There was a moment during last month’s Ride London cycle race that will stay with me more than any other. It wasn’t the sight of that finish line on Tower Bridge, glorious as it was after 100 miles; nor was it the first sip of that post-finish pint, much as I’d been dreaming of it all the way round. It was a moment about 50 miles in, lying on the grass somewhere in the Essex countryside, when I took in the sight of ordinary people, men and women, old and young, black and white; hundreds if not thousands of them, all dressed in helmets and Lycra and popping electrolytes as far as the eye could see.
The reason this merry scene stopped me in my tracks isn’t that I have a thing for tight sports clothing or helmet hair. It was that it felt like a flicker of what cycling in London could look like, in some parallel universe, if cars didn’t exist and those on two wheels actually looked like a cross-section of the city.
My utopian dream was shattered when I returned to the cycle lanes of south London two mornings later. Ah, back to the usual ratio, then: me and a dozen or so middle-aged-men in Rapha.
I have nothing against Rapha (the brand that has essentially become a cyclists’ uniform) or the MAMIL brigade but what happened to the rest of my fellow ladies in Lycra? The mums riding with their daughters. The groups of girlies gossiping over their pink handlebar tape. The retirees with real bodies doing their bit for charity. They were all there riding next to me, smiling and high-fiving through Epping Forest on their way back to Westminster. Yet two days later it was as though I made it all up.
There are, of course, many of us still brave (stupid?) enough to take to the capital on two wheels. But despite it being a decade since then-mayor Boris Johnson’s Vision for Cycling in London plan to make the sport more accessible, we women are still in the minority. Most mornings my bike lane is at least 70 per cent male and 90 per cent white — a depressingly accurate reflection of TfL’s recent finding that cyclists in the capital are overwhelmingly more likely to be male than female, be aged 24-44 and to be white than Asian or black.
The cost-of-living crisis certainly hasn’t helped this appalling ratio. Riding to work should, in theory, save us money as well as time pressed up against someone’s sweaty back, but you’re unlikely to find a bike for less than a couple of hundred pounds in the capital — not exactly affordable, when theft rates mean you’ll probably have to replace it every couple of years (RIP to my trusty no-one-will-ever-steal-this commuter bike, finally stolen last month).
Hiring is hardly a sustainable option, either. Last week a 12-minute Lime Bike to Brixton cost me £7 — just a pound less than an Uber, and much less safe. Studies show that female cyclists are at greater risk from lorry deaths than male cyclists and twice as likely to face near misses or harassment. Drivers are also reportedly 3.8 times more likely to pass female cyclists too closely than they would male cyclists. It’s no wonder that Ride London — the one day of the year you can cycle on closed roads in the capital — is so much more female-heavy than the other 364.
How do we change this? Finding a non-car-related sponsor for Ride London would be a good start. Having Ford’s logo all over this year’s posters certainly didn’t help the sport’s well-off white male image. In the meantime, how about mayor of London Sadiq Khan and his potential successor introduce some cycling measures that actually improve accessibility, like bike lanes that genuinely feel protected and schemes that actually make the sport affordable?
A day of car-free cycling each May is heaven, but we shouldn’t have to pay £100 for the privilege. We all deserve to ride in that wonderfully diverse peloton of cyclists 365 days a year.
Calling all blondes: take care of your hair in the pool
Two years ago it was the unicorn. Before that it was the flamingo. The pool float of choice for summer 2023, according to forecasters? A Barbie golf cart complete with a matching pool towel and swimsuit in tribute to the new Margot Robbie movie.
Teasers for the film suggest we’ll see plenty of Robbie splashing about in pools and that she’ll even suffer an “existential crisis” as she heads into the real world, asking her friends “Have you guys ever thought about dying?” before she goes.
If my recent visits to the lidos of south London are anything to go by, Barbie might not need to worry about drowning but she might want to consider a much more pressing reality facing blondes in pools this summer: that of the chlorine turning our hair green, a crisis that I faced just last week, 24 hours before acting as a bridesmaid.
Barbie, hope you’re reading this. Have you ever thought about dye-ing?
