Really you thought all that about the advert. A little OTT. Why not just take what the advert was designed as " Everyone can Cycle" and light hearted.
Yebbut.
How can we hope to adjust attitudes in our country whilst still accepting clichés like this as "light hearted". How would we have reduced blatant racism (its page 4, I can play the racism card now I think) if we just accepted it, or sexism, or even more day to day issues like drink driving, smoking, speeding.
All had to start with an acceptance that these things were "bad", before we could even begin to make them socially unacceptable.
Look at this from another angle, fitness is good. Its good for personal fulfilment and its good for national interests (in particular national budgets). However, unlike swimming or running, cycling has additional, latent benifit's to the national economy such as savings on transport, infrastructure, maintenance...its no co-incidence that on a global scale, many large cosmopolitan cities now invest a good deal of time and PR in promoting cycling.
So why dont we invest time changing attitudes?...because we are still just accepting it.
Would we find it odd if an advert for speedo illustrated swimmers as safety geeks, or if
Nike presented marathon runners as Hardcore yob's?
I have to calm down I'm getting a bit ranty, apologies