Road stars put cycling on the track to mass popularity, believes Clancy

You would have had to have been living on Mars for the last few years not to have noticed the boom in cycling in this country.

Medals galore at successive Olympic Games, back-to-back winners of the Tour de France and a sprinter in Mark Cavendish who breaks speed limits and records for fun.

Throw in a dramatic increase in participation and a sharp upturn in attendances at events from track meetings to road criteriums and it becomes apparent that cycling is progressing at an unstoppable rate. And this is without yet mentioning the Tour de France coming to Yorkshire.

London 2012 was not necessarily a catalyst for change, more a means to accelerate cycling on its pioneering way.

A generation had already been inspired before the greatest show on earth came to our capital.

The exploits of Cavendish, 
Sir Bradley Wiggins and Sir Chris Hoy – role models all – from the Beijing Games and Tour de France of 2008 were enough to get people out on their bikes.

Since then the wheels have kept turning as the honours continued and dominance on the track spilled over onto the road.

Ed Clancy is one of Britain’s best on the track, an Olympic champion in Beijing and again in London, with a bronze medal thrown in for good measure.

As a regular road racer in the national criterium series he has seen first-hand how much a nation has been gripped by cycling and taken along for the ride.

“Cycling is just getting bigger and bigger,” says the 28-year-old, who was born in Barnsley and now lives in Huddersfield.

“British Cycling is enjoying record levels of membership.

“Every single Revolution Series (track) meet sold out and we’re headed back to the London Velodrome this winter which will be great fun.

“There seems to be so many more people now coming out to watch the national criterium races. The races in York, Beverley and Otley recently were crowded.

“At the national road race championships up in Glasgow last month, it was like nothing I’d ever seen before.

“Obviously guys like Mark Cavendish and David Millar are a big draw, but interest is definitely on the up. It all probably stems from around the time of Beijing but I think it’s more to do with Cav, Brad and the Tour de France guys.

“Track cycling is great and it has the ability to inspire people, but I think the road is easier for people to relate to and it all started with what Cav achieved.

“And then Froomey (Chris Froome) goes and wins the Tour de France and yet again it’s another boost for cycling in Britain. It just shows that cycling is in a really good state.”

The knock-on effect of British success on the biggest stages is that it inspires people to have a go. Riding a bike is one of the first lessons a child learns, and now more than ever there are opportunities for children and adults to get active on their bicycle.

For this, British Cycling deserves a big pat on the back. The organisation is as pro-active as any governing body in promoting their sport to a wider audience.

Events like the SkyRide, which are mass-participation rides through city centres, and initiatives like Get Britain Cycling have been major triumphs.

“The SkyRide is the legacy in action,” says Clancy.

“All I think about is riding my bike, what am I doing in this session, track or road etc, but when you see people cycling city centres it’s fantastic.

“It’s a great way for families to get together, whether they’re racing or just getting out on their bikes to enjoy it.

“It’s all a snowball effect. If a father buys a bike his wife might want one, then the children want a ride and all of a sudden they’re going out for family rides and getting involved in these big events.

“You see it now on the roads all over the country, with the have-a-go guys and the weekend riders.

“When you go out on a Sunday there’s so many more people now out on their bikes.”

As much as the needle is pointing up for cycling, the sport has, and is destined to always face, two great challenges – drugs and safety.

Drug taking at elite level has blighted the sport for decades, while safety is the big issue among grass-roots riders.

British Cycling have lobbied central government hard for greater road safety for the nation’s cyclists, from getting heavy goods vehicles off city streets to cycle-proofing major road networks.

In-roads are being made but it remains a work in progress.

“Safety remains the one thing that puts people off,” says Clancy.

“Everyone knows someone who has been hit by a car or has had an incident on the road.

“It can be dangerous, but British Cycling are working on solutions.

“The best example for me of a legacy in action is the road I drive on from Huddersfield to the Manchester Velodrome used to be dual carriageway.

“Now it’s a single carriageway with a cycle lane.”

As for the drugs issue, the clean image of Britain’s road cyclists is going a long way to forcing the sport’s murky past even further into the rear-view mirror.

Clancy says: “Once again we’ve seen a clean rider win the Tour de France with a team that puts honesty first and is putting cycling’s past behind it with its zero-tolerance policy.

“That is great for the next generation of kids coming through.

“They’ll have picked up on what the likes of (disgraced competitor) Lance Armstrong has done, but they can see that things like that are in the past.

“In Britain we’ve got a really strong intolerance to cheating and it’s paying dividends for the sport at all levels.”

Cycling in numbers

British Cycling has over 75,000 members (as ofJune 2013)

Membership growth isaround 49 per cent year on year.

Since Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France in July 2012, 22,000 people have joined British Cycling.

During London 2012, nearly 250 people a day were signing up for membership.

Race membership – for competitive cyclists – makes up almost 52 per cent of the current membership.

Ride membership constitutes about 42 per cent of current membership.

Only 15 per cent of British Cycling members are female with a ‘Get Women Cycling’ strategy designed at improving numbers.

84 per cent of British Cycling members are over 18.

The average age of a female member is 35.

The average age of a male member is 39.

British Cycling’s youngest member is 0. The oldest member is 100.

Cycling continues to be one of the leading recreational activities in England. 99,000 more people are cycling now than in 2008, according to Sport England’s latest results from its Active People Survey.

Nearly 1.9 million people are now cycling at least once a week.

Sky Ride events attracted 147,500 people in 2012/13. 645,000 have been engaged since 2009.

There will be 16 Sky Ride events during 2013/14 engaging a further 125,000 people to ride a bike.

During 2012-13, British Cycling delivered 1,650 led rides engaging nearly 19,000 cyclists.

More than 1.1 million new people are now riding their bikes once a month as a result of the British Cycling/Sky partnership since 2008.

Over 25,000 people are currently competing regularly in races.

Almost 3,500 competitive cycling events now take place each year.

Over 17,000 young people made their first steps into racing in 2012 through the Go-Ride Racing programme.