“Victoria how could you?”; Pendleton takes one from the heart

This is a vintage-era postcard gratuitously
placed and has nothing to do with this blog

I am not a real sports fan; totally illiterate. I am not a follower of popular culture; on the street or any size screen I wouldn’t know… what'shername… see, I just don’t know, I can't think of any female celebrity that captures my attention. I’m weird with my crushes, they’re mostly historical. I am lucky if the camera was invented when most of them did their thing, or that some artist was around during the same century to hear a report of their likeness and capture it in some rendering. I once had a picture in my wallet of Emily Dickinson. I showed to my well-read friend. “Aw! She’s homily!” he cried. She was the Belle of Amherst, and I loved her, although I filed the picture away somewhere. I like female scientists, Lady Ada Lovelace, Maria Agnesi, as well as the real crazy artists, like Valentine de Saint-Point, and Suzanne Valadon. It is rare when I feel a fuzzy, pink-cloud admiration about someone currently on the world stage, and shaking it up. Then came Victoria.

I was a bike messenger for years in Boston mostly, but San Francisco too, and a fairly good one. Cycling history is important to me. The bicycle was responsible for a gender, sexual, and racial revolution in America during the last two decades of the 19th century. Fin-de-siècle women were suppose to be sickly, a costly doctor on retainer was the sign of a man’s success. The bicycle got them out of their corsets, hiked up their skirts, got them throwing their legs up and over a saddle, and sweating. It allowed them to move about freely without the aid of men, or a man’s horse, or other beasts of chattel. New York school teachers were not allowed to ride a bicycle; next she’d be showing the pupils her bloomers, and chewing gum, with a horrible bicycle-face. Sounds funny, but allowing a woman to travel, cheaply, under her own power, and have it contribute to her physical fortitude was a pretty powerful thing. Check The Kominas  video Sharia Law in the U.S.A. for a modern parallel.

A young savvy suitor, for a small investment could ensure some privacy while courting, something that was very new and uncustomary. Ma and Pa looked askance at some mustachioed gent coming a'calling, wheeling up to the homestead, with two rides, or a tandem. They were able to travel some distance into nature, and then let it take over. Sounds a little better than a cramped backseat of an auto, but then I’m a too tall, kinky romantic.

Major Taylor c. 1900

As a historical note Marshall Major Taylor was the second black world champion of any sport for two years around the millennial. The Worcester Whirlwind, the Colored Cyclone was the toast and terror of Europe, yet could not ride competitively in his own country. He died penniless in 1932, his fortunes drained by hucksters, and bad investments, selling his auto-biography The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World door-to-door. He was exhumed from his unmarked grave in 1948, and laid to rest by a group of former pro racers, with money donated by Frank W. Schwinn.

I was checking the BBC sports RSS to see if there was any advance track cycling news on the Olympics in London. I only follow two sports, both Olympic, with some interest; women’s speed skating, and women’s track cycling. I figure, why would I want to watch a bunch of dudes in tight clothes chasing a ball like a dog or small child? [Don’t get me started about a sport where the object is to dominate your opponents’ end zone, with repeated penetrations, with ends that are both split and tight.] Anyway, then I came across Victoria. There was some blurb about British track cyclist Victoria Pendleton saying how she wasn’t the manic-depressive psycho everyone thought she was, she was just in the habit of speaking her mind. She’s had an up and down career since two gold medals in Beijing 2008. [Which now makes sense, given how this plays out.]

I watched her world record setting performance in the team sprint with Jess Varnish at the World Track Cup in February before I checked the FHM pictorial. My ears burned at my peers comments to the pictures, how dare they puerilely sully her heroic accomplishments,  her incredible spirit and self-empowerment. While there were some incredibly sexy shots of a beautiful strong woman in various states of nudity on a bike and not, I downloaded the one of her riding on the track, no hands, sitting erect in team colors, holding the Union Jack over her head. She was Britannia in Victory personified. I’ve been getting a little anglophile over the past few years, but I felt a welling up in me like a damn Tory. [editor's note: UK artist and avid cyclist Paul Shipley was very kind to send his version of this amazing moment done in gouache, watercolor, and acrylic. The victory well-preserved, Pendleton's expression is even more fixed with determination. More of his art can be seen and purchased at http://www.veritasart.co.uk/gallery.html]  

I got two cheap picture frames, printed reasonably descent prints and hung them up. Keep in mind that ever since my girl left, I’ve been taping up every punk rock show flyer, every pin-up shot torn from a magazine I can, because it would piss her off. I actually bought picture frames; this was serious. I capped the 8 x 10 BiV with a 5 x 7 of her chilling in a black half-suit, helmet in one hand, still in the saddle and clips of one hot stripped-down ride, leaning against the track’s rail for support. Her long flowing black hair and makeup on the top countered the lower natural girl-jock victory shot.

