I’m 'that guy' from the club run, except that thanks to virtual racing, I now have global reach

It is probably time to admit that, in online racing at least, I’m a dick. I act in bad faith, I make trouble. I can always be confident that when the chat in a race stops being cheery and starts to fill with innuendo and implied threats of virtual vengeance, they’re talking about me.

Michael Hutchinson

Multiple national champion on the bike and award-winning author Michael Hutchinson writes for CW every week

I’m not cheating. My profile does not claim I weigh 25kg and stand one metre tall. I’m just annoying. With all respect to people who ride online races with pure motives of achieving victory, I can’t quite achieve that level of buy-in. I take an online race mainly as a workout, and the main purpose of a workout is to work.

To that end, I throw in wild attacks at stupid moments. I go to the front and really drive the pace on the small hill that comes before the big hill, with the result that I get dropped on the big hill, usually along with a pile of other people who have now learned the hard way that I am a loose canon and not to be trusted.

Perhaps my most annoying stunt is to put in an attack, get a gap, then just drop back to the bunch so I can attempt to do the same thing again five kilometres later. The problem is that anyone who chases me to get in what looks like a race-winning breakaway ends up stranded off the front on their own. I’m “that guy” from the club run, except that thanks to the internet I now have global reach.

I have the ability to piss you off from eight time zones away. I feel I should point out the difference between racing badly and racing like an idiot, because from the outside they are hard to tell apart. Racing badly is doing your level best, but just being rubbish. Racing like an idiot is racing with an agenda that doesn’t match everyone else’s.

You can race like an idiot in the real world as well. My friend Bernard’s tactics were based on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. His idea was that the best tactic isn’t the thing that’s obviously likely to lead to victory, but simply the thing your enemy wants you to do least. This is almost the dictionary definition of racing like an idiot. He invariably got beaten by people who had assessed the tactical options and chosen “the one most obviously likely to lead to victory,” like any normal person. Bernie always claimed the moral high ground, and I always told him to look up how many races Sun Tzu won. (“None, Bernie, he won none.”)

But I’ve also seen idiot-racing from the best. I once did a criterium race round the Hillingdon Circuit in West London (UK) that featured none other than Sir Bradley Wiggins among the cast. The group was abuzz with admiration for his tactical acumen. “You just never know what he’s going to do next,” a team-mate said. “He’s so unpredictable.”

I actually realised quite early on that he was attacking every five minutes like he’d got an egg-timer on his bars, going clear, then sitting up. He was doing intervals, and we were all helping. He had the classic agenda that was not like everyone else’s. Eventually, with a few laps to go I went with him. It wasn’t hard since I knew exactly when his attack was coming. He towed me up the road and sat up. I was ready for it and went on to win.

I was still racing like an idiot, but in this instance, I like to think of myself as a super-idiot. When I tell people I beat Wiggins in a crit, I don’t always mention that he very much helped me do it. And I never, ever call him an idiot. After all, he helped me win, and I’m sure that was exactly what he wanted.

This article was originally published in Cycling Weekly magazine. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.