BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
Sad, isn’t it, when a trade mag takes comfort from mainstream mentions of the niche product it reports on?
Madonna rollerblades, sales of rollerblades increase after she’s featured rollerblading in Hello magazine.
In fact, she’s more likely to be photographed cycling. Do cycle sales rocket? Probably not.
But perhaps the Bush/Kerry/Armstrong bicycle-related news clippings are having more impact?
Mass media coverage of Lance Armstrong’s latest and greatest victory will continue to postively impact on road bike sales, and the mainstream awareness that Kerry and Bush are keen cyclists is high, and rising.
Kerry’s favourite leisure pursuit is now regularly used as a stick to hit him with. Man of the people? Pah! He rides an $8000 bike. That’s now a standard line of attack from opponents and pro-Republican political journalists.
Yesterday, before his prime-time convention speech in Boston, John Kerry went for a bicycle ride, telling reporters from the saddle he felt "fabulous."
Kerry’s infatuation with bicycles extends to his speeches.
In his formal acceptance of the Democrat nomination for presidential wannabe, Kerry name-checked bicycles, or cycling, three times.
"My dad did the things that a boy remembers. He gave me my first model airplane, my first baseball mitt and my first bicycle."
Thanks, Kerry Snr.
"When I was a young man, [my father] was in the State Department, stationed in Berlin…On one occasion, I rode my bike into Soviet East Berlin."
And then the cock crowed for a third time:
"Two young bicycle mechanics from Dayton asked what if this airplane could take off at Kitty Hawk? It did that and changed the world forever."
Quick, somebody get Michael Moore a bicycle, he’s going to need it if he wants to toady up to John Kerry…
