Issue 93 | October 2013
EDITORIAL
THE GET BRITAIN CYCLING story has been a bit of a mixed bag. Sure the report itself was a success,
NEWS 4-8 CYCLE SHOW
The floorplan, the exhibitor list, some of the products you can expect to
find...all this and more in our handy guide to the NEC-based event
FOCUS ON… EUROBIKE 2013 SADDLEBACK 2014 23
This month we spent so much time at shows we forgot what the office looked like...
Sponsored by PALIGAP 2014
E-BIKES Powabyke UK is launched, plus electric news from Eurobike and the forthcoming Cycle Show
OUTDOOR & FITNESS Did we mention we’d been at a lot of events? We were also at the Outdoor Trade Show at Stoneleigh
ROAD BIKES 53 TRAILERS 65 DEALER PROFILE PEOPLE NEW PRODUCTS 63 COMMUNITY
Independent dealer Premier gives us its take on the state of the BMX market
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Cycle uber online retailer Wiggle has a new head honcho, plus changes at Factory and ATB
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Colourful helmets, new sat navs for bikes, MTB shoes, caffeine fuel and more in our round-up
SPOKESMAN EVENTS 83 NUMBER CRUNCHING 94 OFF TRACK 96 98
Carlton Reid proves that wheel kickers have been around since Victorian times....
SPONSORED BY Jonathon Harker, Editor
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Last month we said that popping to the shops on a bike was seen as eccentric. You responded
IBD vacancy rate, Cycle to Work Day gets industry backing and Clarks ramps up UK presence
so far as it goes. It produced recommendations that cycle advocates could largely agree on – which is no mean feat in itself. In addition, it earned plenty of column inches and helped keep cycling high on the agenda.
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A whole eight pages of reportage from the industry’s largest show, packed with fresh products, news, industry trends and a spot of lake jumping
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...but we did see an awful lot of nice new products, reproduced for you in these pages
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So yes, that’s great. As far at it goes. What next? Call me naive, but I imagined the Government would be issuing its response to the report after it had heard from MPs in the well attended and hugely encouraging Parliamentary debate on the Get Britain Cycling Report. That debate was full of common sense words on cycling and was strongly in favour of the Government doing what the report said – investing more in cycling in order to reap the resultant economic and health benefits. Instead, the Government responded to the report with an answer along the lines of “we’re doing lots for cycling already, actually”, the debating MPs condemned that attitude and... well that’s about it, really.
The Government’s lacklustre response to the Get Britain Cycling report is a shame, but it doesn’t stop this industry continuing to be a success story.
With the best will in the world, I don’t think anyone
genuinely thinks that the Government is going to do a U- turn after hearing the words of critical MPs and say “actually, maybe you folks are right, here’s quadruple what we said we’d spend on cycling, let’s employ a National Cycle Champion and see what a success we can make of it”. That £77m investment is welcome, of course, but it amounts to about as much (or less) than the cash allocated to Cycling England, which the current Government axed soon after coming to power. The sense of disappointment was boosted still further by the news of all the cash and planning that is set to be ploughed into the electric car industry by our supposedly cash-strapped Treasury. Electric cars have a long-term strategy behind them, with a funding pot of £500million and a dedicated Office for Low Emission Vehicles. Compare that with the £77m for cycling and the hand-washing ‘leave it to the local authorities’. It’s a shame for cycling and for the cycle industry, but at least we’ve still got cycle to work, Bikeability and a hugely innovative industry packed full of new product (check out our show reports) permeated with a palpable sense of excitement. The Government might not be totally on board with cycling, at least not when it comes to paying for it, but forget them, we’re cracking on with it.
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