With its football team been beaten by the Italians, its tennis players giving a rather poor contribuion to Wimbledon, England has been quite unlucky this year, sport-wise, while at the same time celebrating the art of sport with its London2012. However, not all the hopes are lost as Wigging's legs pedal in France and push him in pole position at the Tour de France. Right there, on the two weels it s where English talents are. Cycling is here understood as much more than a sport, it s devotion and naturalness at the same time. The amount of people that cross the island up and down by bike is amazingly high. And again right there, in their commitment and in the sport in itself, is where English are the best. It is particularly stunning to see how many Londoners reach the city by bike and how many naturally understand their way of transport to be their bikes. 
It then come with huge surprise that his year, London2012 is actually penalizing cyclists. The same London2012 that was aiming to be the greenest and most sustainable game ever. The ODA, the London Greater Authority and Transport for London have done an amaizing job of exellent cooperation to prepare the city for the upcoming Olympics. Effords were made to make sure Londoners would still carry on with their regular lives without letting the feared games' caos affect their routines. Simoultaneoualy, huge changes were implemented to make the city be ready to welcome thousands and thousands of people in this already frenetic capital. London in 2011 has pretty much been a huge building site that really quickly developed an amazing change. One of those has been the transport system where TfL and ODA have strongly put forces together to shut roads down (in fact 1rd- GreenWay) to the traffic and establish nice pedestrian pathways, together with the implementation of the games lines on the main roads, accessable only to the partecipants to the games. Those game lines, placed exactly in the middle of each road, will not be accessable to cyclists, for "security reasons", as if being on the other side of the road, with non existent cycling paths, would instead make cyclists in a safe position. 

The funding a city receives to prepare for the Olympics is not only a possibility to offer a good service during the games, but also an invaluable opportunity to inprove the city structure for the future community use. London has been in need of proper cycling facilities for decades now, especially considering how many people are actually willing to cycle in this country. Ignoring the possibility to create a great cycling service around the city has been a huge missed opportunity, an invaluable one.On top of this, most train companies have banned bikes from trains (a part from refoldable ones), decision that affected millions of people that commute to London from outside the city and then cycle from the station to work.

Questions arise one more time then on the extent to which these games are actually going to be as sustainable as they were hoped to be. Share thoughts!