When I first commuted by bike in London 20 years ago, people in my office thought I was, at best, odd. My route went through Hyde Park. I knew the names of all the other cyclists who habitually rode down Rotten Row at the same time each morning – that’s how few there were of us. Ten years ago, I moved to the Brecon Beacons in Wales and had another eye-opener in the cultural perception of the bicycle. In the capital, there was at least, by then, a growing body of people who acknowledged the health and transport benefits of cycling. In the countryside, you rode a bike only if something was wrong. The locals watched me pedal in and out of Abergavenny every day with suspicion.

Five months after moving, I was in the local pub, high on a hillside, on a Friday night. An old boy I knew only by the name of his farm cupped my elbow and led me gently to a corner of the bar, fixing me with a stern gaze. “I see you on the bike, boy,” he said. “How long you lost your licence for then?”

And now, well, everything is bicycle, it seems. In the UK, an estimated nine million people use their bike on a weekly basis. Some 3.7 million bicycles were sold in 2010, up 28 per cent on 2009. There are half a million bike journeys a day in London – a rise of some 150 per cent since 2000, and up 15 per cent on 2010. On some Thames bridges and certain streets in the City, bikes now outnumber cars during rush hour. Membership of both British Cycling and the Cyclists’ Touring Club are at record high levels. Taking track cycling, road racing, BMX riding and mountain biking together, we are one of the leading competitive cycling nations.

Bradley Wiggins, and what he now looks set to achieve in Paris tomorrow afternoon, is both a cause and an effect of our increased participation in cycling. Sky wouldn’t pump millions into the sport (and follow it up by investing in grassroots, recreational cycling schemes) unless the nation was determinedly getting back in the saddle. Perhaps they sense, as I do, that we might just be at the dawn of a new golden age of the bicycle.

The first great golden age was the 1890s, when the bicycle became the utilitarian form of transport for the masses. Then, people wondered how something so simple could have remained unknown for so long. Today, I regularly meet people who have just taken up cycling again: they wonder how they could have overlooked something so simple for so long. For most of us, it is the simplicity and the accessibility of the bicycle that is so compelling.

Professional cycle racing, on the other hand, is anything but accessible. If I had a pound for every time I’ve tried to explain this week how the Tour de France’s “general classification” works, I could have bought a new carbon bottle cage. The next question on the lips of every initiate is: “Why has it taken so long for a Brit to do well in the Tour?”

From the start, the sport of bicycle racing was strangled by the convention of Victorian rule-makers in Britain. For us, the sport largely consisted of “time trials”, codified in the 1890s by Frederick Thomas Bidlake, a man with a peculiarly British passion for timekeeping. Competitors set off at intervals and ride alone, against the clock, up and down a wind-slapped A-road. In Europe, massed-start rides like the Tour de France were much more popular. These races entailed breakaways and sprint finishes, chases and crashes, suffering and solidarity, tactics and alliances, co-operation and competition, vanity and honour. Massed-start road racing is underpinned by the unwritten etiquette of the peloton, something so complex that not even a Victorian Englishman could codify it into a booklet of rules. As the French say of cycle racing: Courir c’est mourir un peu.

In fairness to Bidlake, cycling in Britain never had the backing of the hegemony. Time trialling was a compromise, a way to use the roads for sport without drawing too much attention. Ironically, the first ever organised road race was won by another Englishman with a passion for “mutton chops”, James Moore. On a cold, wet day in November 1869, more than 100 cyclists, including a handful of women, gathered beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris before a crowd of thousands. At 7.30am, a flag was waved and the riders set off for the city of Rouen, 125km to the north-west.

The staging of the Paris-Rouen race was disrupted in 1870 by the outbreak of war between France and Prussia, but it was used as the model for all the classic European road races that were to follow, and which endure today. Each new race – Bordeaux-Paris, a 560km night-day event inaugurated in 1891, Paris-Brest-Paris also in 1891, Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 1892, Paris-Roubaix in 1896 and the Tour de France in 1903, to name a few – all seemed to try to outdo their antecedents. But Paris-Rouen set the first marker in the enduring relationship between bicycle racing and human suffering. Moore is reputed to have said before the race: “I will get there first, or they will find my body in the road.”

Bicycles are currently fashionable. That might not last, but it’s indicative of how health concerns, transport issues, the environment and the price of oil are driving the bicycle back to the centre of public consciousness and making it a viable form of transport for more and more people. In Britain, the hegemony is riding bicycles for the first time since the 19th century: to have the Mayor of London, senior politicians, newspaper editors, media moguls, fashion gurus and a host of leading businessmen all riding and advocating bicycles would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.

The bicycle is one of mankind’s greatest inventions – it’s up there with the printing press, the electric motor, the telephone, penicillin and the World Wide Web. Our ancestors thought it was one of their greatest achievements. That idea is slowly coming back as more and more of us appreciate the simplicity and the utility of the machine.

