Gee Atherton in action at Fort William

By rights we ought to hate the BBC’s Top Gear show. Presenter Jeremy Clarkson tends to bang on about his dislike of cyclists, it’s all terribly eco-hostile (despite being powered largely by testosterone) and most of the cars featured don’t have space in them for a spare pair of shorts, let alone a bike. But it’s almost impossibly entertaining stuff, and we love it.

We expect to love it even more on Sunday, when Team Animal/Giant’s Gee Atherton races a Giant Reign against a Renault Clio driven by Clarkson’s fellow presenter James May. Gee’ll be riding the Lisbon Red Bull Downtown course, while the Clio will follow a course of similar length but without the flights of stairs or jumps in it, for obvious reasons. Apparently the segment took a day and a half to film. Who won? You’ll have to watch it to find out – 8pm, BBC 2, Sunday 4 December. We’re told that 5.8million people watch Top Gear in the UK (and 200million on BBC Worldwide) so that’ll be the profile of mountain biking raised a tad, then…

We expect there’ll be more details on www.bbc.co.uk/topgear and www.athertonracing.co.uk in the fullness of time.