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  Boris aside, who are your heroes on two wheels? | Ben Thomas |
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In the wake of the London mayor's heroics this week, we want your stories of cycling's good samaritansGuardian reader Lissendis commented on one of this blog's recent posts:This bike blog is getting a bit depressing.
It seems as if the purpose of most of the recent threads is to get us all moaning about something.Ample evidence of moany postings was supplied, with the plea:Can we have a few more happy bike blogs please?Lissendis is right.
Cycling should be a happy activity; sometimes even a heroic one.
So today let us salute those people - plumbers, hairdressers, shopkeepers, mayors - who become something special when they get in the saddle.Here are five of this blog's heroes on two wheels.Boris JohnsonThis is a straightforward tale of a mayor becoming a "knight on a shining bicycle".
A lady is being menaced by three 10-year-old girls.
Enter hero on wheels, blond of hair, burly of stature.
He faces them down.
They have an iron bar; they decide against using it.
He calls them oiks.
They flee.Anonymous (i)In training for a charity bike ride across Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia, Adrian Scarlett was cycling in Allerton, Liverpool, when he sensed that two people in a stationary car up ahead planned to do him harm.
He gave the car a wide berth but they drove after him anyway and pushed him off his bike into the road.
Enough to make many people give up cycling, at least for a while - but enter an anonymous hero.
"A cyclist came and helped me," said the now-philosophical Scarlett, "so that's two sorts of people I've met in one day."Anonymous (ii)The Stockport cyclist who got a woman's bag back from a mugger in April after seeing the victim punched in the head.
It's one thing to stop and offer comfort, something else to risk a knife in the guts to get the stolen item back.
Police applauded the cyclist's "heroic actions" and urged him to come forward.Andy DangerfieldIn a scene with all the tragedy and horror of a battlefield (read the London Evening Standard account if you doubt it), Dangerfield got off his bike to try to help fellow cyclist Chrystelle Brown after she was crushed by a lorry in Whitechapel.
He attempted first-aid, assessed her injuries, and cycled to a nearby hospital to summon an ambulance in the shortest possible time.
Despite all this, Miss Brown died of her injuries.
A sobering reminder that all the altruism and presence-of-mind in the world sometimes isn't enough.Gino BartaliA one-time Tour de France winner finds himself pedalling around the Italian countryside, carrying forged documents from one member of a secretive organisation to another.
Sounds very shady, and distinctly unheroic - but this was the second world war, and the organisation was dedicated to saving Jewish citizens from the Nazis.
Bartali saved many hundreds of lives by his courier work (and incidentally went on to win the Tour de France again - chapeau!)Over to you - which other cycling heroes deserve recognition?
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