Bradley Wiggins Has A Lot To Answer For

It won’t have escaped many people’s attention that Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France on Sunday – the first British cyclist ever to achieve that. Obviously, he’s a superb sportsman and is fully deserving of his title. But that’s Bradley Wiggins…

However, what people may not realise is the sudden spawning of a million wannabe-Bradleys who haven’t got a clue what they’re doing. The number of ageing Spandex boys out on the roads yesterday was dramatically greater than usual. And it has carried over into today.

I’m not talking about people on normal bikes – though they’re bad enough. I’m talking full-on, 5mm wide wheels, Zentai-suited, stupid hat… the lot.

From 9am this morning until 8pm tonight the roads were full of them – and during the rush hour the idiots were using main roads instead of the cycle routes that the councils have spent millions on for them.

Bradley Wiggins apparently has only 4% body fat. The wannabes have only 4% of the intelligence of other baboons, as they attempt to take drinks from their frame-mounted bottles on narrow country roads, wobbling all over as cars held up behind try to get past, or slowing down to stop and investigate some “mechanical problem” in the middle of a busy light-controlled crossroads. And those are two real examples that I witnessed today.

Many of them were riding home from work at that time, I would imagine. You can just guess at how clever they thought themselves as they donned their Spiderman suits to look like Bradley and walked past all the secretaries in the office. And all the secretaries going “look at that prat” under their breath to each other.

Because they ARE prats. Most of them KNOW they are in the way of traffic, and they STAY in the way deliberately. The ones that DON’T know are just a danger to themselves and all around them.

The BBC is wetting its britches over Bradley’s triumph. I don’t think they’ve mentioned cycling more than a handful of times since the last Olympics, but since it became clear that the Tour de France title was won they haven’t shut up about it. This morning, even they started on about the wannabes – apparently they’re known as MAMLs – Middle Aged Men in Lycra – so I’m not the only one to have noticed this copycat behaviour (though I did observe it as long ago as March 2010).

Any motorists reading: be warned. If you hit one of the idiots you’ll get the book thrown at you. So be careful.

Update: Congratulations obviously go to Bradley for his Olympic gold medal today (1 August 2012) – but again, there was a noticeable increase in non-aerodynamic spandex-clad wallies weaving all over the roads this evening. And the hits on this particular post have also skyrocketed.

There’s obviously a lot of wannabe Bradleys out there getting ready to head on out…