Pedal it like Beckham

I learnt the other day that professional football players aren’t allowed ride bikes – apparently it’s in their contracts. Nor are they allowed to go skiing. Footballers are valuable resources and like any company asset need to be maintained in good working order to deliver a full return on investment. Skiing is clearly tough on the knees and the risk of injury is high, not only to legs. I read that broken thumbs were a common snowboarding injury.

But cycling?

Is it because they are worried about damaging their precious limbs through pedalling or because they perceive that they may get knocked off and hurt? Given that getting caught speeding whilst over the safe alcohol limit is a rite of passage for most footballer it can’t be the latter.

What can be the harm in cycling to get a paper from the local corner shop …hang on there’s the issue. That one phrase sums up the whole problem: why would a footballer want to ride a bike to the corner shop when he can take a Bentley Continental GT?

1. footballers don’t live in places that have corner shops

2. footballers certainly wouldn’t collect their papers, they’d get them delivered or more likely

3. their agent would tell them all the bits they needed to know.

It’s a shame though as cycling is often prescribed as an entry point to taking up exercise or a part of a programme of recuperation.

The biggest shame is that children, so heavily influenced by celebrity sportsmen, particularly footballers, never see them riding a bike. At some point in a child’s life they will have had the conversation that runs

Child - “but I don’t want to [delete as appropriate] got to bed now/eat broccoli/dry my hair/do my homework”
Parent – “well [delete as appropriate] David Beckham/Frank Lampard/Wayne Rooney does”

The problem is that argument doesn’t work with “I’m not driving you to school everyday, why don’t you ride your bike?” since David Beckham/Frank Lampard/Wayne Rooney don’t ride bikes.

To get children cycling, it’s got to be cool yet accessible, not in a skinny jeans wearing, fixed gear, fakenger, cutting edge Hoxtonite kind of way.