Cycling was once a mass participation activity. Ben Healy’s dazzling Tour de France performances can help catalyse a revival
T
he front pages in Ireland were splashed with yellow last week after Ben Healy became the first Irish cyclist in 38 years to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. While those who cycle sometimes make a point of separating its two forms – sport and transport – they are deeply interlinked, and bumpy streets on the island of Ireland have played a part in that.
In 1888, John Boyd Dunlop developed the pneumatic tyre to help his son cycle around Belfast more comfortably. The technology was first used for racing bicycles and then manufactured in a factory in central Dublin before it was brought into widespread use.
The combination of the pneumatic tyre and the safety bicycle led to a boom in cycling. This new model was the iPhone of bicycles at the time, replacing earlier bikes including the penny farthing with its impractically large front wheel.