If you’ve ever experienced a moment of awe or freedom on a bicycle; if you’ve ever taken flight from sadness to the rhythm of two spinning wheels, or felt the resurgence of hope pedalling to the top of a hill with the dew of effort on your forehead; if you’ve ever wondered, swooping bird-like down a long hill on a bicycle, if the world was standing still; if you have ever, just once, sat on a bicycle with a singing heart and felt like an ordinary man touching the gods, then you share something fundamental with Bradley Wiggins, and you have reason to cheer him down the Champs-Elysées tomorrow.

Rob Penn is the author of ‘It’s All About the Bike’, published by Penguin, and a director of Bikecation (www.bikecation.co.uk)

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM–(Marketwire – July 19, 2012) - The summer continues to promise so much for those cycling enthusiasts amongst us. The Tour de France is hitting its most gruelling stages whilst the road race in London at the end of July looks set to be one of the most spectacular and intriguing events this summer.

Evans Cycles Road Bikes

But it’s no good simply enjoying them from the comfort of your sofa. It’s time to get involved, and with the great collection of road bikes from leading cycle shop Evans Cycles, there’s never been a better time to explore the best rides in the UK.

Finding your next road companion with Evans Cycles you can choose from top makes including Specialized Bikes, Trek, Cannondale, BMC, Raleigh, Trek and Fuji.

Equipment and Components from Evans Cycles

Once you’ve purchased your new companion for those epic cycle rides throughout the UK and Europe it’s time to ensure you have all the equipment and components you need to make sure everything goes without a hitch.

As a leading retailer of road bikes and cycling equipment, you’ll find all your needs catered for at Evans Cycles. Choose from Shimano parts, Garmin GPS and Altura gloves. It may not be the Tour de France, but you’ll be prepped for anything.

Notes to editors

- Founded in 1921, Evans Cycles is the UK’s largest quality cycle retailer, stocking the widest range of products and brands.

- Deeply passionate about cycling in all its forms, Evans’ friendly staff have expert knowledge and are happy to help out with all aspects of cycling.

- Evans celebrated its 90^th anniversary in 2011, evolving from a family owned store to an award winning enterprise. Evans Cycles is now the UK’s leading bike retailer selling road bikes, mountain bikes and hybrid bikes, as well as cycling clothing and accessories. 

- Evans Cycles operates stores nationwide along with an ecommerce website – where you’ll find the best product from the world’s leading cycling brands including Specialized, Trek, Gore Bike Wear and more.

By Keith Weir

LONDON |
Fri Jul 20, 2012 9:53am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) – The success of riders like Bradley Wiggins and Chris Hoy has encouraged growing numbers of Britons to get on their bicycles to commute to work or to fight off middle-aged flab.

The mutton-chopped Wiggins looks set on Sunday to become the first Briton to win the Tour de France while British riders will look to repeat their Beijing gold rush when London hosts the Olympics next week.

British Cycling, the sport’s governing body, reports a surge in its membership after years of stagnation and says the industry is worth almost 3 billion pounds ($4.7 billion) to the UK economy.

“We are seeing a step change in the numbers of people riding bikes. The success internationally has definitely been one of the reasons for that,” said British Cycling CEO Ian Drake.

“It’s almost becoming the norm now. Most people will know somebody who is riding a bike on a regular basis,” he added, saying that growing awareness helped to make cycling safer.

Figures from Sport England place cycling fourth in terms of the number of participants, in a list headed by swimming, soccer and athletics.

In a sign of the sport’s growing appeal, commercial TV broadcaster ITV will screen the final two stages of the Tour this weekend live on its flagship ITV1 channel, switching from its less popular niche channel, ITV4.

Wiggins rides for Team Sky, set up and funded by satellite broadcaster BSkyB, part owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

The team was established in 2010. It is an extension of Sky’s broader sponsorship of British Cycling which began just before the Beijing Olympics and which has recently been renewed.

Around 200 BSkyB employees are cycling from London to Paris where they hope to witness Wiggins cruising to victory on the Champs Elysees on Sunday.

“We set ourselves a goal of winning it within five years. That was an ambitious target as no Briton had ever won the Tour de France,” said Robert Tansey, chairman of the Team Sky board.

EVOLUTION OF THE MAMILS

Drake of British Cycling says the Sky partnership has built on funding from the country’s national lottery. He stresses that the money pumped into the sport has helped both elite riders and community schemes such as supervised “led rides” to get more people on their bikes.

Amateur riders gather at pubs and cafes around London and other cities at weekends, heading off into the countryside in pelotons that were once more associated with continental Europe.

A new breed of riders has been dubbed the MAMILs – middle-aged men in lycra.

“What you often see are men who come in for a commuter bike. They start to see others whizzing past them on racers and want to trade up,” said Paul Gage, a former journalist who now runs a bike shop in the north London suburb of Muswell Hill.

