Published: 26 July, 2012
by RICHARD OSLEY

PELOTON.

Peloton.

PELOTON…

Le Maillot Jaune.

We’re all cycling experts now thanks to Bradley Wiggins. We’re all able to reel off all the right lingo like we grew up on the very rock-face of Alpe D’Huez and have always had the spirit of the Tour de France gushing through our arteries.

Peloton is now a real word for all of us.

In fact, I was late for work this morning because I got stuck in a big old peloton trying to get out of the tube station at rush hour.

Wiggins’s victory in the Tour, a momentous feat, has thrust cycling into our heads and shown that around every corner of London sits an expert in the sport.

And, as we have the super champion of the world at cycling, I am expecting all these experts who have been explaining how Wiggins won the big one over the last three weeks to retain this deep interest in the sport for the other 49 weeks of the year.

I want to see the Guardian live-blog Milan-San Remo. I want to see all the experts who revealed themselves on Twitter over the last week and the sudden super fans to keep me informed of the developments in the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta.

Truth is, none of this will really happen. They’ll all go back to watching football in a few weeks.

Even those who have the admirably committed Eurosport on their tellies don’t flock to watch the races which aren’t the Tour de France.

Only the really committed, approximately 0.0002 per cent of people reading this column and about 0.0007 per cent of people celebrating Wiggins’s victory this week will find a way to watch the Paris-Roubaix road race or the Tour of Qatar.

For three weeks a year, you see cyclists on London’s roads using their drop handles a bit more and making sure the water bottle on their frame is full. You see them trying to get as aerodynamic as possible in their toe clips on the Outer Circle around Regent’s Park.

Watch out for them when the lights are amber. But once Le Tour is over, the sport is forgotten about like the tortoise Blue Peter used to box up for the winter.

Sky has done its best to change this.

Credit them with that.

They have thrown money and coverage at it in an attempt to spark the interest it gets in places like France and Italy.

But the three-week experts that we now know are out there need more bait to expand the wider interest beyond the Tour de France.

Wiggins’s victory needs to be seized as the chance to inspire others that it clearly is.

The idea of a victory cycle down Kilburn High Road (whichever side of the borough boundaries he spent more time in his youth) would be a wonderful idea.

It would already have been arranged in his home town if he was French. Wiggo wouldn’t have a choice, they’d have a statue of him up by now if he was Italian

(…imagine the bronze lamb chop sideburns).

Beyond that, let’s get the youngsters racing.

Close off the roads, let’s get a London road race for teenagers. Imagine how exciting that would be for those sprinting down the Embankment.

Cycling is a sport that has been on the brink of ruins owing to drug scandals, but its turning point might be now. We should be a part of it.