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‘Cycling goalkeeper’ Ben Foster gets driving ban for speeding

The Watford and former England footballer was caught doing 99mph on the M40 in April 2021

Watford footballer and former England international Ben Foster, who is well known for his love of cycling, has been banned from driving for six months and slapped with a £2,250 fine for speeding.

The ex-Manchester United goalkeeper was recorded driving his Tesla at 99mph on the M40 at Beaconsfield between Wooburn Green Lane and Junction 2 in April last year.

Foster was convicted on 14 December after pleading not guilty. He failed to appear for his sentencing earlier this week at Wycombe Magistrates’ Court, where he was fined a total of £2,250 and given six points on his licence.

According to a court official, those six points mean Foster has now accumulated at least 12 points on his licence, resulting in a six-month driving ban.

He also has been ordered to pay a £190 surcharge and £620 in costs.

> Remco Evenepoel gets driving ban for speeding 

The 38-year-old has been capped eight times for England and has made over 500 senior appearances for Premier League clubs such as current side Watford, West Bromwich Albion and Manchester United, where he picked up two League Cup winner’s medals.

In September 2020 Foster set up his own YouTube channel, ‘The Cycling GK’, which currently has over a million subscribers and combines video diaries of his football career and his experiences on two wheels.

> “If a pro cyclist could come into a football club and show the players how hard they work it would really open their eyes”, says Ben Foster 

He has spoken frequently about his passion for cycling, and revealed to road.cc last year that he convinced a few of his Watford teammates, such as Troy Deeney and Tom Cleverley, to start riding bikes during the initial Covid lockdowns.

Foster also said that he hopes to pursue bike packing and gravel riding when he hangs up his football boots, with the Alps, Dolomites and Pyrenees – along with the Dirty Kanza gravel event – on his post-career to-do list.

Earlier this month, Quick Step-Alpha Vinyl star Remco Evenepoel was banned from driving for 21 days after the Belgian rider was caught driving at 125kph in a 70kph zone, a misdemeanour his lawyer attributed to a ‘youthful error’. 

Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.

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12 comments

Avatar
keef bike 63 | 1 year ago
0 likes

I thought him losing his touch as a goal keeper was perhaps down to being in the twilight of his football career not the fact he has heavy feet!

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Rapha Nadal | 2 years ago
1 like

What is the point of this article?  Cyclist drives fast.  And?

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AlsoSomniloquism | 2 years ago
2 likes

Maybe in the next contact Road.CC can ask why he pleaded not guilty? Loophole and his ilk trying something on so needed the extra time of court case? Were they trying a "it wasn't me speeding, it was the autodrive" type defence?

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Tom_77 replied to AlsoSomniloquism | 2 years ago
2 likes

AlsoSomniloquism wrote:

Maybe in the next contact Road.CC can ask why he pleaded not guilty? Loophole and his ilk trying something on so needed the extra time of court case? Were they trying a "it wasn't me speeding, it was the autodrive" type defence?

If you plead not guilty there's always the possibility that the prosecution will screw up - lose evidence or not produce a witness. For a speeding offence the only advantage in pleading guilty is a smaller fine. So if you're wealthy you might as well gamble.

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Sriracha | 2 years ago
8 likes

Silly sausage! If only he'd kept quiet about being a cyclist, he might have got away with it.

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swldxer | 2 years ago
4 likes

Licence in the UK.

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BigSigh | 2 years ago
2 likes

I'm pretty sure Dirty Kanza has been renamed. Isn't it Unbound Gravel these days?

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Glov Zaroff | 2 years ago
1 like

'Foster has now accumulated at least 12 points on his license' - would be interesting to find out the total and what the previous points were for. Well done you total tw4t. 

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Trickytree1984 replied to Glov Zaroff | 2 years ago
0 likes
Glov Zaroff wrote:

'Foster has now accumulated at least 12 points on his license' - would be interesting to find out the total and what the previous points were for. Well done you total tw4t. 

Out of interest, have you ever broken the speed limit?

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philhubbard replied to Trickytree1984 | 2 years ago
2 likes

The other thing to mention is that with his considerable wealth he could have easily kept his license if he wanted. 

142,000 have lost their license for 12 points or more since 2017 but a further 35,500 have kept their license by claiming they require to drive for work

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Simon E replied to Trickytree1984 | 2 years ago
0 likes

Trickytree1984 wrote:

Out of interest, have you ever broken the speed limit?

Bearing in mind the huge cuts in policing, especially roads, have you ever considered how often and/or by how much a driver has to break the law to rack up 12 points?

It's really disappointing that a bloke who is "passionate" about his cycling (so you'd hope he has a better, and many might consider a role model, still can't bring himself to try following the rules once behind the wheel.

I suspect that the fine won't have much of an impact. But would a bigger fine really be a deterrent? Do speeding drivers think "If I get caught this will really hurt"?

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BikeJon replied to Glov Zaroff | 1 year ago
3 likes

As a Watford FC supporter I can say they are not the 12 points we're looking for!

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