Racing Hard

by William Fotheringham

  The metronomic progress of most of the participants belies the tension in time-trialling. It looks smooth on the surface, but plenty can go wrong. Luis León Sánchez, a stage winner in the Tour de France, had his progress halted within metres of descending the start ramp when his chain snapped, and then had a puncture; the New Zealander Jack Bauer misjudged a bend and came close to crashing.

  The initial running was made by Martin. After just under 8km he led Wiggins and Cancellara by six seconds, with Phinney at 9sec and Froome a further 1sec behind. The battle for medals looked tight, but the gaps opened inexorably as the duel between Wiggins and Martin gained in intensity. Ten kilometres later, the picture had become clearer: Wiggins led, 11sec ahead of Martin, the gold medal battle clearly between the world champion and the Tour winner. The final time check, in Esher High Street, with 15km to run, reflected the Tour champion’s dominance. Martin had slipped away again, 23sec back; Froome was now at 42sec and clearly heading for bronze.

  Shortly after passing through the town, belting down Portsmouth Road, Wiggins overtook Sanchez, who had started four and a half minutes ahead, and disappeared into the distance, a Ferrari to a horse and cart. That was an image to place alongside the punch in the air as he crossed the finish line in the Tour time-trial at Chartres, and it summed up the day: Wiggins dominant in a final triumphant lap of honour at the end of the greatest summer of his sporting life.

  As Wiggins and I wrote in his account of 2012, My Time, there was a magical quality to this day. It felt that way to me. For the journalist, there is a curious sense of anti-climax at the end of a Tour de France, because usually the final key stage is on the Saturday, and Sunday’s stage on the Champs-Elysées is where the main actors tend to rush off to do this and that, while Sunday deadlines loom large. Since the Greg LeMond Tour of 1989, there has been no sense of the Tour actually being won on the final Sunday.

  So this had a very different feel to it as the defining moment of the Wiggins summer. It was also the moment when “Sir Wiggo” was born in the minds of the British public. The support for their man was massive and if his Tour triumph had felt a little remote perhaps, this was on the doorstep. It was also that rare thing: a British star heavily tipped to win at home and then delivering. Hence his elevation to the pantheon of celebrity where for the British public he needs no introduction.

  Goodbye to the greats

  7 August 2012

  Super Tuesday was everything it was expected to be, as the final session at the velodrome produced high drama, bucketfuls of tears and two gold medals and a silver for Great Britain, who continued their dominance to end the track programme with nine medals from 10 events. Had the referees not intervened in the women’s team sprint on day one, the squad would have achieved 10 out of 10. As it was, their domination is unprecedented in British sport.

  The Great Britain squad bade farewell to two figureheads, Sir Chris Hoy – in his last Olympic Games – and Victoria Pendleton, racing her final laps of the track. Both their events were a microcosm of their distinguished careers. Hoy’s domination in the keirin was spectacular, his ability to pull a victory out when defeat threatened typical of the man. Pendleton’s emotional rollercoaster in the match sprint, apparent victory then defeat by Anna Meares after a relegation, reflecting the supreme competitiveness and emotional vulnerability which have been her hallmark through three Olympic campaigns.

  The next wave of British cycling stars is here already, the baton passed by Hoy as Laura Trott prepared for her moment in the limelight, the victory in the 500m time-trial that clinched her solo gold in the omnium after her team pursuit triumph. “Just before the 500m, Chris Hoy said to me, ‘You can do this,’” she revealed. At only 20, she has time to overtake the greatest track cyclist these shores have produced.

  Hoy may continue to the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014 but his Olympic career has underpinned the success of British cyclists over four Games. His intervention with Trott exemplified his senior role as an iconic model and target for youngsters such as Jason Kenny and Philip Hindes. He exits Olympic sport as Britain’s most-decorated medallist, with six golds to his name, surpassing Sir Steve Redgrave and drawing level with Bradley Wiggins on a career total of seven, although the cycling Modfather has “only” four golds to his name.

  It was a last-gasp victory, snatched from impending defeat in the most theatrical style after Hoy forced himself to the front of the string two laps out as he had done twice before. On this occasion, leading out nearly cost him a medal, as the German Maximilian Levy closed then came briefly past him entering the final banking.

  Levy was coming the long way round, and Hoy kicked again as the straight beckoned to cross the line two-thirds of a bike length ahead of the German. “I saw the front wheel come past and thought I couldn’t let his back wheel come past, so I drove harder than I’ve driven before and his wheel came back.” Afterwards, he was applauded off the track by a guard of honour formed by the British team personnel, and then the tears flowed, inevitably.

  They flowed as copiously for Pendleton: after more than 20 years, two Olympic gold medals, nine world titles and a Commonwealth gold her career is over. The 31-year-old from Stotfold, Bedfordshire, left cycling to rapturous, deafening applause but it was left to her old rival Meares to play the part of pantomime villain, defeating her in the final in two straight rounds and leaving her with a silver medal in her final race.

  Pendleton and Meares lined up in the final for their last encounter. It was as tense and venomous as might have been expected. In the first match Pendleton made her effort up the back straight after the bell, and the Australian came at her strongly. Meares put an elbow into Pendleton’s thigh as the British woman briefly moved off her line as they sped through the final banking.

