The Scots/French revolution

How the Scots provided the means, the French the ends

2004 is European Year of Education through Sport (EYES). A year when Europe is placed centre stage for international sports with Euro 2004 taking place in Portugal and the Olympic and Paralympic Games taking place in Athens. The concept is to demonstrate to young people in 28 countries across the continent the diverse aspects of sport – competition, health and socialisation and the attendant benefits of tolerance, team spirit, fair play and strength of character. Scotland fully supports the aims of EYES and has its own major event in 2004 hosting the Under-21 Rugby World Cup. There's also good news in that Glasgow has won the bid to host the Badminton World Cup in 2007.

One of the best ways of keeping fit and enjoying a social sport is cycling. And whilst the air and indeed the television is generally electric with sport this summer, arguably the greatest annual sporting event of all, will be taking place in France – the truly challenging Tour de France. This event has put the sport of cycling up there with the Olympics and the World Cup thanks to the enthusiasm and ingenuity of France. But equally, without the inventiveness of a few Scots the world may not have had any bicycles in the first place – let alone a smooth surface to cycle upon.

Today there are 800 million bicycles in the world – twice the number of cars. When Dumfriesshire blacksmith Kirkpatrick Macmillan set out to repair a hobbyhorse in 1840 there were none. But after developing the hobbyhorse by adding gears, levers, cranks and rods to save the wear and tear to his shoes there was the first prototype bicycle.

The next significant evolution – the pedal cycle – took place in Paris in the mid 1860s and one of the possible inventors (there being no hard and fast record or patent) Pierre Michaux exhibited his two-wheel velocipede at the Paris Exhibition in 1867. And suddenly, there was a craze which exploded in Europe and the USA. In Scotland, an American sewing-machine manufacturer, Howe Machine Co of Connecticut, had followed the Singer Company and set up a factory in Glasgow in 1872. They were quick to see that the engineering applied to sewing machines was much the same as needed for cycle manufacture and started producing bicycles around 1880.

A Scotsman, John Macadam from Ayrshire, had already made road-travel by whatever means a smoother ride when in 1816 he started making road surfaces with crushed stone bound with gravel on a firm base of large stones. A camber, making the road slightly convex, ensured the rainwater rapidly drained off the road and did not penetrate the foundations. This way of building roads later became known as the Macadamized system and it's from Macadam that we now have the word tarmac. And it was another Ayrshire man, John Boyd Dunlop, who in February 1888 whilst working as a vet in Belfast, invented the pneumatic, solid rubber tyre after worrying about the effects on his ten-year-old son of his bone-shaking solid-tyred tricycle. His experiments were so successful that Thornton & Co. an India rubber goods manufacturer in Edinburgh, took the commission to start manufacturing the tyres. And of course, the name Dunlop has been associated with tyres ever since.

The modern bicycle may owe its existence to a couple of Scots – with a contribution from the French – but it was the French who all but invented cycling as a sporting and social phenomenon. The first recorded bicycle race was held over a two-kilometre course in Paris in 1868 (before the rubber tyres, so rather uncomfortable). By 1893, when the sport was not quite so masochistic, thousands packed the 'velodrome' of the Parc des Princes and lined the countryside to watch road races from Paris to Trouville, Dieppe and even St. Petersburg. Within a decade, what was to become the world's greatest sporting event, the Tour de France, had begun. Geoffrey Wheatcroft has written a book about the 'world's greatest race' and Chris Maume writing in 'The Independent' newspaper in July 2003 in the Tour's centenary year said: "The modern Olympics may be older (just), football's World Cup may be watched by more people on television (possibly) but nothing else, surely, provides the same riotous assemblage of human qualities. Inventive cheating, mammoth drug-taking and monstrous egotism travel the same road as altruism, honour and raw-boned heroism."

Pedal-powered Scots and the on-going revolution

Without doubt then, cycling is one of the most exciting, natural developments that has resulted from the Auld Alliance. If France contributed to the development of the machine itself, Scotland has also contributed to the 'raw-boned heroism'. Past Olympians include Jackie Bone, Billy Bilsland and Sarah Phillips. Ross Edgar was bronze medallist at the Commonwealth Games in 2002 and 2003. Craig MacLean and Chris Hoy were Silver medallists at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Robert Millar, from Glasgow, after riding for a French club for five years became 'King of the Mountains' in 1984 and is the only Briton to have won this gruelling challenge. And finally, Graeme Obree, a maverick rider broke the World Hour Record in 1993 putting to superb effect his home-made bike which was aerodynamically designed to accommodate the crouched (or tucked) position he had invented six years earlier and which was later adopted in varying disguises by other top competitors.

One of the greatest things about cycling, of course, is that you don't have to be a professional sports person to enjoy it. It truly is a leisure activity that is enjoyed by millions around the world. Cycling is alive and well at this level in Scotland and the magnificence of the landscape adds enormously to the pleasure cycling affords. Go to www.visitscotland.com/cycling for tips as to good places for cycling.

For the adventurous and more competitive cyclist in Scotland there are clubs like the famous Glasgow Wheelers (going since 1923), the internationally recognised Fort William World Cup and the superb Glentress Forest Trail near Peebles in the Scottish Borders that has been described as 'the best dedicated mountain bike centre in Britain'. Cycling Scotland, Sport Scotland and Scottish Sport are all organisations that provide good information about cycling via the internet: for these and other relevant links see below.

Finally, cycling is one of the best ways to keep fit. And Neil Sinclair from St. Martins in Perthshire is an inspiration to us all. He cycles more than 30 miles every day and clocks up some 10,000 miles per year. He has cycled the Land's End to John O'Groats 874 mile route in just eight days. He says cycling is the secret of his fitness. He's 87. And when he and his wife Elizabeth (76) go on romantic trips to places like Killin (50 miles from home) Neil cycles while Elizabeth drives ahead in their Citrφen Saxo car. He claims that his cycling has kept him so fit that he and Elizabeth have 'been like a honeymoon couple for five decades'. Vive le sport!