You are Barrie McDermott and I claim my £5

I'm not sure whether it's a comfort or not to know that it's not just London.

I should add, here, that the achievements of Bradley Wiggins and assorted others were quite magnificent – special mention to the female trio who, if memory serves, broke the world record in six successive races to reach their gold.

I just felt myself dreading an increase in people getting on a bike for the first time (or the first time in years) and imagining they were sporting the yellow jersey.



TBH, the time when I was hit across the belly by the bike was the last time I did take physical action, sidestepping to avoid having my foot ridden over, and the bloke therefore going off the pavement and into the road. He didn't take kindly to it.



I cannot fathom why people are allowed on the roads without proper training – you wouldn't be allowed to take any other vehicle on the roads without that.

Wish I'd have seen that!

Having just got back on a bike (and living in The Pennines) after nearly twenty years I can assure you my lungs very quickly got rid of that notion.

I fully take your points, I wouldn't ever ride on a pavement but after one quick little jaunt (well, it wasn't that quick, a lot of it was spent pushing the bloody thing) I decided to get some training.

I think the mistake a lot of people make, especially if you used to cycle a lot, is that you just imagine you'll hop straight back on and away you go and it'll just be second nature, like it used to be.

Riding a bike is actually a pretty complicated thing to do. Well, I'm only speaking of my recent findings, it might well be an absolute stroll in the park, but I'm certainly not making it look like that!

Its always good fun to read of people having a go at road cyclists - tell me a story about a road cyclist behaving badly and I'll rebuff your claim with at least two of a motorist (including those who like to call themselves professional drivers) doing the same.

Anyone who has ever done a daily commute to work at 8am or 5pm will witness three or four potential collision incidents from bad motorists even on a short route, the only time you ever feel even slightly safe is when the inside two foot of road is painted red and signed as a cycle route, even then you're not safe from pedestrians or motorists who for whatever reason feel that the red bit is for them to use.

And yes, I drive a lot too.

As for the OP, if you disregard those who won their medals through technology and with the aid of hi-spec mechanics then you not only exclude cyclists but the Paralympic limbless runners (after all, they couldn't achieve the same on NHS artificial legs could they), and you may as well exclude all athletes for that matter as the training techniques that they use now owe far more to science than to their own endeavours.

So thats quite a ridiculous stance to take.

Sports Personality, probably Wiggins because he seems to have some, probably the two pairs of female rowers who won their own events on that wonderful mid-games Saturday as all four of them were totally used up at the end but estatic and emotionally spent and to me represented the best of olympian effort.

I was primarily having a go at pavement cyclists.

But yes, I've seen plenty of motorists do things they shouldn't – stopping on crossings and not using indicators are two favourites – but I have not had the equivalent of the incidents I mentioned with a motorist. And yes, I am aware that pedestrians also have responsibilities and are not always 'saints' in terms of their road behaviour.

I'm trying to recall if I've ever ridden a bike on a pavement that wasn't designated as a cycle pavement and I don't think I have although some cycle pavements are actually designated as such and also shared with pedestrians (part of National Route 1 on the north east coast springs to mind) and can be a nightmare, as can canal towpaths where the mix of cyclists and pedestrians isn't always to the benefit of either - and yes, increasing lengths of towpaths are being opened up officially to cyclists as the Sustrans organisation sponsors or takes over the maintenance of them, Leeds to Shipley being an example, how the hell someone hasn't ended up in the canal on a Sunday morning I don't know.

I don't see a problem with cyclists using the pavement, so long as they give way to pedestrians. We really don't want kids on bmxs on the roads now do we.

If we give them all a friendly alien, they can fly anyway.

Why not? It's where they belong. Maybe if they were made to do a cycling proficiency test and drivers made to do a bike awareness course then they would get on better.

Treat problems not symptoms.