In coordinated dawn raids yesterday, several of Team GB’s celebrated Olympic cycling champions were arrested and detained indefinitely, including Sir Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and Victoria Pendleton.
The move followed a marked country-wide deterioration in traffic conditions following the Games, accompanied by the realisation that the cause was thousands of condom-clad poseurs clogging up the roads as they try to emulate their heroes.
Surrey’s Chief Constable Lynne Owens said the elite few probably thought their behaviour was acceptable, living as they mostly do in the North, but their influence was having a major detrimental effect in her crowded county, where the menace had reached crisis point.
‘It only takes a few tossers to decide to cycle to work and thousands of hard working drivers get seriously held up,’ she said. ‘It was acceptable in the 1950s when traffic was light, cars were smaller and people cycled because that was all they could afford, but these days there’s not a hope in Hell of getting past the scrotes and there’s really no excuse for it.’
The problem is as bad at weekends, when accountants and solicitors leave their families to prove themselves by clogging up country roads as they accumulate the miles. The chaos is exacerbated by ‘fun pedlars’, so called because they wander all over the road.
Despite calls from some quarters for the medallists to be shot as an example, it is hoped that as a condition of their release they will instead be persuaded to record videos renouncing cycling and encouraging their imitators to take advantage of an amnesty to hand in their machines for scrapping.
Prior to the current outbreak, the main source of the scourge was in towns and cities, where unruly cyclists terrorised entire populations. A successful outcome to the current campaign will be seen as a green light to stamp out city centre cycling once and for all, prompting mayoral candidate ‘Chameleon’ Ken Livingstone to denounce Boris Johnson’s pro-cycling stance.
