Same Old Song

Cycling and bad music go together like Gin and Tonic.  Or, to put it in an appropriately Manchester context, chips and gravy. 

The caravan which precedes the Tour de France peloton is accompanied by fromage-dripping accordion musak, and the continental Six-Days are ridden against a background of high-octane commercial techno.  

But the music selection at today's Track World Cup hit new heights of audio weirdness and whoever was behind it is either a genius or seriously disturbed.

I'd grown used to the, frankly barmy,  idea of playing "Zorba's Theme" for primes and the hackneyed "We Will Rock You" to hype crowd tension before match sprints but today we entered the Twilight Zone.

The merest hint of an Italian rider was greeted with blasts of the outrageously stereotypical Mambo Italiano (sample lyrics "Hey Mambo, don't want a tarantella, Hey Mambo, no more mozarella"). 

And any rider from Holland was serenaded with a bizarre oompah tune of mysterious origin. Despite having quite a lot of family in the Netherlands, my Dutch is non-existent, so the song may well be a stirring patriotic call to arms. Or it may translate as "Hey, fatty in the orange suit, you know you're very slow, pull up the banking now (oompah, oompah)", in which case I applaud a subtle piece of multi-lingual sledging. 

In the course of a single men's sprint match we were treated to extracts of a Strauss waltz, Joey Ramone's cover of "What a Wonderful World", SL2's "On a Ragga Tip" and Blur's "Parklife" -- a playlist of such a determinedly eclectic nature that it wouldn't have disgraced the late John Peel.

The other repetitive tune of the day, of course, was God Save the Queen (not the Sex Pistols' version) which was played at every single one of the victory ceremonies.  How long is it going to be before the other cycling nations do the two-wheeled equivalent of "taking their ball back" and refuse to play with us any more?

I tried again to get a picture of the British Cycling stand, but a Paul Weller look-alike contest was taking place.  As you can see, the winner was quite convincing.