Independent retailers and larger chains say a government-backed scheme that gives generous tax breaks for buying bikes has helped sales.

“Enabling employees to make savings of up to 42 percent on new bikes through schemes such as Ride2Work is obviously going to increase the popularity of cycling,” said a spokeswoman for Evans Cycles.

Evans, set up in the 1920s in south London, now has 47 stores and says turnover has grown fourfold over the last decade to more than 100 million pounds.

Looking in the window of an Evans store in the Canary Wharf financial district, London-based Frenchman Corentin Leverrier says he is tempted to take up cycling again.

“Britain is dominating cycling at the moment and that is promoting it better than anything else,” said Leverrier, a 35-year-old banker.

“It’s surprising how popular it is here, considering the weather.”

($1 = 0.6366 British pounds)

(Reporting by Keith Weir, editing by Paul Casciato)

Just as Britons start greeting visitors descending on London for the Summer Olympics, news this week will either have them leaping off the couch to get moving — as Olympic sponsors such as McDonald’s have been urging folks to do — or slump back in despair and reaching for another handful of crisps.

Apparently the 60 million good citizens of the UK are the, well, fattest in Western Europe, and when London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics back in 2005, officials pledged to use the Games as incentive for 2 million Britons to increase their physical activity by the opening ceremonies.

“When the torch is lit July 27,” writes the Associated Press, the U.K. “government will not only have failed, it will have backed away from its pledge entirely. Last year, the U.K. quietly dropped its aim to get 1 million more Britons into sports; the pledge to get another 1 million people more active through things like biking or walking to work has also been scrapped.”

LOCOG’s strategic plan and promise to the IOC included free school sports programs have fallen by the wayside, according to AP — a victim of Europe’s debt crisis, which also caused the slashing of adult programs such as free swimming for Londoners. But let’s be realistic, TV viewers won’t relate to elite athletes at the top of their game any more than they would watching Hollywood stars on the red carpet.

“The Olympics do inspire people, but there is no evidence there are increased physical activity levels afterwards,” said Bill Kohl, director of the physical activity epidemiology program at the University of Texas School of Public Health, to AP. “Most people realize they will never be (track star) Usain Bolt.”

Kohl has authored a paper, published in The Lancet medical journal, to coincide with the Olympics, describing low levels of global physical activity a “pandemic.” Another study in The Lancet (from which The Economist created a global map of sloth) argues that a lack of exercise is now responsible for as many deaths as smoking, and estimates that about one-third of adults are not doing enough physical activity, causing 5.3m deaths a year.

“For the individual, it is certainly more dangerous to smoke than to be physically inactive,” Kohl commented. “But on a population level, the impact of physical inactivity is equal to smoking.” One big surprise: “America does not live up to its sluggish reputation. Six in ten Americans are sufficiently active, compared with less than four in ten Britons.”  

Another issue as the global obesity epidemic comes into focus is all that TV viewing in the first place.

A new study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity connects a child’s TV viewing and eventual leg strength (or weakness), as well as wider waists. “Watching more television in early childhood forecasted lesser performance on a test of explosive muscular strength in later childhood,” reports the Los Angeles Times on the study. “This suggests that for some children, excessive television exposure was associated with the experience of a substantial level of impairment.”

“Children who watch more television are more likely to develop poor dietary habits, sleep disturbances, and become obese,” the study said. “Because it represents a sedentary activity which takes time away from other more physically demanding pursuits, the amount of time children spend watching television in early childhood raises concerns over potential consequences for later physical fitness during the school years.”

One example of successful intervention by authorities is Ciclovia in Bogota, Colombia, a traffic-free streets initiative every Sunday to help its seven million plus population get physical. Research reports that close to one million residents now walk around on a Sunday, a fifth of whom say they would be inactive were the ban not in place.

Pedro Hallal, Federal University of Pelotas, lead researcher in the Lancet study says, “With the upcoming 2012 Olympic Games, sport and physical activity will attract tremendous worldwide attention. Although the world will be watching elite athletes from many countries compete in sporting events… most spectators will be quite inactive.”  

Can the digital revolution find a way to help people be active – or is it only our texting, eating digits that are getting more rigorous work-outs?

[image at top: McDonald's UK London 2012 Mascotathon]

Bradley Wiggins is set to ride into the history books.

Tomorrow, the 32-year-old will cycle down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and cross the finish line of the Tour de France as the first British winner of the prestigious tournament – bar a catastrophic mishap.

Success now seems to come easily to the gifted cyclist. But it wasn’t always so.

At the Athens Games in 2004 he became the first Briton for 40 years to win gold, silver and bronze.

But the Olympic medals hung heavy around his neck and he admits that afterwards he lost the plot, getting “absolutely wasted”, gaining weight and having no motivation.

“I didn’t know how to handle the situation and I couldn’t cope,” he said later.

“It’s one thing winning a gold medal but dealing with it afterwards was even bigger.

