Our Lady's Bicycle Race

Innuendo and double intenders lurk every word of the way in describing the preparations for the Madonna's bike race.

Legs shaved and oiled, they strip off their track suits to reveal, well, all, or nearly. The cycling shorts are as transparent as last year, and after carefully adjusting their saddles and themselves they set off for a little ride round, like the horses in the Palio being wheeled in tight circles in front of the rope, waiting for the gun.

The support cars, all in metalised silver and covered in advertisements, are invariably sporty hatchbacks driven by balding afficionados whose cycling days now are expressed in Sunday morning peddles up and down the local hills. They coddle their 'boys', fiddle with the bicycles and little cans of oil, and carry spare wheels about which they pump up for reassurance every now and then. There are so many extra wheels around someone could make a fortune supplying a few frames.

The loudspeakers are chanting the names of the riders like some medioeval litany, and away they go, pursued by the silver cars driven by the silver-haired.

Apart from Our Lady, there isn't a woman to be seen.