I like two types of strong women; strong, and women—add a rumor of crazy and I’m a sucker. I said that to a friend, when we had people over, some women asked what Victoria's pictures, among all my bicycle ephemra, were about. He called it “bike porn.” Let me clarify, the whole idea of these shots, and pin-ups in general, is that the women are the subject, not the object. Pornography connotes a kind of ownership, hence its etymology; porne is Greek for harlot or prostitute, and is derived from bought or sold. Clearly, the only one owning it was Victoria.

The UCI Track World Championships in Melbourne were coming up in early April. I couldn’t wait, the field had some lookers, even the US’s Sarah Hammer is impressive, but lacks the union of form andintention. Most women cyclists get a little bottom heavy, which is sort of nice, but up top, they generally get too thin. Track cyclists are stronger then the road or mountain riders; Victoria’s arms made Michelle Obama’s look like chicken-wings, and the curve of her deltoids, linking to her trapezius, and down to the cleft of her lats, not huge, but incredibly curvy-feminine.

I read this essay by a psychologist who said that males couldn’t help but think of sex everytime they looked at women, because every gentle round curve; breasts, shoulders, knees, even the reverse curve of the nape of the neck, were meant to remind him of the butt, since early-on most sex was from behind, and that used to mean the success of the species was assured. Sounds good to me. That’s why most muscle mass women put on doesn’t naturally get the bulk and definition that men's does. Her body was an incredible machine, but not for assuring the species' success, but to sprint, with a sudden huge burst of controlled power, and thus assuring victory. She was perfectly, what is known in the field as a term of art, aero. [Now it’s all making sense. How could I be so stupid?]

Anyway, while I was engaged in this idle infatuation, I had attempted to get a little closer to a few individuals in the network of misfits I had recently been running with and found my domain. Right away, I failed miserably, and worse alienated some great people. There were some affections exchanged, but the average American fourteen year-old has more action than I had during these two weeks. The combination of a lot of things coming to head; professional, family, financial, during a period of gross transition and restructuring, caused me to choke. Out of practice, or better behaved, because in my courier days I would have kissed three girls the same night in the same bar [Come on, don’t mean nothing.], and played hand-on-the-knee with whoever else would let me, total lothario stuff. All to crank the wheel home alone, psyched because I was my own man. The fact that I was indeed alone would set in once I climbed into bed, in my dingy basement apartment. I had been trying to do things differently. Ultimately, the ladies who I had developed amiable feelings towards, were otherwise engaged. This was not an uncommon occurrence, and one that I had had a well-trod path on. Why had I saved that one pair of clean underwear, or the razor that wasn’t too dull, for the occasion? I might as well, and I think I did, get the full-on lothario mode going again; dirty, filthy and disrespecting.

But, walking by Victoria’s framed victory shot, with her iconic look of sureness, confidence, pride in her accomplishment; as an individual, as a woman, as a Member of the Order of the British Empire with her Union Jack, made these day-to-day pressures and misfires melt. There was indeed, always Hope; hopefully the offer wasn't just limited to the British. [Guess it wouldn’t hurt to be Australian either, jerk!]

So, the World Championship arrived and I combed the internet trying to find a source to watch the event. Not on US cable of course, not on my housemate’s forty-six inch HD television that we never watch, but finally I found a vender licensed to stream it live from Melbourne, at 5am, for $9.99 onto my crappy laptop. But while searching, I had been scanning the headlines looking for my Hope, and some expression of confidence, that she was back, and her name was derived from victory after all, and the same name as arguably the most powerful British Queen in history. Could she sweep it, go back to the London Olympics, and grab all three golds? Then I saw it. I didn’t have to read it to know what happened. The headline was Pendleton admits Aussie affair upset team-mates. Maybe the affair the SBS was alluding to was some errant intrigue?, but no it was an affair with a member of the British Cycling coaching staff. An Aussie Sports Scientist? Is there such a thing?, I am an engineer, and that can't even be a real nerd, and a caneater no less. She was acknowledging how the affair began prior to Beijing, was kept secret until after, dude quit the team, went back to Australia, and they’re now engaged. Since the World Championship is in Rooschtupper Central she’s now in his arms, when she should be thinking of being in the drops and clips.

According to the article on sbs.com.au, “She added: ‘A lot of people felt very negatively about it; team-mates that blamed me because Scott [Gardner] wasn't there to help them and felt I was being selfish; members of staff who felt it was unprofessional, even though we never flaunted it...’” And then I thought about her disappointing record since, there were some coups, yes, but somehow there was a fickleness, or doubt, caused… by… love? Then I thought of the most famous FHM cover shot, you can find it online easy, and her perfectly honed body… Freaking Sports Scientist!

"You don't choose the person you fall in love with.” No, you don’t Victoria, sometimes they choose you.