“Everyone’s view of me was: ‘That’s Brad Wiggins, the Olympic champion. He’s such a strong character.’

“But, really, I wasn’t. I needed help. I had no motivation to do anything. No one tells you how it’s going to be after you win an Olympic gold.

“I had lost a big thing in my life. Something that had driven me for so long was gone. I needed a counsellor to help me through it.

“People were telling me I had to do this and had to do that. But I never had the chance to sit down and think what I wanted.

“I put on a stone in weight because I wasn’t riding my bike and I was drinking a lot. I was going to a lot of functions and at some of them I’d get absolutely wasted.

“I’d lived so religiously in the run-up to Athens that I just wanted to feel normal again.”

 

The lull lasted two years before he returned to the track. But he came back stronger and more focused than before and at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 won two golds.

Winning the Tour and another Olympic gold in London will earn him a place among the sporting gods but the road he has travelled has been far from smooth.

Bradley was born in April 1980, in Ghent, Belgium, 15 months after his parents married.

Dad Gary was a hard-drinking Australian track cyclist with a violent temper.

His skill on a bike had taken him from a country town outside Melbourne to Europe and on to the cycling circuit.

Gary began taking amphetamines to give him a competitive edge but it exacerbated his aggression.

He regularly got into fights with other riders and began settling arguments with his fists when he returned home to wife Linda.

Wanting peace, Linda came back to the UK at Christmas in 1982. Gary called her and told her not to bother coming back as he had found someone else.

He packed all their belongings in black bin bags, took the ferry to Linda’s parents’ home and dumped the bags outside.

He took Bradley for a dismal outing and then disappeared from his life for nearly two decades.

Bradley wrote in his autobiography: “As far as Gary was concerned, we didn’t exist.

“He insisted on taking me to London Zoo where he even asked a passer-by to take a rather poignant picture of father and son, apparently enjoying an idyllic day out together.

“It was the last time I saw him for nearly 17 years.

“I’ve got the picture. I tried occasionally to create the fantasy I had of a father but the door was slammed firmly shut on Linda and myself. As far as Gary was concerned we didn’t exist.”

Linda and her son got a flat in Kilburn, North London, where the young Bradley dreamed of becoming… Gary Lineker.

Perhaps surprisingly, given her disastrous marriage to a professional cyclist, his mother had other ideas.

“‘All kids want to be professional footballers,’ she said. ‘I think you’d make a better cyclist.’”

He began cycling to Hyde Park from their flat but after Chris Boardman won cycling gold at the Barcelona Olympics he began taking it seriously.

He joined a local club and even with a cheap old bike, began regularly beating other riders.

Despite growing up with no contact with his father, Bradley quickly decided that his future lay in riding.

He told his French teacher that he couldn’t learn the language from a textbook but would learn it while riding in the country.

Bradley said later: “He laughed but I remember seeing him years later and speaking to him in fluent French.”

In 1997 he got a phone call from his father, now back in Australia, who was looking for a reconciliation.

Warily, Bradley responded and the pair kept in infrequent touch.

But three years later Bradley decided to visit for three weeks and found his father drinking himself into bitter rages.

Gary began lecturing the son he had hardly seen about where he was going wrong with his cycling.

The encounter confirmed everything Bradley felt about his father.

He wrote: “If my father had been around, there was no way I’d have ever been cycling because he would have been so critical of everything I was doing on the bike and really put me down at every step.”

By 20, Bradley was competing in the Sydney Olympics where he won bronze in the team pursuit and his gradual ascent to the top was well on its way.

But just months before the Beijing Games in 2008 he got a call from his agent, saying Gary had been found unconscious and bleeding at 7am in a street in the town of Aberdeen, New South Wales, after a beating.

He later died in hospital.

An inquest heard there may have been more than one assault, the initial attack taking place at about 9pm one evening followed by another at about 6.15am.

Bradley was blunt in his autobiography: “I could respect Gary only as a bike rider.

“The truth is, I didn’t like this man one bit as a bloke.”

Instead he credits his wife Cath, not his father, with giving him the winning instinct.

He first met her in 1997, when she was a sprinter in the junior cycling squad but it was five years before he asked her out.

Cath was by now a student and within days they had moved in together.

They married in 2004… at the height of his binge-drinking.

He recalled: “It was a very happy day and I was definitely pledging to spend my life with the woman I loved. But, true to form, I was absolutely bladdered for most of the day.”

Cath helped him give up the booze and get back on his bike.

He said: “I probably wouldn’t be where I am in cycling if I hadn’t met Cath.

“It gave me that base to really think about what’s important.”

The couple now live in Eccleston, near Wigan, with children Ben, seven, and Isabella, five. He earns more than £1.5million a year and that income is likely to soar in the coming years.

Away from the track Mod-mad Bradley likes collecting scooters and is a big Jam fan, idolising Paul Weller.

