Is cycle sport encouraging uptake of cycling?

Now, if cycle sport encouraged Skully to take up cycling, I'd be well impressed.

hehe
This below from Oliver is where I'm at. I'm really confused as to why everyone I know who isn't a cyclist, and many who are, assuming that I must be SO excited about the amazing TdF and Lympics and isn't just it great? No not really, everyone seems to be just watching telly. I love cycling. I don't like cycling very fast. I enjoy riding just in itself. I'm not interested in watching other people cycling fast. Sport is a kind of bullying, to me. I guess sport has bad connotations for me. A kind of disengagement happens to me when people around me get competitive. It puts me off cycling with other people, quite often.

It is necessary, though, to decouple perceptions of everyday cycling from perceptions of bike racing. Everyday cycling still has an image of being impossibly hard and dangerous, and that has to change
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This sort of point:

Obviously in London there has been a shift in perception to a certain degree as people have realised cycling is a great way to get around. It's happened in other urban areas (such as Bristol) too. But there is another breed of rider you're forgetting. I see an ever increasing numbers of weekend-warriors/freds/callthemwhatyoulike who are buying sports bikes on cycle-to-work and riding for fitness. They're prime candidates for dabbling in a bit of racing after a couple of years.

Don't forget the freds!

... is interesting about sport uptake on a general level. But what I'm really hoping for is that lots of people who are, say, hiring bikes, might think about buying a trailer and bike and doing their supermarket shopping without the car. Or going on holiday on a cycle, not for itself, but as a way of getting somewhere. Doing something with a bicycle but not cycling for its own sake. Practical cycling. This would be real progress for cycling, in my eyes.

As were some other good points here^^^^^^^, from jmf, hippy, rpm... I'm genuinely wondering why I'm so 'funny' about sport now (time for some competitiveness counselling?!)

I wonder if this idea of a proper cyclist and not proper cyclist in London has waned a bit since Ken Livingstone instigated the Cycle Hire scheme? I reckon London's drivers are becoming really more patient with slow and wobbly cycling.
/Borishater