The venerable English saddle maker with Italian marketing blood wants to look and feel young. It has decided to associate itself with the fixie tribe and is sponsoring world-wide bike polo tournaments. It has issued special edition Swifts and TeamPros, in different colours, each one associated with one of the towns hosting the events.

This week-end is the turn of the blue Swift, i.e. the European Hardcourt Bicycle Polo Championship here in London.

Now, we missed our midlife crisis, and bicycle polo seems to us to make as much sense as synchronized swimming, but who are we to disagree with a company that has straddled tradition and innovation for 150 years?

The Bike Show has recently visited the Brooks factory in Birmingham and you can listen to an interview on the shop floor here.