Your vote needed (again): TalkSport asks, 'Is cycling a sport?'

People play football - you dont play @ cycling beleive me...everyone who's got any degree of inteligence upon learning of my interest in cycling look at myself in admirance.

Obviously Mr Brazil is purely 'playing' the obvious card here here..its quite self evident that Mark Cavendish is unheard of YET to win what he has is exemplified talent!

I wont have heard of the many talented sports stars that are to be in the Olympics this year but it doesnt mean I'll look down on them in a derogatory & self demeaning manner...

Football fans HATE anything getting the better of their beloved sport...

I spent some time in Italy, a while back & an Italian told me that football is looked on as a working class sport then Cycling is a sport that you've got to have talent for...

I know who Giles Coren is actually.

He is a restaurant critic, and possibly a berk.

His finest work was a widely-circulated email to his sub-editor, tearing them a new arsehole for altering his copy so that his review of a restaurant ended on an unstressed syllable and lacked a couple of gay jokes.

I am not going to let him pollute my mind with irritation at him, and I suggest you all do likewise.

Alan Brazil is a whopper. Most of talkshite's listenership appear to be whoppers so I don't really care what some petty poll has to say, I'm more knowledgeable in terms of cycling than their average listener, I'm also more knowledgeable on the subject of football as I can watch the game and form my own opinion as opposed to just repeating verbatim what the latest red top drivel is.

As somebody pointed out earlier, football was dragged into the mainstream and just look at what a horror show that has become.

Also, can I point out that Dr Fuentes is now working for several top football teams, clean as a whistle that sport...

The oldest definition of sport in English (1300) is of anything humans find amusing or entertaining.

So going back to 1300ad you still could go and watch someone being hung drawn and quartered.....and call it a sport.

Football = game...as in the immortal words of Greavesy...'It's a funny old game'...
Just as curling is a game, or bowls....
Cycling...well it's a way of life...My bike says 'sportive' on the top tube not 'gameive'

Cheapening bovine gaze... Awesome bit of writing!

It always amazes me how such non issues always provoke so much reaction and debate. And yet, here I am rising to the bait!

If you check the definition of 'sport' on any of the online dictionary sites, it is blatantly obvious that cycling would be classified as a sport.

Methinks Mr Brazil, and his Talksport employers, know exactly what will happen as a result of saying something so controversial: lots of free publicity, an increase in website traffic and a lot more listeners!

You 'play' games; football, rugby, tiddlywinks. You 'do' sports; cycling, running etc ;->

At the end of the day we (cyclists/fans) need to rise above the anti-cycling brigade. None of them can stop the increasing popularity of our sport/means of transport.
I think its some kind of self defense they put up to cover up their own in securities. Its the same people that shout names out of their car windows and make fun when I'm out running or cycling, its just easier for them to make fun than admit to themselves that they'd love to be able to do what we do, just they haven't got it in them.

Surely it's not as black and white as is cycling a sport or not, If your racing or training it's a sport, but if your commuting or going somewhere it's travelling, and if your just going for a ride then it's a hobby.

I'm all for definitive definitions, they're by far the best kind.

My mum still has all my subbuteo stuff - plus a few hundred Everton programs dating from the late seventies - in the loft. I hope. One day I'll flog it all, get very rich, and contribute rubbish to this site from my yacht in Brixham.

My younger brother was a Subbuteo fanatic, with all the teams playing in a league and cup competitions, he had loads of stats, a sort of early pre computor fantasy football, John Motson of Subbuteo. He never played for real but coached and assisted with youth teams.

The definitive definition of distinction between sport and game, is that you can smoke a cigarette in one, but not the other...

Subbuteo ... now there's football, rugby, cricket - perhaps there should be a Road.cc competition to devise a Subbuteo Track Cycling game ! Sorry, do I mean sport ?
Where does cycle polo come into the equation ?
Merry Christmas(time) and a Happy New Year to everyone, by the way !

Lol @ Pete. I had the team but in striker. Remember the press the top of the head to make them kick?

Anyway, I am always slightly uncomfortable calling anything a sport that can be done while in the pub!

Hatter when I said mainstream I was thinking particularly of places like Belgium or Holland, where cycling is more in the ether, if you like, not so much with other sports such as football.

The definition of a sport is that if you have to change your shoes to do it - its a sport. It works for most.
This is a fair enough - it differentiates between 'ordinary' cyclists and competative ones?

Russell Osman? Great team, great manager.
Ipswich (when they played in those white pinstripes) was my favourite Subbuteo team, like, ever!
Sorry am I off topic?

Football is a game, not a sport. You play a game. You play football, tennis, golf etc... You don't play cycling. Cycling is a sport.

Might have been a decent player (terrible haircut) but he's as thick as pigsh*t. Why anyone would listen to Talksport might be a better question to ask.

i fondly remember watching alan brazil from atop my milk crate in the churchman's stand at portman road. i always fell off it when we scored. didn't he get five in a match once? great player.

Am I the only one that doesnt want cycling to be mainstream?
Football's mainstream and look at the state of that.

+1 Simon, love it