Vive Cadel - a triumph for spandex & fat bums

CADEL Evans' historic Tour de France victory has been hailed as a triumph. Here are five reasons why we are staring at a potential national tragedy.

1. An explosion of cyclists

On Monday morning, following Cadel's coast across the finish line in Paris, it took me 5½ hours to drive the 7km from home to work.

Why? The roads in inner-Brisbane were glutted with thousands of middle-aged male cyclists and their shiny, bobbing glutei maximus, strewn through the streets like a monstrous truckload of Spandex-wrapped watermelons unleashed.

Not a car could pass, not a scooter could weave through this sea of ageing buttock cleaves, every one of the riders, bar none, cruising in their minds not on Milton Rd, or Given Tce, but the Champs Elysees, La Marseillaise ringing in their ears.

This may necessitate the Clem7 tunnel being closed to vehicular traffic (or is it already?) and used exclusively for bicycles. And renamed the Clem Elysees.

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In turn, Australia will suffer the greatest spike in bicycle-related deaths and accidents since Baron von Drais invented the wooden Draisienne in 1817 and pitched himself headfirst into a steaming pile of horse muck.

2. A chronic shortage of doctors

The sudden increase in excited, middle-aged male cyclists roaring about on their new bikes will inevitably mean a chronic rise in heart attacks, knee degeneration, head knocks, shin splints, grazes, broken bones and derriere chafing.

This could potentially lock up, for years, emergency wards across Australia and send the already precarious national health system into a downward spiral. Or should we say a downward cycle.

3. An unprecedented increase in the popularity of Spandex.

This would throw the national fashion agenda back to the days of glam rockers like Ratt, Van Halen and Twisted Sister, discotheque jeans tragics and early Star Trek fans.

In addition, it could necessitate the emergence of huge Spandex sweatshops staffed by small pre-school-aged children working 16-hour shifts mixing macroglycol and diisocyanate and spinning it into fibres, all to produce a pair of shorts to house the wobbly bits of millions of mid-aged men who can afford the shorts but can't afford a Ferrari.

4. A generation of children named Cadel or Cadelle

Having just got through a rash of babies named Indeea, Kristaal, Koby, Jaydn, Tyler, Jorja, Addison, Mayson, Paris, London and Nu-York, a wave of Cadels will hit the professional world in about 2035.

By then the country will have named a small town in Cadel Evans' honour, installed an annual national holiday Cadel Day and the economy will be largely underwritten by Cadel souvenirs, Cadel cookbooks, Cadel sports drinks, Cadel memoirs, Cadel organic food products, Cadel-designed apartments and Cadel yo-yos.

There is a very real chance these many thousands of Cadels or Cadelles will end up working for a company named after Cadel.

Alternatively, after decades of doctor shortages, struggling to handle the nation's outbreak of cycling-related injuries (see point 2), many of the very doctors treating this tsunami of injuries sparked by Cadel Evans' Tour de France win, will actually be called ``Dr Cadel'' or ``Dr Cadelle''.

5. An evolutionary shift to larger glutei maximus

Within a few centuries, Australians will display a larger average buttock size than any other nation, courtesy of the Cadel cycling craze.

Australians will no longer be identified by their unique verbal strine but by their huge, globular backsides.

``Hey,'' people will shout, seeing one of us hauling about our monstrous rear muscles, ``there goes an Australian!''

In turn, international airlines will have to provide an ``Australian section'' in aircraft and space shuttles to accommodate any of us wishing to travel, and flying cars will have to be modified to cope with our special giant rear ends.

condonm@qnp.newsltd.com.au