How a Single Ride Changed the Face of British Time Trialing

In England, in 1953, the top British time trialist was a man named Ken Joy. (Left.)

The previous year he had ridden a 100 miles in 4 hours and 6 minutes, which at that time was phenomenal.

In the early 1950s, British riders racing against the clock invariably rode on a single fixed wheel.

48 x 15, or 48 x 16 (86.4 inch or 81 inch.) would be a typical gear ratio used for 100 miles.

Courses would be selected over the flattest possible terrain, and measured to an exact distance. For example 25, 50, or 100 miles.

At the end of 1952 Ken Joy turned professional and was sponsored by Hercules, a large manufacturer of roadster bikes, located in Birmingham, England. As British time trialing did not have a professional category, the only thing open for Ken Joy, was to ride solo and attack the many place to place records and distance records under the auspices of the Road Records Association.

So when Ken Joy was invited to ride in the Grand Prix des Nations in 1953 it created tremendous excitement for the average British Club Rider. This famous French event was after all considered to be the unofficial World Time Trial Championship of Professional Cycling.

Britain was somewhat cut off and isolated from the rest of Europe as far as cycling was concerned. We were in our own little world of time trialing, and the time trials held on the continent of Europe were odd distances, and held on courses that were not always flat, so how did you compare.

There was much speculation in the weeks leading up to the event as to how well Ken Joy would do. After all he had to be in with a chance, 100 miles in 4 hours 6 minutes is not exactly hanging around, by any standard.

I was 17 years old at the time and in my second year of racing, mostly time trialing; I was definitely caught up in all the excitement. The Grand Prix des Nations was to be run over a distance of 142 kilometers, which was just over 88 miles, a distance that would suit Joy.

The event was held on a weekend, and a few of the major British newspapers had the results in Monday’s morning edition. So we had to wait until the following Wednesday when the “Cycling” magazine came out to get the result, and the full impact of what had transpired.

The event was won by a then unknown 19 year old French rider named Jacques Anquetil. Not only did he beat Ken Joy, he started 16 minutes behind the British rider and caught and passed him. A nineteen year old kid, just two years older than me, had trounced the best that Britain had to offer.

There were two British professional riders in the 1953 event; the other was Bob Maitland who's previous riding was mostly in NCU Mass Start Circuit Races. I seem to remember Maitland finished with a better time than Joy, but both were well down the field. Later in 1955, Bob Maitland was part of the first British team to ride the Tour de France.

I remember well the above picture of Anquetil, low, areodynamic, with his hands curled around the slim Mafac brake hoods. His mechanic standing on the running board of the following car with a spare bike on his shoulder. This was a whole different world, a whole different level of bike racing.

This one ride changed the face of British time trialing. Anquetil used a five speed free-wheel, with 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 cogs. With a single 53 tooth chainwheel; it gave him a top gear of 102 inches. This was the highest ratio mechanically possible at that time. Soon after British time trialists would abandon fixed wheel and use five speed straight up 14 to 18, and later 13 to 17 free wheels.

Jacques Anquetil of course went on to become one of the great cyclists of all time. Winning the Grand Prix des Nations 9 times, and going on to become the first man to win the Tour de France five times.

The Grand Prix des Nations which started in 1932, and became one of the professional classics, was held annually until 2005 when it was abandoned after the UCI inaugurated an official World Time Trial Championship.

This article appeared here in July 2009. I thought it was a story worth repeating. 

Footnote: If you haven't already done so, read this 3 part series:The History of British Cycle Racing. It tells of the ban on road racing in Britain that lasted 50 years, and how a handful of cyclists fought to get this ban lifted. Britain's current success in cycling is due in part to those who went before and dragged the sport out of the dark ages.

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Saddle too low?

If I see someone riding with their knees splayed outward it is often a good indication that their saddle is too low.

It may also be the rider is overweight and has a large belly to contend with, but not always.

Stand with your back to the wall and raise one knee forward and upwards towards your chest.

There is a limit to how high your thigh can go. Once that point is reached, the only way you can make your knee go higher is to move your knee outward and then it can travel an inch or two higher.

Squat with your knees together and you can’t go as low as you can with your knees spread apart. In non-medical terms, it is the limit of travel of the ball at the end of your thigh bone in its socket in the pelvis that restricts your movement beyond a certain point.

It amuses me to see riders with aero bars in a low horizontal tuck position, riding with knees splayed outwards. Any aerodynamic advantage they gain by the low tuck position is lost because the outward knees has increased their frontal area by 20% or more. Not only that, but the outward spread thighs is like an open ended “V” catching air as they travel forward.

In order to achieve a low horizontal position, one must be flexible enough that the pelvis remains near vertical and the back bone or spine bends forward. Three things affect the angle of the thigh bone in relation to the pelvis. The saddle too low, the saddle too far back, and the back too low, but only if it causes the pelvis to rotate forward.

It is rarely I see someone with their saddle too high. One can feel that they are stretching at the bottom of the pedal stroke, or they are rocking side to side on the saddle as they pedal. But a saddle too low may feel fine, but it is not necessarily the most efficient riding position.

If your knees are splaying outwards it should be easy to spot, just look down. Knees should pump straight up and down like two pistons, and should pass an inch or so either side of the top tube. If you suspect your saddle is too low, it rarely does any harm to raise it. Put a piece of masking tape around the seat post to mark the original position. Raise it by a small amount 1/8 in, or 1/4 in. Maximum. (3 mm. to 6mm.)

