Dr Hutch: Do cycling fans need to up their game?

Cycling isn’t best suited to cheering spectators so it’s hardly surprising fans awkwardly utter such nonsense, says Dr Hutch

Dr Hutch getting cheered on
(Image credit: Getty)

As a group, cyclists have remarkably few character flaws. I say this with confidence, because we have so effortlessly shrugged off the attacks of tabloid papers, the massed ranks of Twitter and (depressingly often) members of our own families.

However, there is one area of life where we do underperform. If you watch a football match (or most other spectator sports) there is a degree of organised cheering, singing and chanting that we’ve never mastered. There have been a few creditable attempts (the Beefeaters on Alpe d’Huez, for example), but generally we’re terrible.

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Michael Hutchinson is a writer, journalist and former professional cyclist. As a rider he won multiple national titles in both Britain and Ireland and competed at the World Championships and the Commonwealth Games. He was a three-time Brompton folding-bike World Champion, and once hit 73 mph riding down a hill in Wales. His Dr Hutch columns appears in every issue of Cycling Weekly magazine