  Pendleton held on by barely half a tyre to take the match, with the crowd initially delirious with delight at what appeared a clear win in the face of Australian skulduggery, before the commissaires’ ruling turned the cheers into a chorus of boos.

  The British woman had to win the second match to stay in the hunt but the Australian won the match on the second banking, when she slowed to a virtual standstill at the top of the slope, forcing Pendleton to jump into the lead. It was a pre-planned move, “my chance to get the psychological advantage” she said, and meant she could run at Pendleton, who looked mentally rattled and stalled coming out of the penultimate banking.

  Her acceleration down the back straight was matched by Meares, who overtook her coming into the final banking, punching the air with delight. She broke down in her press conference afterwards, and said that merely getting here felt like a victory in itself. “I won’t don a skin suit ever again. I’m looking forward to all the stuff I’ve denied myself for the last 10 years. I’m looking forward to having a life.”

  As Queen Victoria prepared to take her final bow, Princess Laura stepped up, adding a gold medal in the six-event omnium to the gold she had won in the team pursuit. The 20-year-old from Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, won three of her six disciplines to clinch gold from the USA’s Sarah Hammer. Trott went into the final event, the 500m time-trial, in second place, needing to beat Hammer by a clear three places. The pair were last up on the track, in which the riders race two laps against the clock, with Trott starting in the back straight to the sound of the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction. She needed to win if possible, and in some style. She produced the fastest first lap and was quickest at every timing point, crossing the line in 35.110sec with Hammer in fourth, giving her the overall title by a single point.

  Trott had begun her omnium campaign by gaining maximum points for being fastest in the flying lap time-trial. She slumped to 10th in the points race but that was followed by an exhilarating ride in the elimination race, the dramatic high speed event which has become her party piece. She displayed superlative bike-handling skills and speed to win, and then added second place to Hammer in the 3,000m individual pursuit. Much depended on keeping tabs on Hammer in the 10km scratch
race, where she finished third, one place behind the American, setting up the final confrontation.

  The status cycling in Britain enjoyed by August 2012 could be measured in various ways, but one was the number of journalists present for “Super Tuesday”. The Guardian had around a dozen hacks in the press box, not all along merely to spectate, as this was one of a wide range of pieces in the paper the following day, marking one of the high points of the London Games. In the space of 12 years, the transformation from Sydney – when I had to explain, all of a sudden, where these cyclists had sprung from – was immense. Hoy’s future remains uncertain as this book goes to press – he may, or may not, go through to Glasgow – while Pendleton quit on this day and was most notably seen on Strictly Come Dancing that autumn. Trott added a golden romance to her brace of gold medals, with her relationship with Jason Kenny going public a few days after this. She and her partner will march on to Rio, but they owe a massive debt to all the pioneers, Hoy, Queally, Wiggins and Pendleton in particular.

  12. IN MEMORIAM

  It cannot be said that writing obituaries is a pleasure, but for a specialist writer on a daily newspaper the exercise is satisfying to say the least, offering as it does the chance to present to the readers some of the individuals who simply don’t get into the pages, as the examples which follow should show. Beryl Burton was a classic example of a sports star of immense talent who never received the national acclaim she deserved. This at least was a step towards redressing the balance.

  Beryl Burton

  7 May 1996

  Beryl Burton, who was found dead beside her bike on a Yorkshire roadside on Sunday, was more than just a great cycling champion: for more than a quarter of a century “BB”, as she was popularly known, was an institution, the dominant figure in British women’s bike racing. “Beryl was not just one of the greatest cyclists, but in my opinion she was one of the greatest athletes of all time,” said Peter McGrath, chairman of the Road Time-trials Council.

  That this coming Saturday, a day before her 59th birthday, she was to have taken part in the women’s national 10 mile time-trial championship which after several years of ill health she stood no chance of winning, underlines the fact that her love of competition – beginning in the days of truly amateur sport – went beyond even her hundreds of world and national championship medals.

  Burton was in the finest tradition of a line of British cycling greats, currently represented by Chris Boardman: she was a specialist in the solitary skill of racing against the watch on road and track who gained national and international stardom largely by working outside the system with little or no help from the sport’s governing bodies.

  Typical of this was the fact that when she took her first world title in the track pursuit in Liège in 1959, she paid her own way to the start. She won a further five world pursuit titles, and took two world road championships, both in the only style she knew – using her strength against the watch to win alone, with the rest of the field chasing her.

  The Yorkshire lass’s domination of British women’s time-trialing began in 1958 and will never be repeated. For 25 consecutive years Burton was crowned British Best All Rounder, a title awarded for the fastest woman over the set distances of 25, 50 and 100 miles. She won the national 25-miles title 26 times, the 50-mile title 24 times, the 100-mile title 18 times, landing her final gold medals in 1986 at the age of 49. Her national records at 25, 50 and 100 miles – some set in 1976 at the age of 39 – still stand, while it took 20 years for her 10-mile record to fall.

