The Do Village

You like to think you can understand people, work them out. Understand their contribution. But every now and then you meet someone who is difficult to place.

I first heard of James Bowthorpe as he was preparing to attempt a world record for cycling around the world. If I’m right this involved cycling 120 miles a day for just over 150 days, covering 18,000 miles or so.

In some ways attempting a world record involving endurance is not that uncommon. What did interest me though was the extraordinary amount of money that James was attempting to raise to help research into a particular treatment for Parkinson’s Disease. You see while I was aiming to raise £2000 for a pootle around the UK, James was going for £1.5m. Later I realised that he was never going to get near that total, but for him a massive target was worth going for. The £120,000 he eventually raised was 60 times more than my goal. An amazing achievement, never mind the world record.

The second thing that amazed me, I only discovered recently. You see, I understood that by cycling around the world in 174 days, James had broken the record. So I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t seeing his name as the record holder. The truth, I found on his blog the other day. And I’ll leave James to explain in his own words.

‘In 2009 I cycled around the world in 174 days and 5 hours. I never did finish that Guinness World Record application, even though I’d beaten the existing time by about 20 days. Why? Because, although important to me in terms of a personal challenge, the record wasn’t my main reason for being out there.

Cycling is, for me, an expression of independence and self-reliance. For my ‘round the world ride, it was also an physical expression of how I feel about a Parkinson’s Disease research charity where I’ve either been volunteering or working for the last 4 years. I wanted a big box to stand on to point at what they do, and cycling around the world really fast was the biggest box I could find. When I got back we’d raised £120,000 off the back of it; that’s a lot of money, but it isn’t enough. There were lots of people telling me how I’d done this amazing, difficult thing. All I could think was that it wasn’t as difficult as doing groundbreaking research, on a shoestring budget, for decades’.

So while Chris Hoy no doubt is well worthy of being knighted, the real heroes are perhaps the ones that don’t fill the forms in, the ones who aim for impossible targets and getting part of the way is still way further than most of us will ever get.

Well, he’s off again shortly and aiming to ride 300 miles a day in the RAAM (race across America), a coast to coast endurance race over 3500 miles. And you can see his progress on his website (and sponsor him as well).

I met James briefly in Bristol last year (at John McFaul’s brilliant cycle festival). As you would imagine, he is a lovely bloke, quiet and unassuming (though as I remember he did do a very nice DJ spot after his talk).

So here’s to the ones that don’t fill in the forms, and here’s to the ones that aim for the impossible and sometimes get near to it. I really hope that one day we can say that James was the one who helped towards the big breakthrough in finding a cure for Parkinson’s Disease, and didn’t he do a couple of bike trips on the way?

All sports are governed by a rule book, full of technicalities and the do’s and don’ts of the sport. But it’s the unwritten ones that are fascinating. I suppose the appeal is that there is something happening which isn’t to do with winning or being the best but to do with being fair minded rather or just a better person.

This year’s Tour de France was won by the great Spanish rider, Alberto Contador. He won by just 39 seconds. The exact time lost by the runner up Andy Schleck during his ‘mechanical’ – the time lost when his chain came off on the 15th stage.

The unwritten rule is that you don’t attack your rival when he has a ‘mechanical’. Contador has since apologised for his attack in the mountains.

When you share a road with a couple of hundred other riders, there are many nice little details. So for example the ‘calls of nature’ mean that no one attacks when a pause pipi takes place. Similarly no one attacks at feeding stations.

The leading riders in each team have ‘domestiques’ the young upcoming riders who’s job it is to look after the lead rider during the ride. They will ferry bottles from the team cars up to him. In years gone by the domestiques would raid local cafés and shops for food and drink (and never pay – the shops would tot up their bills and send it to the tour organisers after the Tour has passed).

On the ride into Paris, tradition says that no one attacks the lead positions until the sprint finish leading up to the finish in the Champs-Elysées (and even then it is only the sprint specialists who battle this bit out). On the ride into Paris Alberto and his Astrana teammates drunk champagne from fluted glasses (plastic I’m hoping) as they rode. Meanwhile every other rider took a turn at the front and shook Alberto’s hand on their way up.

These ethical codes are one of the things that makes the Tour so special.

The bigger point though is I suppose about generally being a good person (as opposed to just being the fastest) and learning the rules and the unwritten ones. It’s a bit like those gentlemanly things we learnt from our parents and grandparents (my granddad took his hat off and said ‘good morning’ to every lady we passed). I will be watching the Tour closely next year for those little gestures, the unwritten rules  (though I would like to know how the TV cameras manage to miss the pause pipi’s?).