He says the hurt and anger resulting from his relationship with his father has helped him be a dad himself.

“I think my feelings only strengthen with everything I do in daily life with my own children, because I never had that. I never had a father, really, someone that I could look up to.

“But I have that with my own son – he looks up to me so much because of what I do.”

And pretty soon, the whole country may be joining him.

* Get to know “Wiggo”: Top 10 facts about Britain’s Tour de France sensation Bradley Wiggins

Bradley Wiggins at the Tour de France

72 hours from glory: Bradley Wiggins extends Tour de France lead as the finish looms

Mellow yellow: Wiggins keeps his cool in the mountains to retain Tour de France lead

Town Called Paris: Watch this fan’s tribute song to Bradley Wiggins as she covers The Jam’s quot;Town Called Malicequot; on her ukelele
 

Check out our Tour de France coverage on our dedicated topic page

By Emma Birchley, East of England Correspondent

The popularity of pedalling has stepped up a gear as the UK’s cycling stars continue to take the world of track and road racing by storm.

Close to two million people now cycle at least once a week according to a survey by Sport England and millions more take their bike out for an occasional spin.

Jason Barker used to weigh 25 stone. Then he bought a bike, his first since he swapped his BMX for a computer as a teenager.

“In three years I’ve managed to lose 10 stone in weight and it’s really helped my lifestyle and helped me feel healthy, ” said Jason, who was out mountain biking with his friend, Chris Seaton, on the trails of Thetford Forest.

Jason, 41, convinced Chris of the benefits eight months ago. Now he is two-and-half stone lighter.

“Once you start doing it, it’s addictive. If people start doing it, they are going to carry on,” said Chris, 43.

For many, cycling is also a way of saving money; it is cheaper than a gym membership and cuts down on petrol costs.

But there is another crucial factor boosting its popularity; the British stars taking the world of track and road racing by storm.

The likes of Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton and Bradley Wiggins, with his fantastic performance in the Tour de France, have motivated Chris.

“They are making people aware of cycling. You mainly see the prime sports, football, maybe rugby, but these people are making it a more mainstream sport, which is fantastic,” he said.

Even with the relentless rain and recession, sales are growing at the Bike Art cycling shop in Thetford Forest.

“In general, the trend over the last few years is for more people to be cycling in all walks of life,” said owner Paul Hill.

“I think the interest in the Olympics is helping a great deal and also in the Tour de France and the guys from Team Sky are doing very well.”

The professionals are also inspiring a new generation of cyclists.

At Herne Hill Velodrome in South East London, children as young as eight are learning on the same track where Bradley Wiggins started out.

Velodrome coach Iain Cook said: “After the Beijing Olympics when the British boys did really well on the track, cycling has really taken off and there have been more and more people coming evey week, and the latest successes are going to make that even better.”

In 2010, 3.7m bikes were sold, up 28% on the previous, according to a report by the London School of Economics.

In total cycling is estimated to contribute around £3bn a year to the UK economy.

Despite the growing popularity, MPs from the Commons Transport Select Committee made it clear this week that not enough is being done by the Government to make cycling safer.

Last year, the number of cyclists killed on the roads fell by 4% from 111 to 107, but serious injuries rose by 16% to 3085.

LONDON (Reuters) – The success of riders like Bradley Wiggins and Chris Hoy has encouraged growing numbers of Britons to get on their bicycles to commute to work or to fight off middle-aged flab.

The mutton-chopped Wiggins looks set on Sunday to become the first Briton to win the Tour de France while British riders will look to repeat their Beijing gold rush when London hosts the Olympics next week.

British Cycling, the sport’s governing body, reports a surge in its membership after years of stagnation and says the industry is worth almost 3 billion pounds ($4.7 billion) to the UK economy.

“We are seeing a step change in the numbers of people riding bikes. The success internationally has definitely been one of the reasons for that,” said British Cycling CEO Ian Drake.

“It’s almost becoming the norm now. Most people will know somebody who is riding a bike on a regular basis,” he added, saying that growing awareness helped to make cycling safer.

Figures from Sport England place cycling fourth in terms of the number of participants, in a list headed by swimming, football and athletics.

In a sign of the sport’s growing appeal, commercial TV broadcaster ITV will screen the final two stages of the Tour this weekend live on its flagship ITV1 channel, switching from its less popular niche channel, ITV4.

Wiggins rides for Team Sky, set up and funded by satellite broadcaster BSkyB, part owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

The team was established in 2010. It is an extension of Sky’s broader sponsorship of British Cycling which began just before the Beijing Olympics and which has recently been renewed.

Around 200 BSkyB employees are cycling from London to Paris where they hope to witness Wiggins cruising to victory on the Champs Elysees on Sunday.

“We set ourselves a goal of winning it within five years. That was an ambitious target as no Briton had ever won the Tour de France,” said Robert Tansey, chairman of the Team Sky board.

