BBC BLOGS - Matt Slater

Archives for May 2009

Britain and the bike: a bumpy ride

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Matt Slater|14:28 UK time, Thursday, 21 May 2009

Does Britain actually like cycling? Forget the medals we keep winning, the warm glow of going "green" and the transport implications: do we, as a society, value cycling?

It's a question I often debate on my daily commute: if I'm using up fewer of the earth's finite resources, occupying less space on the road and keeping myself fit and healthy in the process, why is everybody trying to kill me?

It's a question participants in the Etape Caledonia in Perthshire will have been asking too last weekend as they found themselves the victims of a crude protest against the event: carpet tacks strewn across the road.

And it's a question organisers of this year's Tour of Britain will be contemplating as they attempt to lift the profile of the race, and road cycling in general, with their first mass-participation event, the Prostate Cancer Charity Tour Ride on 6 September.

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Gym will fix it for British boxing

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Matt Slater|14:16 UK time, Friday, 15 May 2009

If Frankie Gavin is to be believed, it wasn't so long ago that Britain's finest amateur boxers went into battle barefoot and bedraggled compared to their counterparts from money-bags Albania.

British boxers, claimed Gavin, didn't even have tracksuits until UK Sport, the agency that dishes out public money to elite sport, issued them with £25 outfits last year.

This revelation came a month before the most promising Olympic boxing team for half a century left these shores for Beijing. And Gavin, Britain's first ever world champion, was the star.

I remembered this on Sunday while driving back from the opening of British boxing's new gym in Sheffield because it is very unlikely a GB boxer will ever again have cause to moan about his (or her) clobber.

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Blatter blunders while Wada walks the beat

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Matt Slater|23:03 UK time, Tuesday, 12 May 2009

I'm going to say this loud and proud: Fifa boss Sepp Blatter is completely right.

Unaccustomed as I am to being on the same side of an argument as world football's grand poobah - a man who has likened multi-millionaire Cristiano Ronaldo's life to "slavery" and believes female footballers should wear tighter shorts - I think he is spot on when he claims the World Anti-Doping Agency is acting like a "police" organisation.

The difference between us, however, is that I think this is a good thing.

So when I heard Wada president John Fahey say football will not be exempted from key parts of the anti-doping rulebook I was as pleased as Blatter will be peeved.

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