Vecchiojo's Video Selection…

VecchioJo shares his pick of the videos that have inspired him to go for a ride whilst simultaneously delaying him during 2012. Take it away Jo…

Riis is briefed on the Muur and Bosberg for the Tour of Flanders 2012

Parodies of Hitler’s outrage from the film “Downfall” are ten a penny these days and a little bit weary, but this one still raises a chuckle, if only for the line “The entire world is against the Crotch Eagle”

Cyclo-Cross World Champs, Koksijde

An arty end-of-programme short from Sporza, their slo-mo is about my race pace. You'll have to hit the link to watch this one

BOY

Winner of a British Airways' Great Britons competition this short film from doctor turned actor Prasanna Puwanarajah and starring Timothy Spall is a beautiful piece of work and likely to make a bit of dust suddenly get stuck in your eye.

Wheel Stealing

I’m a bit surprised this doesn’t happen more often. Liège–Bastogne–Liège, on the climb of La Redoute where it gets real steep and the road is crowded with drunken Belgian fans, all a teeny bit partisan to Philippe Gilbert, the local boy who comes from the town at the bottom of the hill. The narrow road, steep hill and packed crowds mean that the team cars have to crawl past and sometimes stop. And there wasn’t a lot of love for Radio Shack at the time. Probably funnier because I was there, just out of shot to the right. This explains why the police turned up minutes later.

Tom Boonen wins the Paris - Roubaix

A fantastic race to watch, and even better from the viewpoint of the Omega Pharma - Quick-Step team car. Zip up your jersey and enjoy

Rapha Continental – Assynt

Not your usual cycling video this. No jump cuts to a hard rock beat. Yes it is very “Rapha”, yes it’s very stylish, yes it’s that quiet thing, yes it has Epic overtones. Pretentious marketing claptrap or an elegant evocative piece of film. You decide.

Team GB Track Cycling - BBC Sport Tribute - London 2012 Olympics

Just in case you’d forgotten how bloody fantastic these few days were.

Not crying, nope, really not crying. Again.

Giro d'Italia 2013 - Official promo

And looking forward. It’s got passion, it’s got heroes, it’s got soul, it’s got pink. It’s the Giro.

Geoff Waugh - World's Hardest Cyclocross Race
 

Geoff Waugh has been photographing bikes since forever and this is his video of the 50th running of the 3 Peaks Cyclocross this year. Sparse and harsh and grey it reflects the character of the event perfectly.

Gravel Metric Three

Gravel Racing was the thing you didn’t realize you suddenly had to do in 2012, here’s a fun little thing from the States. It could just as easily be Norfolk though.

Cipollini - Bond

Why do my rides never involve girls, Porsches, helicopters, a motorbike chase and a speedboat? Mario Cipollini launched his new BOND bike with a ballsy pastiche video  but the Behind The Scenes videos of him being filmed from a motorbike descending a mountain road that’s not closed to traffic are just as fun and three times as scary. Especially when he tell the motorbike to speed up.

Here Come The Girls - Women’s World Cup Cyclo-Cross, Plzen

Victoria Pendleton being on Strictly and getting a CBE, Sarah Storey being made a dame, the rise of Laura Trott, the women’s Olympic road race being infinitely more exciting than the men’s, Bradley Wiggins making noises about backing a women’s team. Despite all the grumbling 2013 could be the beginning of the recognition and respect that women’s bike racing deserves. If proof were needed this video of the cyclo-cross World Cup from Plzen shows that the women have just as much balls as the men, if not more. Not calling them girls would help enormously though, I know.

(Skip the bits from 01.40 to 05.45 and 06.34 to 07.30 if you don’t want to see a man go on and on about a BH cyclo-cross bike, in French)

Morvélo - À Bloc

Yeah, I’m biased because these are “my” roads, and look, the sun’s shining. The bike and pub clothing boys from Brighton released another jolly video. They do like their video. Ride hard, have fun, look stylish doing it. Rules for life.

Back Pedalling

There Cycling show you how to dismount a bike in style whilst on the phone. So now you know.

Shopping Bike Tricks

Who was it that said it’s not about the bike? Anyway, a frenchman does silly tricks on his mum’s shopper, it breaks, he beats it back into shape. Repeatedly.

Fun, but he’s no Martyn Ashton.

You Can’t do That

If you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of months you’ll have missed this. Martyn has been riding trials mountainbikes professionally since sometime last century and had already astounded both mountainbikers and roadies alike with a video of him doing things on a road bike a couple of years ago. This year he took it up several notches to produce “Road Bike Party”. Six and a half million views of inappropriate use of a Pinarello can’t be bad. Despite the rookie chainring tattoo it’s still the best film of the year.