EVOLUTION OF THE MAMILS

Drake of British Cycling says the Sky partnership has built on funding from the country’s national lottery. He stresses that the money pumped into the sport has helped both elite riders and community schemes such as supervised “led rides” to get more people on their bikes.

Amateur riders gather at pubs and cafes around London and other cities at weekends, heading off into the countryside in pelotons that were once more associated with continental Europe.

A new breed of riders has been dubbed the MAMILs – middle-aged men in lycra.

“What you often see are men who come in for a commuter bike. They start to see others whizzing past them on racers and want to trade up,” said Paul Gage, a former journalist who now runs a bike shop in the north London suburb of Muswell Hill.

Independent retailers and larger chains say a government-backed scheme that gives generous tax breaks for buying bikes has helped sales.

“Enabling employees to make savings of up to 42 percent on new bikes through schemes such as Ride2Work is obviously going to increase the popularity of cycling,” said a spokeswoman for Evans Cycles.

Evans, set up in the 1920s in south London, now has 47 stores and says turnover has grown fourfold over the last decade to more than 100 million pounds.

Looking in the window of an Evans store in the Canary Wharf financial district, London-based Frenchman Corentin Leverrier says he is tempted to take up cycling again.

“Britain is dominating cycling at the moment and that is promoting it better than anything else,” said Leverrier, a 35-year-old banker.

“It’s surprising how popular it is here, considering the weather.”

($1 = 0.6366 British pounds)

(Reporting by Keith Weir, editing by Paul Casciato)

Keith Weir

Reuters

7:28 a.m. CDT, July 20, 2012

LONDON (AP) British lawmakers clamored for an explanation Thursday about why the military needs to field more troops to protect the Olympics after a private security contractor that was paid millions to do that failed to recruit enough staff.

The development is considered a major embarrassment for London’s Olympic Organizing Committee just two weeks ahead of the games.

Home Secretary Theresa May confirmed that the British government will deploy an additional 3,500 troops at the London Olympics. That’s because of concerns that the firm G4S – which had been contracted to provide the bulk of the 13,200 private security guards protecting 100 Olympic venues – may not hit its target because of problems recruiting and training staff.

May stressed to lawmakers that the security operation for the Olympics – which officially kick off on July 27 but have soccer games as early as July 25 – had been meticulously planned. Still she said contingency planning had always been necessary amid a constantly changing security environment.

“Concerns have arisen about the ability of G4S to deliver the required number of guards for all Olympics venues,” she said Thursday. “We have now agreed that it would be prudent to deploy additional military support.”

The move brings the total number of military personnel including reservists protecting the games to 17,000 – dwarfing the 9,500 troops Britain has in Afghanistan, and at a time when the armed forces are coping with thousands of job cuts.

The substantial security operation for the Olympics also will feature 12,000 police, 3,000 volunteers, Typhoon fighter jets, helicopters, two warships and bomb disposal experts.

May said the “absolute gap in the numbers was only crystallized” a day ago.

“G4S have let the country down and we have literally had to send in the troops,” said opposition Labour Party lawmaker Keith Vaz, demanding to know when the issue was first identified and if G4S – which has millions in contracts from the British government – will suffer financial penalties.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman Steve Field said the security firm should face penalties if it breaches its contract.

But Conservative lawmaker Philip Hollobone said the penalties should go beyond Olympics-related fines.

“My constituents would want the Home Secretary and the government to say that G4S can have no more government contracts whatsoever until they pay every last penny of the additional cost” of the troops, he said.

May stressed that military operations elsewhere will not be affected by the additional deployment for the Olympics but acknowledged the move will put extra strain on servicemen during the summer holiday season.

Britain has committed 553 million pounds ($857 million) for venue security, covering arenas in London and other locations across Britain, including a southwest England sailing center and five soccer stadiums.

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

17.00: Britain’s FTSE 100 continued to track early-day gains as Burberry (BRBY.L) led the index.

The FTSE 100 added 0.5%, or 28 points, to 5,714 and the Mid-250 index gained 1.41%, or 157 points, to 11,243.

Luxury retailer Burberry rose to the top of the FTSE 100, adding 52p, or 4.2%, to £12.84 as Chinese consumers showed no sign of losing their appetite for expensive goods from Hermés and Rémy Cointreau.

Sales for both companies rose more than 20% in the second quarter, spurring investor hopes that Burberry would bounce back following its decline in first-quarter sales growth.

Sports shop owner JJP Sports (JJB.L) slid 1.8p, or 24%, to 5.7p as group like-for-like sales fell 8.7% in the first half of the year, forcing it into talks with partners.

European markets also made gains: Germany’s DAX index took on 1.11% to 6,758, France’s CAC 40 index inched ahead 0.87% to 3,264, and the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares added 0.95% to 1,064.

However, Spanish 10-year bond yields rose to 7.02% following weak demand at a £2.3 billion auction of two-, five- and seven-year securities.

