The word "rider" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to refer to someone who rides on the back of a horse or a motor vehicle, or who rides a bicycle. For example, "The motorcyclist had a passenger on the back of the bike—a young man acting as a rider."
The term "nervous" is on every rider and manager's lips when asked to describe the demands of the early phase of the race, but what they mean is more complex than a few shivers of anticipation at the prospect of a tricky bit of road or two.
Related: Sir Bradley Wiggins smashes Alex Dowsett's hour record – in pictures The Hour is better known for pressure of a different kind: the relentless need for the rider to maintain an even pace, while on the edge of cracking.
Farmers had a vested interest in killing foxes, which preyed on their livestock; a hobby rider out for an enjoyable day's riding in the autumn sunshine doesn't really care what is being pursued, a fox or a scented rag.
Unfortunately though, when I see another rider, I have no idea if they are going to slow down, speed up, stop, run over a pedestrian and say it was my fault or do a wheelie down the wrong side of the road.
Only in 2010, 11 years after Armstrong had told the rider Christophe Bassons to leave the sport instead of "making accusations [about drug use] that aren't good for cycling" did the US Justice Department begin a federal investigation to see if crimes had been committed, followed a year later by the US Anti Doping Authority pursuing the allegations against Armstrong.
One Tour contender is in a spot of bother - Tejay van Garderen, BMC's promising American rider, damaged his bike in that previous skirmish, and is currently trying to catch up with the main group on a spare set of wheels.
Despite last year's fiasco on the snowbound Stelvio, where a group of riders clearly gained an advantage by ignoring calls to neutralise the race on the descent, Giro race director Mauro Vegni simply shrugged and said he was sorry, but that article 12.1.040 – which states: "Non-regulation assistance to a rider from another team, stage races.
No one likes to see a mechanical rob a rider of overall glory – but spare a though for Oscar Gatto, who had been the fastest man in the breakaway that rode away to victory in Forli and who was also the victim of a disastrously timed puncture that robbed him of a stage win.
"With one of the world's highest levels of per capita emissions, Australia has gone from leadership to free-rider status in climate diplomacy," the report said.
The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has rejected claims by a panel headed by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan that Australia is a "free-rider" on climate change.
Even those who would quit the EU are guilty of excess optimism along with excess gloom: Eurosceptics cling to the rash belief that Britain could secure free-rider access to EU markets by walking out.If the British are obsessed with society's unfairness, that is because they want it fixed a finer ambition than clinging, fatalistically and cynically, to a crumbling status quo.
