Stephen Pollard • Get a life, cycling bores

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July	27
2004

Get a life, cycling bores

» Posted on July 27, 2004 08:26 PM » Category: General

I know I'm supposed to be on holiday...but really, sometimes people just take my breath away.

As I write this, I have had 14 comments on my post about how mind-numblingly boring I find cycling to be. I can write that we should send troops to the Sudan, that parallel trade in medicines might be killing people and that...well, anything - and I get just a few comments. Mention that I find cycling dull, however, and the reaction is as if I've written personally to every reader to tell them that their mothers are whores.

Get a life. Get some perspective. Get some sense. I didn't suggest cycling should be banned. I didn't say no one should watch it. In fact I didn't propose anything. I made what, in the real world, was a rather unimportant observation about my personal taste.

I'll take a leaf out of the great Kelvin MacKenzie's book. A reader who rang The Sun to compain about something or other was told 'you're banned from reading The Sun'. A few minutes later, the reader rang back with a query. 'Does the ban apply to my husband, too?'.

To all the idiots who don't understand that expressing an opinion is not the same as demanding others share it, I have a message: you're banned. And your husbands, wives, partners, lovers, friends, school mates, college acquaintances, fellow workers, fellow dole scroungers, fellow benefit fraudsters, pets and robots. Anyone who has ever met you, in fact. You're all banned.

And with that, it's back to Goodwood. And a real sport.

(Oh, one other thing: in what language does writing that you find watching competitive cycling boring equate to saying that you don't cycle, or even that you disapprove of others cycling? Perhaps a few of the commenters should learn to read and understand English before making assumptions. My holiday, as it happens, involves cycling in the mountains. And that's the God's honest truth.)

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Comments

Indeed, expressing an opinion is not the same as demanding others to share it. But pay attention, if people knock at your door and allege the inverse, you can be sure: these are Belgians, members of the Thought Police, who lost their way going on holidays.

Stated by: Johan Van Beek on July 28, 2004 7:49 AM

A storm in a tea cup. More people should take up shooting as a hobby to gain a little perspective. Not only does the world and his wife think it is boring but it SEEMS that everyone DOES wants to ban it too. Christ, imagine if the Daily Express printed an article about how perverted cyclists were as it has done about shooters.

Fact is, lots of stuff that many find very interesting is extremely boring for others to watch. Like athletics (zzzz), cricket (zzzzz), dancing (zzzzzzzzzz), Big Brother (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz).

Stated by: JohnJo on July 28, 2004 8:05 AM

I think you came across in your piece as being unable to understand why cycling might be an interesting sport to some people

Which is unfortunate

For instance you said
I know of no one — no one — who has the slightest interest in the Tour de France or who thinks cycling as a sport anything other than mind-numbingly tedious

It's as if you are asserting that your group of acquaintances are so broad that one of them must like this "dull" sport. Perhaps you should meet some other people?

Stated by: Jamie on July 28, 2004 9:34 AM

Of course it was "just a rather unimportant observation about my personal taste".

I just don't understand what the point of it was. Indeed you seem to acknowledge yourself that it was pointless. If it was just a blog post, fine. But it was a prime (and presumably well paid) column in a national newspaper. Well if that's what the Times wants for their money then fair enough, I suppose.

Stated by: alex on July 28, 2004 10:13 AM

And why have a comments section if you don't want people to express opinions disagreeing with you? (in a civil manner of course ;-) )

Stated by: alex on July 28, 2004 10:20 AM

Come on Stephen! Don't hide your light under a bushel. What about THIS?

Stated by: Penny Farthing on July 28, 2004 11:40 AM

Whoops! Sorry wrong URL Try THIS

Stated by: mike on July 28, 2004 11:46 AM

So Stephen, if readers wrote in to the Times in response to your column, you'd suggest they are just a bunch of no-hopers?

I couldn't give a toss about cycling, but I think you're misunderstanding the nature of why columnists write and the way it is written. After all, isn't an aggressive, silly piece like yours - one which is broadcast to all readers precisely *because* it's an observation of your personal taste - aimed at eliciting a response?

I don't think readers are much more interested in cycling than they are by war, either; if you wrote about Sudan or Iraq in the same tone which you write these worryingly regular ego-venting pieces I think you'd have a voluminous mailbag.

What miffed me about that piece was that it just seemed like typical rent-a-rant nonsense which, in my experience, is laced with hypocrisy and lack of proper examination all in the name of a few lame gags. You can't moan that people say "but you like horseracing! surely that's no different to cycling, it's simply a race!" when these pieces are put out in the public domain and you offer people the right to reply.

Stated by: bobbie on July 28, 2004 12:04 PM

... and what about the children being kidnapped in Uganda?

Stated by: Bob Doney on July 28, 2004 1:54 PM

Everything comes in cycles

Stated by: MrPower on July 28, 2004 3:21 PM

I always think a little bit of 'de gustibus non disputandum est' goes a long way in matters like these. If I make a quip about the narcoleptic properties of baseball, for example, I get reactions straight out of a Bateman cartoon.

Stated by: David Gillies on July 28, 2004 5:59 PM

Cycling, like a lot of other sports, has really owed much of its success to television. I don't find the Tour de France very enthralling as a spectacle, but the very idea of what Lance Armstrong and others achieved is impressive nonetheless. Arguably it is a damn sight more impressive than yet another dreary win for Michael Schumacher at F1 motorsport, for instance. I also love the idea of an American wiping the floor with his rivals in deepest France. You can almost hear the French sports press grinding their collective teeth. Go Lance!

Stated by: Johnathan on August 4, 2004 1:57 PM

bobbie - First, horses are much finer looking creatures than professional cyclists. And they were born to run. No one was born to cycle. Cyclists have horrible legs, highlighted by their inexplicable devotion to Lycra. They also have awful faces. Years of grimacing all the way up the Alps, or wherever, leaves its mark, darling.

Stated by: Verity on August 9, 2004 1:02 AM

I ended up at this post via an absurd column by a Torygraph columnist named Sarah Sands.

http://www.news.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/07/31/do3102.xml

It contains such compelling logic as: "In life, you are a cyclist or you are a motorist." Right...

How about "Left-wing commentator Stephen Pollard" and "what would a policy wonk on the Atkins diet know about the torment that propels cyclists?". If said wonk really was cycling in the mountains, I would guess at least a little bit...haven't found too many Left-wing polemics on this site, though maybe I'm missing something.

Stated by: Scotty Oates on October 17, 2004 4:40 PM

Stated by: Erotyka on May 2, 2006 5:41 PM

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