US market rises on Fed stimulus hopes

15.20: US markets opened on the front foot as unemployment claims rose ahead of expectations, raising investor hopes of further economic stimulus from the Federal Reserve.  

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.29% to 12,946, the Standard Poor’s 500 index took on 0.27% to 1,376, and the Nasdaq Composite index gained 0.75% to hit 2,296.

Jobless claims rose to 386,000 last week ahead of the forecast 367,000. Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, said: ‘US unemployment benefit claims are showing an improving trend, despite an uptick in the jobless count last week, pointing to subdued payroll growth in July.

‘It therefore seems increasingly likely that the Fed will need to see the economic data deteriorate further before sanctioning more aggressive stimulus.’

Oil prices have peaked above $107, their highest level in seven weeks, on fears of further unrest in the Middle East as political tensions in Syria rise. Brent crude added 1.7% to $106.99 and light crude gained 1.7% to $91.43.

Carsten Fritsch, analyst at Commerzbank, commented: ‘Within just a week, prices have climbed by more than 8%, primarily on the back of geopolitical risks. The conflict in Syria, which has already been under way for 16 months, appears to be escalating.

‘Yesterday saw an attack in which two high-ranking representatives of the Assad regime were killed. The Iran conflict is also coming into increasingly sharp focus, Israel having blamed Iran for the attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria.’

Avocet Mining boss quits over unrealistic forecast

12.55: There’s a flurry of mining news today. West Africa-focused miner Avocet Mining (AVM.L) shed 0.45p, or 0.65%, to 68.8p as its chief executive, Brett Richards, stepped down over problems at its Inata mine in Burkina Faso. Shares tumbled 70% when it was announced that the site was expected to miss its output target, following an increase in production costs last month.

Current chief operating officer, David Cather, will step up as the company’s new chief executive. Tim Dudley, analyst at Canaccord Genuity, raised his outlook on the stock to ‘buy’ from ‘hold’ with a target price of 100p.

Dudley commented: ‘Clearly with a drastic share price response to another delay in the release of scoping study results for the Inata expansion the company’s strategy had to change. We believe that with the appointment of Mr. Cather, experienced mining engineer, the direction will move towards conservative planning.’

On the FTSE 250 miner Afren (AFR.L) is the second-highest riser on the index, up 7.1p, or 5.9%, to 126p with a boost from its Kurdistan operations where more oil was found.

Nick Copeman, analyst at Oriel Securities, said: ‘Afren issued a positive update on the Jebel Simrit exploration well in Kurdistan this morning which has now encountered 460 meters of net pay and delivered 135,000 barrels of oil a day from the first three flow tests. We retain our buy recommendation.’

Rain drags on retail sales

10.50: More on retailing. It’s official, the rain beat the Queen. Retail sales grew much less than expected in June, rising just 0.1% as the wet weather damped down the impact of the Diamond Jubilee. Analysts had forecast a rise of 0.6%. The low figure means second-quarter sales figures fell by 0.7%, the biggest decline in over two years, hence the pain being expressed by many retailers today. On an annual basis, sales are up 1.6%, but again this is below forecasts.

Philip Rush of Nomura says, ‘for the retail sector as a whole, easing inflation has failed to support sales volumes as much as it had done over the previous several months. Worse still, quarterly growth in the value of sales slipped into negative territory for the first time since the start of 2010. Bad weather is compounding retailers’ numerous other woes in this challenging retail environment.’

Mothercare means business

Time to look at Mothercare (MTC.L). The baby-products retailer advances 4.75% or 9.75p to 215p on a familiar sounding trading statement. The UK, where it is closing stores in a bid to restore profits, saw total sales dive over 10% in the 15 weeks to 14 July. However, once again this is offset by an 11% rise in its international sales from  59 countries, including India.

Tom Dobell, manager of the MG Recovery fund, is a big investor in Mothercare because of the twin stories around the potential UK recovery and international growth. The shares have risen 29% this year.

Oriel Securities repeats its ‘buy’ stance saying. ‘There are real signs of encouragement at Mothercare with sales over the last five weeks in positive territory on the website as customers respond well to new and more keenly priced product. A pick up in the store opening programme overseas will see the rate of sales growth improve.’

There is another solid set of results from Howden Joinery (HWDN.L), the supplier of kitchens to the building trade which emerged  from the old MFI Furniture business. Half-year profits at the Citywire Top Stock are 8% up at £25.4 million on revenue 7% higher at £364.6 million. Andy Brown of Panmure says: ‘Howden is being well managed but the end market remains tough, hence our neutral stance.’

HSBC faces £3bn bill from scandals

10.20: Talking of Citywire Top Stocks, HSBC (HSBA.L), the only bank in the top holdings of the five fund managers we follow, is trading 2.25p up at 548.25p, which may look strange following the reports of the money laundering the bank permitted in Mexico and the Financial Times’s story today naming the bank as one of four EU banks under investigation for Libor rigging.

