Once I moved to Holland of course I found I was in the minority. They love their cycling over here, and they are good at it too. From the regular outdoor cycling races to the confusing, bizarre and seemingly no-rules sport of indoor sprinting, the Dutch will glue themselves to their TVs to cheer on their favourite cyclist, although to be honest they all look the same to me in their tight little body suits, silly pointed helmets and funny shoes. Plus every time a winner raises his arms in triumph I have to bite my tongue and resist the urge to shout "two hands, hold on with two hands!!!" at the TV as my mothering instinct kicks in amid memories of Niels and Carl face-planting off their bikes.
This week the country is agog at the Vuelta, a cycling race which starts in Spain and ends up travelling through Holland. Now I just know someone is going to correct me here, but frankly I just spent 15 minutes trying to find out why and where and for how long this is all about on the Internet but as a child of the Now Generation, if I can't find what I need on line in quarter of an hour I give up. Suffice to say a large crowd of guys would be whizzing past the town, and the kids school had decided to turn out in support to watch. After Carl had asked me "are you coming Mum? Are you gonna come and watch? Are you? Are you? Are you gonna come too?" about fifty times while bouncing manically on his toes I thought it best to mosey along if only to stop him throwing himself under the first bike in a fit of excitement . Stifling a yawn and feigning enthusiasm I walked with other Mums and Dads and about 100 incredibly noisy kids to stand behind hastily erected barriers on the main road.
And actually it was fun. Every two minutes a police motorbike would zoom pass, greeted by a deafening chorus of cheers and totally uncoordinated Indian waves from the kids. Then Spanish police started cruising by, cooler by a factor of ten with their confident smiles and slow waves. The kids were about ready to explode when the official race motorbikes started cruising by, tooting their horns and returning the waving enthusiastically. By the time the race cars, laden with spare bikes and wheels and sprouting bunches of antennae cruised past Carl had reached the point where his adrenalin was just about used up and his little face was squeezed against the metal railings, the effort of all that waving and screaming just all too much. Pushing away thoughts of having to call the fire brigade to cut his head loose should he actually manage to squeeze it through, I focused on the action long enough to see three cyclists whizz past so quickly they were a blur of orange of blue. Was that it?? No, just the leaders.
Thankfully not five minutes later the main bunch arrived, pedalling hard but steadily, eyes focused unwaveringly on the road ahead, silent in their intense concentration. And Oh.My.God. Suddenly I got it. The realisation of why this sport is so popular - at least amongst women - suddenly blossomed in my brain like an ink drop in water. These guys are hot. Never mind your helicopter shots of crowded bikes jockeying for position; up close and within touching distance those cyclists are pure tanned muscle from their chiseled calves to their razor sharp pecs, with buns so hard they look carved from granite. Thighs that could crack walnuts pump rhythmically while sculptured forearms grasp the hand grips . They were past in a few seconds but in the frenzied cheering that followed I noticed I was not the only Mum suddenly joining in the Indian wave, and we all shared a secret little smile on the walk back to school.
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