make clear) it was your comment, not my reply, that was not pertinent.
Looking at Google shopping results for 'road bike', and then at a variety of retailer sites (Halfords, Decathlon, Sigma Sports, Ribble, Winstanleys, etc. etc., plus a couple of our local shops with ecommerce presence), on none of them are more than about one in eight black or dark grey, and often that's just one of a number of colour choices. So if there are a preponderance of such bikes around, it seems like it's less because bikes have become more 'boring' than it is because the people buying them have.
@Rendel Harris Well, Rendel, I think if you look really hard you can see that I wrote "how much more boring road bikes have become" and not 'how much more boring road bikes IN THE TOUR DE FRANCE have become". Simply look around you, when you see a group of road bikers pass by. Look in the bike shops. It's black, black, more black, some dark grey, more dark grey, matte. And black parts, like on all the bikes you showed as an example.
Exactly. Agree. But that doesn’t give ProCycling a free pass – instead the UCI and all pro teams should be leading the way as ambassadors for cycling as the greenest sport. Pro cycling could be green, but it will take significant change. Frighteningly however, it’s greenwashing that is still the aim and motivation for the majority of pro cycling sponsors. It’s not good enough. Such sponsorships should be banned. Like tobacco and alcohol. It’s as simple as that. Our planet is sending a very clear message through ProCycling – not sustainable.
21 thoughts on ““What an odd thing to say” goes cycling: Motorists call for “road tax” and claim “roads are for cars” as predicted in response to viral TikTok trend video of kids cycling to school; Van der Poel returns to cyclocross; Darth Pogačar + more on the live blog”
No to joined up cycleways !
No to joined up cycleways !
https://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/24806083.plans-pathway-bush-road-a140-scrapped/
You’re right! Outrageous
You’re right! Outrageous waste of money!! Fortunately, there are are people ready to stand up for what is right: Shelagh Gurney, Conservative county councillor for Hellesdon…I am pleased to announce that the cycle pathway has been removed from the proposal and will not be constructed
Accompanied by photo of smug, appropriately jowly Tory
Shelagh Gurney, Conservative
Shelagh Gurney, Conservative county councillor for Hellesdon, said: “I have received many, many emails, phone calls and letters from residents expressing their concerns about security, access, anti-social behaviour, loss of allotment land and access to allotment plots.”
Is this peak anti-cycling? Or can there be farther to go? What next? Will we be accused of terrorising locals, starting wars and infanticide?
Ignore the fact that places with good access for cyclists and pedestrians have lower crime rates, I’m left wondering how many “many, many” is and did they all originate from the residents, or, as in so many other cases, the usual rent-a-mouth suspects.
A tragedy. If only that conservative councillor had read the road.cc article about how they lost seats where they opposed cycle facilities.
I braved the comments on that
I braved the comments on that and was pleasantly surprised
I hope the ones on the kids
I hope the ones on the kids bike bus improved too, after reading the first one I decided I couldn’t brave it 🙁
It’s near the airport again
It’s near the airport again and sure people are going to bash it in isolation as anti cycling, but it was a tiny cut through that in no way promoted cycling, or excludes people from cycling because it’s not there.
The biggest issue there is the a140 its not an area you remotely want to find yourself on a bike.
Referring to the evil of bike
Referring to the evil of bike buses, commenters say:
This is more likely to get them hurt, to be honest
That means: I’ll hurt them, all right, if I can get away with it
Perhaps one person, going against the grain, summed it up better than I could: Drivers are like miserable coworkers. Can’t be happy with anything but their way and will try to bring you down with them both emotionally and physically
I quickly exited that
I quickly exited that newspaper site after reading the first comment 🙁 Folk can’t balance up a 2-3 min delay at most overtaking (hopefully carefully) a bunch of kids cycling, against a whole peak hour of delays from kids be driven to school. Not to mention the benefits to the kids, etc
*A 2-3 minute delay?! * 10
*A 2-3 minute delay?! * 10 seconds and some are already getting twitchy, 30 seconds would be intolerable to many I think!
Indeed, the reality is just a
Indeed, the reality is just a few seconds, which is kinda why I said 2-3mins at most and your probably conservative at 30s, some eejits seem to get twitchy at 5s 😮
For your loved one
For your loved one
https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/24807770.veteran-british-motor-bicycle-go-gavel/
may need new tyres
Its sad though how the
Its sad though how the comments on this uplifting story focus on the typical cyclist hate 🙁
Bloody delivery riders and
Bloody delivery riders and their illegal powered “bicycles”!
How did VdP manage to stay so
How did VdP manage to stay so clean?
Got in front early and stayed
Got in front early and stayed there!
“Albania to host Grande
“Albania to host Grande Partenza for Giro d’Italia in 2025
This is exciting news for all Baltic cycling fans: “
But not for fans of geography.
(I think you mean Adriatic? Or Balkan?)
“How was the weather today?”
“How was the weather today?”
“Balkan north wind.”
Didn’t take long to get from
Didn’t take long to get from “don’t see kids playing in the street anymore”, to “get your fucking offspring out my fucking road” … did it.
Cyclists used the roads
Cyclists used the roads before cars – it was cyclists who petitioned the government to put a hard surface on our roads.
kingleo wrote:
Not only petitioning, but some cycling clubs chipped in to pay for some roads
https://roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/
“Ahead of the fireworks at
“Ceylin … ALSO makes it two for two… Ahead of the fireworks at the men’s competition at Mol, there was a familiar face at the top spot in the women’s race, as Fenix-Deceuninck’s Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado crossed the finish line…”
Come on! Give Ceylin and the other women (in particular Lucinda) the credit they deserve and don’t just introduce them as a boring side-program to the “men’s fireworks”! And where I love to see three videos of my favorite male cyclist MvdP, I’d have also liked to see three videos of my favorite female cyclist CdCA – or at least a photo.