The most poignant moment of the under 23 men’s road race at the Australian national championships last week happened well after Jordan Kerby, Damien Howson and Jack Haig had claimed the first three places.
Most of the spectators had wandered off, having seen the victor take his spoils, but a few interested onlookers stayed by the barriers waiting for the rest of the field to finish.
The remainder of the top ten would be made up of two small groups of riders crossing the line a short time after, and one of the groups was greeted by a male, leaning deliriously across the fence, punching the air with delight and cheering himself hoarse.
What he was shouting was unintelligible, but his emotion was on show for all to see. The immensely proud father was saluting his boy’s magnificent effort to record a top ten finish.
As the riders disappeared across the line and rolled around the corner out of sight, the man jumped back from the barriers, a smile from ear to ear. The boy’s mother stood a little way back from the fence, shaking with disbelief, her hand over her mouth, eyes filled with tears.
Thoughts of Lance Armstrong and performance enhancing drugs would have been furthest from their minds. This was cycling as it should be. Emotive, passionate, exciting, believable and pure.
It was beautiful to watch for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, despite all the doom and gloom that currently surrounds cycling, parents are still willing to support and encourage their children to take up the sport, and secondly, any damage inflicted upon cycling will be repaired through the efforts of the fine young men and women currently working their way through the ranks.
History suggests widespread support of cycling will always exist, even if the sport continually tries to self-destruct. It survived the Festina Affair, Operacion Puerto and myriad other misdemeanours.
The biggest catastrophe of them all came with the Reasoned Decision, and yet, even with the imminent downfall of one of their greatest ever athletes, the Americans came out in force for the USA Procycling Challenge.
Coming just days after Lance Armstrong announced he would no longer contest the doping charges brought against him by USADA, Tour de France-like crowds flocked to Boulder’s Flagstaff Mountain proving that, from a spectator’s point of view anyway, the sport was alive and well.
And while it is still only early days this season, record crowds lined the roads of Buninyong and Ballarat for the national championships and healthy numbers perched themselves upon the hairpin bends of Arthur’s Seat for the Jayco-Herald Sun Tour, despite the race losing its UCI status and lacking the number of draw-cards it has had in previous years.
Now our attention turns to Adelaide. If the fallout from the Lance Armstrong affair was going to reflect in a lack of spectator support, then nobody told the people of South Australia.
Over 100,000 at the People’s Choice Classic on Sunday evening and hoards of rabid, screaming fans narrowing the road up Checker’s Hill yesterday seems to indicate that people still believe in cycling.
Spectators, who stood three and four deep at Lobethal for yesterday’s stage one finish, got a glimpse into what makes cycling great.
Andre Greipel, affectionately known as ‘the Gorilla’, wowed the crowd with an emphatic win. Led out superbly by his Lotto-Belisol team mates, Greipel put on a sprinting master class, demonstrating how clean riders, by sheer hard work, determination and a fair sprinkling of talent, can produce the type of magic that sporting dreams are made of.
If it is any indication of what is to come this season, then expect cycling to garner even more crowd support.
Yesterday’s result sets up some mouth-watering prospects in coming races. Greipel’s old team mate and adversary Mark Cavendish also won yesterday. It may have been in a different race and on a different continent, but the ‘Manx Missile’ announced he has lost none of his speed or desire by beating the likes of Alessandro Petacchi, Peter Sagan and Thor Hushovd to claim stage one of the Tour de San Luis.
Come July, one would hope we are focusing on the battles between Greipel and Cavendish rather than the lawyers and Lance Armstrong.
But for now at least, the crowds have spoken. They are beginning to believe again. They have new heroes. Clean heroes who are wrestling cycling out of the court rooms and back onto the roads where it belongs. There is a way to go yet, but it is not all doom and gloom.
You see, Lance was wrong. It is all about the bike! And bike racing.
Racing that is emotive, passionate, exciting, believable and pure.
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