CYCLING & COFFEE
Coffee connoisseur Adam Becket delves into the storied yet mysterious relationship between cycling and the original energy drink
As you read this, it is not unlikely that you have a coffee in hand. Ninety-eight million cups of the black – or brown, or white – stuff are drunk in the UK every day. Tea might still hold the upper hand as Blighty’s national beverage, but coffee is on the march, and has been for 400 years. Your morning cafetiere or coffee-stop flat white might seem routine, but every time you add hot water to grounds and brew, you’re joining in a history that stretches back a very long way.
In cycling, coffee is associated not just with taste but image too. As far back as the 1950s, during the long-drawn-out war between cycling’s governing body in the UK, the National Cycling Union (NCU) and the upstart British League of Racing Cyclists (BLRC) over the latter’s desire to bring mass-start racing the UK, coffee was a signifier of cool. It’s an episode told by Michael Hutchinson in his book Re-Cyclists: “It wasn’t just the racing, it was cultural… The establishment riders and officials were from a black-andwhite age; the Leaguers were, to be blunt, cool. They wore sunglasses, they had brightly coloured jerseys. They bought the French sports paper Miroir-Sprint if they could find it, whether they could read French or not, and looked at the pictures in coffee shops.”
Coffee has always been a cool accoutrement in cycling, from the days of Coppi sipping espresso and Eddy Merckx riding for Faema, a team named after its Italian coffee machine brand sponsor. The ritual, the aroma, the sophistication – it all ties into the urge, in cycling, to look and feel European, Continental, cosmopolitan and modern. It seems odd, then, that France has a reputation for bad coffee. “It’s ironic,” agrees Will Corby, head of coffee at Pact Coffee, “that coffee in France is generally terrible. The connection feels culturally far more tied to Italy.”
Other coffee brands, observing the success of Faema in cycling, strove to forge links to the cosmopolitan sport. In the 1980s, there was Café de Colombia in the peloton; in the 2020s, there was Segafredo – big names in coffee wanting to prosper from the connection. Bear in mind that neither coffee nor cycling has always been a mainstream interest, particularly in Britain. Both were minority pursuits, the preserve of renegades and non-conformists.
For those on the inside of these two connected subcultures – be it in the 1950s or the 1990s – rolling into their local cafe for a cup of coffee was just a cool thing to do.
Modish to mainstream
In 2024
