British Pride. Isn't it about time we found a sport that we can be proud of??

Ok, so in my last blog post I described how Scotland seemed to be ‘glorious failures’ in all sporting events. Heroic losers is how I would describe our bold little nation.

The way we get riled up watching a Scotland football match is rather epic, like the famous Braveheart speech. But it would still take more than “fireballs” and “lightning bolts” to put us into an international tournament.

So, still glorious failures. We are the Neville Longbottom of world sport. Huzzah.

But instead of wallowing in our own self pity, crying our eyes out while watching Andy Murray getting put through the tennis equivalent of a Nazi firing range against Rafael Nadal, why don’t we get up off our bottoms and find a sport that Scotland can be proud of.

Grand Prix. Nope, the last great driver we had could barely get his anvil of a chin into his crash helmet.

Cricket. Too civilized, and besides, we don’t have a strong Asian community to hold our country up. With the exception of the south side of Glasgow. No.

Equestrian. Pur-lease.

Cycling. Yeah righ- HANG ON!!

Cycling. Why didn’t we see it before?? Cycling is the answer to our sporting nightmares. Explained so in these three quick and obvious points.

1. We are good at it. Chris Hoy, Danny Macaskill, Danny Hart. All big cycling names who are at literally the top of the cycling world.

2. There are so many different disciplines that incorporate cycling. TheUCI, which is the governing body for all forms of cycling rules over the disciplines: Road, Track, Mountain Bike, Cyclo-cross, BMX, Trials, Indoor cycling and Para-cycling.

3. This is the most important thing: WE CAN GET INVOLVED IN IT!!

Little is it known but Scotland has some of the bike venues  in the world.

Fort William, the home of the UCI Downhill World Cup in the UK and considered the best mountain bike track in the world by professionals, is just an hour’s car journey from Glasgow.

In Glasgow, a brand new Velodrome is being built for the up and coming Commonwealth games, supposedly able to hold 9,000 spectators.

And it’s not vastly expensive to do it yourself. A regular mountain bike from Halfords will cost you anywhere between £200 and over £1000 depending on how keen you are to get involved.

Now, a grand doesn’t sound like back pocket cash but if you compare to the likes of golf, where a bag, clubs, shoes, trolley, clothes AND membership to the country club are pretty much standard it is relatively cheap. And you won’t have to wear those awful chequered sweater vests. Well, unless you want to.

So, it seems we have succeeded in finding a sport that we can all enjoy, young and old, and that we can take pride in being the best in the world at.