Someone's gotta say it...

There is no evidence that Fabrice Muamba is a doper and
unless evidence suggests otherwise, it would be wrong
to claim he is one. Why is the same not true of cyclists?
(image credit: Struay CC BY-SA 3.0)

Let's have this one out since so many people are thinking it already.

If Fabrice Muamba had been a professional cyclist rather than a soccer player, the first whispered mentions of EPO would have come within seconds of the 23-year-old's heart attack. Just like they did when Frederiek Nolf, Bruno Neves and Marc Demeyer died; along with just about every other young cyclist to have suffered a heart attack, even when no evidence of doping was ever found.

There is no suggestion that Muamba doped and unless evidence should appear, it would be wrong to suggest that he did. It should be wrong to suggest the same of any young athlete who rides a bike, too. The difference is, cycling has - admittedly against its own will, at first - done more to eradicate doping than any other sport, thereby exposing the problem and associating itself with drugs in the public eye.

It's not known if doping is widespread in soccer and to date only one British player, Abel Xavier, has ever been banned for performance-enhancing drugs - however, many players have been caught taking recreational drugs with cocaine an apparent favourite; which rather suggests that footballers are as happy to put questionable chemicals into their bodies as cyclists once were.

It's often said that doping in cycling changed from the witch-doctory of Choppy Warburton to the science of Eufemiano Fuentes as a result of the development into a big-bucks televised sport with extra-sportifs pouring in vast sums and rider salaries sometimes reaching several million dollars per season. At its top levels, soccer is bigger bucks than cycling ever was - we have seen many young men, in many cases with no other discernible talent, become very wealthy indeed. It is, therefore, ludicrous to dismiss the suggestion that there is doping in football. The same is true of all other competitive sports, just as it is in business and anywhere else that chemicals might give an advantage in competition, just as there are also soccer players and cyclists who reach the top of their game through sheer hard work and athletic excellence.

However, the day will come when other sports too will be laid bare; and it'll be seen that cycling is no different to them in this respect - it was merely the first to be forced to clear up its act.

Get well soon, Fabrice.

New velodrome opens in Bournemouth, UK

That Britain is about to emerge as one of the great cycling nations seems obvious right now. Team Sky are all set to add to the victories they've already brought home from the Tour de France, there's a Brit rider with a real chance of winning for the first time in years, Cavendish is the fastest man on two wheels, the female cyclists are adding triumph after triumph to their total success, Ben Swift is getting faster and faster as he becomes ready to take over when Wiggins signs off... if the French don't start looking at us in a new light over the next decade, it'll be a very surprising thing indeed.

More velodromes = healthier kids+sporting success

More evidence of this has come to light in the form of the brand new velodrome which opened in Bournemouth on the South Coast last weekend. The £750,000 facility, the first outdoor velodrome to have been built in this country since 1962, is world class - Olympic and Commonwealth Games veteran Geoff Cooke was first to ride the track, alongside his protégé Ellie Coster (who beat him!) and was highly impressed. "I've ridden tracks all over the world and this is as good an outdoor track as I've ridden," he says. "It's so easy to ride - it's not so steep that kids will be put off."


This is exactly what British cycling needs - facilities for young cyclists and which will encourage more young people to give the sport a go. The British fell in love with cycling even before the French did, but the French realised that a love affair needs work if it's to survive the test of time and so they made sure they spent money, built velodromes and established well-financed training programs. In Britain, the government provided a few urban cycle tracks and left them to decay, perhaps paying a bloke with a broom to go and sweep the broken glass out of the way every once in a while. In France, cyclists are the heroes of the road and are paid respect. In Britain, with the bike widely considered to be what unsuccessful people who couldn't afford cars used in order to get about, cyclists got no respect from drivers and road riding was, much of the time, hellish. Still is, in fact, and it's this combination of perceived low status and unpleasantness that causes most young people to pass the bike on to a younger sibling (or chuck it in the river) and forget about cycling forever just as soon as they can take their driving test and buy a horrible old Vauxhall Nova. Give young cyclists opportunity to learn the techniques and hone their skills and we'll be guaranteed generation after generation of competitive cyclists ready to go out into the world and win races.


British cycling is in a healthier state right now than it has been for many decades - in fact, it's healthier than ever. Every project designed to promote it helps, even small-scale local initiatives. A three-quarter of a million pound velodrome does a world of good.

Bournemouth Cycling Centre is located at Slades Farm just off the A347 in the middle of the town and holds regular open sessions for experienced cyclists aged 14 years or over. See Bournemouth CC's webpage for more information.