  More impressive, however, were her performances against the men of the time, who were regularly beaten by the dimple-cheeked curly-haired “slip of a lass”. The legend was born when she topped the men’s record for the 12-hour event, covering 277.25 miles in the set time. On her way, she caught and passed Mike McNamara, who although beaten on the day by Burton, was on his way to a British men’s record for the distance – a record which was actually lower [for a time] than the women’s distance set by Burton.

  Burton recalled in her autobiography Personal Best that after 223 miles she caught and passed McNamara, who had started two minutes before her. “I thought some gesture was required on my part. I was carrying a bag of Liquorice Allsorts in the pocket of my jersey. I pulled one out. ‘Liquorice Allsort, Mac?’ I shouted. He gave a wan smile. ‘Ta love.’”

  There were other feats against the men a year later when she set a women’s 100-mile record in a time of three hours and 55 minutes. Burton was also the fourth fastest cyclist of either sex in Britain over the distance and again beat the best man comfortably. A cycling writer at the time compared the achievement to a woman breaking the four-minute mile by “a substantial margin”.

  Burton’s solitarily competitive streak can be traced to her schooldays, when she set herself increasingly tough standards for the playground game of bouncing a ball against a wall After a brief excursion into swimming, her ability on two wheels became obvious when she met her future husband, Charlie Burton, an amateur cyclist from her home town of Leeds.

  Charlie was to provide support for the next 40 years as Burton juggled the family commitments which followed the birth of her daughter Denise in 1955 with full-time jobs and punishing training schedules.

  She was a truly amateur cyclist: some employers, such as the GPO, were less than helpful when it came to fitting in world championship trips, while in the mid-1960s she was putting in punishing shifts in a market garden run by a local rival. She remained loyal to the amateur Morley Cycling Club for the whole of her career.

  Apart from occasional sporting failures – notably several frustrated bids at the world one-hour record and a disastrous attempt on the men and women’s 24-hour title and record, when her knees gave out after she had taken a commanding lead – there were to be two other major sources of frustration in Burton’s life.

  One was that, in spite of her MBE in 1964 and OBE in 1968, the British press never recognised her feats. She complained that her British 12-hour record for both sexes made the bottom of page seven of the Yorkshire Evening Post. “If she had achieved comparable feats in a more popular sport such as tennis, often beating the top male competition of the day, she would have been a household name around the world,” commented a lifelong associate.

  Burton’s other regret involved her relationship with her daughter Denise, who built a good international career in her mother’s shadow, but could not avoid becoming her rival in the early 1970s.

  The bitterness between the two women was such that after they had both sprinted neck and neck for the gold medal in the 1975 British road race title, Burton would not shake her daughter’s hand. In spite of a tearful reconciliation after meeting head to head in the British track championships later that year, relations could never be the same again.

  It remains one of my great regrets that I never managed to interview Burton, largely because my speciality was European racing at the time when I might have had the chance to meet her; I have similar regrets about Percy Stallard, another of the sport’s great characters.

  Percy Stallard

  15 August 2001

  Percy Stallard, who has died aged 92, was the father of cycle racing on public roads in Britain. His act of rebellion in organising a massed-start race from Llangollen to Wolverhampton on June 7 1942, in the teeth of vicious opposition from national governing bodies, revolutionised the sport and paved the way for events such as the Tour of Britain.

  “The ideology of one man, Stallard, gave this country road racing as we know it today,” wrote Charles Messenger in his history of the British League of Racing Cyclists (BLRC). “That ideology set the pattern whereby government legislation was introduced on March 1 1960, which made it legal for racing to take place on the road.”

  Cycling was in Stallard’s blood: he was born in his father’s bike shop, close to Wolverhampton station, which he was to take over until his retirement in the 1990s, and which is still run, in a different location, by his son Michael, twice Brit
ish cyclo-cross champion. As a talented racing cyclist, he faced the same restrictions that his fellows had encountered since racing on the public highway was stopped by the police in 1894.

  Time-trials – where the riders raced alone and unpaced against the watch – were permitted in Britain if run well out of the public eye, and if riders were “inconspicuously clothed” in black alpaca jersey and tights. In contrast, massed-start races were immensely popular in Europe, led by the great multi-stage races such as the Tour de France and the Tour of Italy. Since 1897, however, they had been banned on open roads in Britain by the governing body, the National Cyclists Union (NCU).

  Stallard was selected for the world road-race championship in Monthléry, France, in 1933, and Leipzig, Germany, in 1934, finishing 12th and 7th respectively, and was inspired by the experience to train his own team of Wolverhampton cyclists – one of whom, Ray Jones, won the silver medal in the 1938 Empire Games – and campaign for the adoption of massed-start races on British roads. His point was that massed start was not unlawful in this country, but his repeated pleas fell on deaf ears.

  “This is the only country in Europe where this form of sport is not permitted,” he wrote in 1941, adding, “there seems to be the mistaken idea that it would be necessary to close the roads. This, of course, is entirely wrong.”

  The lack of road traffic during the second world war gave Stallard his chance to gain approval from the police to put massed start on the open road. He announced the running of the Llangollen-Wolverhampton race in April 1942 – “proceeds in aid of Express and Star comforts fund” – and was promptly banned by the NCU.