Cycling's Olympic legacy is already here, says British Cycling

The stars do train on open roads. Many of the Manchester based people often commute to and from the Velodrome on their bikes.

However, any talk of legacy which focusses only on cycling as a sport (and particularly an off road sport) is frankly a bit pathetic. I'd like to see a campaign to remind drivers that it might be the next (or indeed the current) Bradley Wiggins or Joanna Rowsell that is being endangered each time that a driver is too selfish or lazy or ignorant to give a cyclist space.

Wiggins certainly seemed pissed off on Twitter a couple of years ago when his wife was knocked off her bike by a motorist. Pendleton has voiced concern about safety on the road before. Cavendish has pointed out differences between UK and elsewhere, including advocating that we should adopt presumed liability here.

Yes, they may be stars, and yes, they may race mainly on closed roads or inside velodromes, but the sport's stars certainly train on the same roads as us when they are in the UK, and they will also have family, friends and in some cases kids who ride on the road.

I don't know whether Bradley, Mark, Lizzie, Victoria et al care about ordinary cyclists or not - I am not sure I see why they should. They are elite professional athletes, who stand to become pretty wealthy from their efforts, hard as they may have been.

However I really do not see them as positive role models for mass utility cycling, indeed the reverse. I think we have quite enough young-middle-aged men in lycra acting out their Tour de France Fantasies on the public roads, especially as commuters. It is they who are impatient to press on and so jump the lights, weave through the traffic and occasionally use pavements to bypass stationary traffic, and it is they who leave the negative impression on those who want to see only the negative, in the pages of the Daily Mail and multiple local newspapers.

I do not blame Bradley et al for this - it is not how they chose to be perceived. However apart from Victoria Pendleton, who certainly allows herself to be portrayed as a fairly mormal person where she is promoting her range of bikes at Halfords, or a well-known hair care product, the image we have of all of them is of lean, improbably muscular, athletes in stretch lycra and funny looking helmets with dark tinted visors.

As for velodromes and mountain bike trails and closed road circuits, I have seen some of the numbers quoted for what these facilities cost to build. You could make a lot of segregated cycle track for the same money and I'll bet a lot more people would use them.

Without investment is real cycling infrastructure, the stuff that goes on the roads, it means absolutely nothing! We have been here before, this is just another flash in the pan. The so called 'legacy' effect will fade away as fast as it came. We have an opportunity, but the golden few, don't really give a stuff about the ordinary people at the grass roots.

I don't often disagree with you MercuryOne, but you're wrong to dismiss Sky Rides as window dressing.

The published evidence on measures that have successfully grown the modal share for cycling all indicate the need for a multi-component approach. That's to say more bike lanes, better-designed road junctions, more cycle training, more bikes available to hire, more off road trails, a supportive legal system with effective enforcement, better provision for disabled cycling, Dr Bike days, etc.

Love them or loathe them, Sky Rides provide a valuable opportunity for people who don't identify themselves as cyclists to engage more in an appealing, low-risk, packaged activity. I'm convinced that Sky Rides play a valuable role in raising the profile of cycling at a local level and help thousands of non-cyclists to enjoy participating regularly.

All well and good. I do wish however that BC would wade in a little deeper into what makes those that don't cycle frightened to ride on urban and suburban roads. Sports riding on closed tracks is laudable - as is winning medals - but BC has a chance now to help change the mind set towards cycling in the UK and the quality of life and health for more people by backing the '20 is plenty' campaign.

Sky Rides are just window dressing: it's regular commutes by more people on a daily basis which will make the real difference and that won't happen until motorist speed is reduced by force.

Politicians and local government in the UK will continue to support what they perceive to be the biggest threat to their own re-election. At present that is angry motorists. It could be angry cyclists if BC step up and take charge.