Where did #BDIPC disappear to? Once the premier bastion of internet peloton sexualisation, the Bangable Dudes In Pro Cycling blog hasn’t had an update since 2013. Which is a shame, because now, more than ever, we’re in dire need of comedic flirtation with hot cyclists on the internet.
Firstly: giving an interwebbal wink over a lycra-covered bulge puts a much-needed prick in the inflated ego of professional men’s cycling. Some of the traditional, archaic aspects of the sport very much make it what it is, but it’s hard to deny that cycling is sometimes so steeped in its past that it’s hard to see how it could possibly be in the future.
Like the Benjamin Button of the international athletic community, pro cycling becomes more annoying, infantile and stubborn as it gets older. It started off as a mature sport for mature folks, and now when anyone suggests, god forbid, that there could be an update in regulations, heels are dug in and tears are shed (this is especially true of the boys not wanting a little sister any time soon, thank you very much).
So, the obvious way to undermine all this masculine energy that’s obsessed with ‘real men’ who smoked cigars on their bicycles and died at 22, is by turning them into comedy sex objects. Sure, the idiotic ones will think they are actually an Adonis, but everyone else will know that we’re really just putting them in their place: reducing them to their physical attributes and ignoring any of their athletic or academic accomplishments. Kind of like a podium girl.
A genuine strategy for drawing attention to what are the very real problems of sexism in cycling is by using inversion tactics. And that’s why Bangable Dudes In Pro Cycling was, in spite of every attempt it made just to be a blog with a bucket-load of innuendos, actually super important.
The blog helped with men’s issues too – by normalising yet another body type, and hailing its attractiveness, BDIPC was doing a service to every skinny climber that’s ever worried that their ability to dance up an incline makes them unpopular with the ladies.
And the final reason we need more BDIPC? Well because there’s some total babes that have only really come to peak handsomeness since blogger Kelly Minx Riordan stopped posting. Namely: bearded Namibian beauty Dan Craven. Yummy.
Did you miss Bangable Dudes In Pro Cycling the first time round? Check out the blog here, and the author’s innudendo-filled interview with Jens Voigt here.