Cormac Leech of Liberum expects a $1 billion fine for money laundering and $4 billion in fines and damages for Libor manipulation, a £3.2 billion hit in total. However, despite the eye-watering sums he says they are in the price and that the shares trade on just 8.5 times forecast earnings for 2013 and yield 4.8%.

10.00: Luxury brand retailer Burberry (BRBY.L) leads the FTSE 100 with a 2.7% rise to £12.65. Engineeer IMI (IMI.L) follows, recovering 2.3% to 809.5p after yesterday’s ‘reduce’ rating from Nomura. Resources companies lead the fallers list with BG Group (BG.L) down 2.2% to £12.88 and Vedanta Resources (VED.L) 1.4% off at 896p. National Grid (NG.L) continues to languish, 1.4% lower at 661.5p, following this week’s clash with regulator Ofgem.

For more details of today’s risers and fallers see our FTSE home page. Burberry, BG Group and National Grid are also on Citywire Top Stocks.

Seymour Pierce ‘buys’ Halford on CEO departure

09.10: There is a lot of retail news this morning. The FTSE 100 is eight points up at 5,694.

Halfords (HFD.L) jumps 5%, or 9.7p, to 207p after chief executive David Wild (above) quits the struggling bike shop chain following a sharp fall in first quarter sales. Chairman Dennis Millard is taking on an executive role and will lead the search for Wild’s successor. 

Halfords, whose shares have fallen 27% or 80p this year, says sales at stores open over a year dropped 5.6% in the 13 weeks to 29 June. This is a deterioration from the 2.3% sales decline in the previous quarter. It expects like-for-like sales to be negative for the rest of the first half and warns they could remain negative in the second half as well.

‘The consumer environment remains difficult and the unseasonal weather conditions this quarter had a direct impact on sales of cycles and outdoor leisure products,’ Millard says in a statement.

Kate Calvert, analyst at Seymour Pierce, upgrades Halfords to ‘buy’ from ‘hold’ believing ‘significant value could be created for shareholders as the business still generates c£75 million of post tax cashflow before £25 million of capex [capital expenditure].’ Philip Dorgan of Panmure is reassured by Halfords’ commitment to holding the interim dividend. He writes: ‘On our forecasts, the shares trade at 9x prospective earnings and yield 5.6%. We retain our recently downgraded ‘hold’ recommendation.’

DIY retailer Kingfisher (KGF.L) falls 2.6% or 7.1p to 268p despite claiming a recovery in underlying sales in its second quarter. In the 10 weeks to 7 July group sales rose 3.7% but on a like for like basis dipped 0.4%. The group owns Castorama in France where sales fell 0.2%, worse than analyst forecasts of a 1.7% rise. BQ did better in UK and Ireland with like-for-like sales up 1.6% compared to forecasts of a 0.4% fall. However, margins have taken a hit as the company cut prices to maintain demand during the wet weather.

In a tale of two sports chains, Sports Direct (SPD.L) continues its ascendancy while JJB Sports (JJB.L)  threatens to disappear down the plug hole.

Sports Direct, which is run by billionaire Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley, unveiled a rise in full-year, pre-tax profits to £162.1 million from £135.5 million. Sales, up 13% to £1.84 billion, were driven by an 82% surge in online business. The shares fell 3.2p or 1% to 291.5p but are up 36% or 78p this year.

Chief executive Dave Forsey said in a statement. ‘In spite of the low expectations surrounding England’s participation in Euro 2012 and the unseasonal weather our core divisions are performing well.’

By contrast JJB Sports tumbled a further 2.1p, or 28.3%, to 5.4p, on another dire trading statement with group like-for-like sales plunging 8.7% in the 24 weeks to 15 July 2012. This leaves the company valued at just £17 million, which is around the level of its bank debts. The company is in talks with its ‘strategic partners’.

Lloyds sells 632 branches to Co-Op

08.15: Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L) shares slip after the terms of a deal to sell 632 branches to the Co-Operative group are announced.

Lloyds, down 0.3% to 29.6p, will receive just £350 million upfront for the ‘Project Verde’ divestment, which the European Commission required it to make in return for its bailout by the British government. The Co-Op will pay a further £400 million depending on performance of the business until 2027. Lloyds says this is worth around £800 million ‘on a nominal basis’.

Lloyds, which is 40% owned by the taxpayer, had  originally hoped to get up to £1.5 billion, but that valuation was scuppered by the economic slowdown.

It is a huge deal for the Co-Op, giving it 4.8 million customers and a balance sheet of £24 billion of assets. It takes its branch network to 1,000 or 10% of all bank branches in the UK and gives it a 7% share of the personal current account market.

The FTSE 100 has opened 5.5 points, or 0.1%, higher at 5,691 after overnight gains in the US and Asia.