DOMESTIQUE

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Need a jacket from the car? Need to collect bidons? pace the star rider back to the front?  Bingo loves to help. It’s why he’s so popular but will never be absolutely outstanding at anything. Bingo doesn’t have the out and out genetic superiority that some of his peers do- so a positive attitude and working for others is the only real chance he has to be in the show that is pro cycling. 

After years of work in the peloton, the countless times he's been sent up the road into doomed breakaways, the sacrifices of lungs and legs he has made on the early slopes in the mountains, the wheels and bikes he’s given up on winding gravel roads, the selfless attacks he’s made to take the sting out of other’s legs. Bingo really deserves to get something back from the sport he’s given everything for, but unfortunately the future looks rather rotund. 

Without something to drive him along and keep him lean, hungry and fit, waffles will become his master. Unmotivated and unburdened by training miles he’ll balloon in weight. The slim chance for staving off obesity lies in a job hosting a YouTube cycling channel, or the entrepreneurial stress of setting up a new brand of Jersey. Sadly Bingo will never have the name and fame to make any of these new careers fly.

Let us look forward a few years.  

It’s dark and drizzly. A fire engine's blue light flashes the front wall of a small house on a Dutch housing estate. A fire engine crew with hammers and bars are breaking down the door and widening the entrance with their iron bars. A crowd watch, shaking their heads at the tragedy of it all. His neighbour with all the best intentions, has talked to social services. The crew enter with a forklift and roll a furry mound onto a pallet covered with a sheet. It’s Bingo. He has ballooned on a huge diet of waffles. He still wears a faded cycling cap and the last vestiges of team lycra stretched so thin it is see-though. They take him to hospital and do all they can. They show him videos of cycling, try and put him on a little treadmill but all he says is 'Waffles'.