Ride for a week or so, then possibly you can go up a little more until you find the sweet spot. Saddle height is not a fixed thing. As you lose weight and muscles stretch a saddle needs to be raised. The questions you need to ask yourself after raising the saddle is, does it feel better, do I feel stronger, and am I going faster.

To reiterate, few ride with a saddle to high, but many ride with their saddle too low, because it feels fine. Unless you try raising it a little you will never find out. I feel any person’s ideal saddle height is the point where the saddle is almost too high, then down a tad from there.

The leg needs to reach its full extension at the bottom of the pedal stroke, without stretching to reach that point, in other words the power is on right to the end of the pedal stroke, and definitely not reach its upper limit at the top of the stroke.

Footnote: I couldn’t find a better picture to illustrate this piece, except the exaggerated one at the top. But it did lead me to realize how BMX riders manage to pedal straight with their saddle so low. The saddle nose is positioned up which causes the pelvis to lean back thus increasing the angle in relation to the thigh. I'm not suggesting you try this on your road bike.

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Working at Vauxhall Motors 1958

1958 Vauxhall Cresta.

Writing last week about British cars, reminded me of my own somewhat brief experience working in the auto industry. For eight months in 1958 I worked as a maintenance engineer on a car body assembly line at Vauxhall Motors, in Luton, an industrial town, 30 miles north of London.

Vauxhall at the time was owned by the American General Motors Corporation. At the time aged 22, a year earlier I had completed a five-year engineering apprenticeship and was a skilled machine tool engineer. I was not working on assembling car bodies, but on the maintenance of the track itself, and the spot-welding machines. Today these would be fully automated, but back then men worked each separate station on the track spot welding the individual parts that made up a car body.

These spot-welding machines can best be described as two clamp-like jaws which came together when a trigger was operated, powered by compressed air pressure. Each pull of the trigger started a cycle. Two copper electrodes clamped down on the sheet steel parts. A large electrical current went through the copper electrodes which heated the steel enough to melt it and weld it in a quarter-inch spot.

Then the jaws released, and the operator moved on to complete a series of spot-welds and inch or so apart. All this done while the track was constantly moving. Each spot-welding machine was custom made for the job it had to do. Some long reach jaws, some short, for example. Some welded vertically, some horizontally,

Each had a large electrical transformer to produce the high amperage required to melt steel. The transformer rolled on its own overhead track having about six or eight foot of travel, just enough to allow each operator time to complete his task as the track moved slowly but constantly onward.

The hand operated spot-welder was too heavy for the operator to hold so it was hung on a counter-balanced system which allowed the operator to move it up and down with relative ease. This too was hung from the same short overhead track that the transformer ran on.

A large diameter cable carried the current from the transformer to the spot-welder. It had a water-cooled jacket around the cable to keep it cool. The copper electrodes were hollow and were also water cooled. Rubber hoses connected from above carried constantly flowing water to the spot-welder and back again. Other hoses carried compressed-air needed to operate the jaws of the spot-welder.

It was always stressed to me that that the track must be kept running, and any time it was stopped it meant a large amount of money lost every minute the track was Idle. Because of this, minor issues like a hose leaking or a copper electrode needed replacing was done while the track was idle at break times or the end of the day.

However, each copper electrode needed to be re-filed by hand sometime twice a day, to maintain a good weld. This was part of my job, but I had to do it in the few seconds left between each operator finishing his run of spot-welds, and the next car body moving up. The track operator had priority.

I would start filing until the operator stepped in and grabbed the spot-welder from my hands, then I would step back and wait until the next cycle, then repeat. When finished I would spot-weld two pieces of scrap steel together, bending them back and forth until the metal broke around the weld, rather than the weld itself. Thus, testing we had a good weld.

One particular day, I was filing the electrodes when I realized the operator was waiting for me. He was new on the job and didn’t know to step in when he needed to and grab the spot welder from me. I had unlimited time to do my job, but he had only as much time as the speed of the track allowed and being new on the job, he was slower anyway.

I realized the track had moved too far by the time he was finished and now the spot-welder was stuck, hooked onto the car body. The transformer and other overhead stuff like the hoses and cables were stretched to their limit. Everything began to creak and crack. It was then I ran to the emergency stop button, but it was too late, as every cable and hose was ripped apart.

Sparks showered down from the transformer, compressed air hoses ripped from their connection, hissed, and lashed around until someone could reach a valve that shut the air off. Water poured everywhere until it too could be turned off.

There was a spare spot-welder in every configuration, along with a spare transformer and a set of hoses and cables ready to go. The whole maintenance team jumped in and the damage was fixed within 15 or 20 minutes, and the track was rolling again.

I was never reprimanded or even questioned as to what happened. Neither did the new track operator, which pleased me because I felt it was partly my fault. I worked there about eight months until the end of 1958, when a downturn in sales meant a cut-back in the work force. As usual, the last ones hired are the first to go.

Pity, I enjoyed that job, good money too.

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Britain's bike friendly cars of the 1950s

I got my first lightweight bike in 1950, it was only five years after the end of WWII and the economic turnaround in Britain and the rest of Europe was only in its early stages. Petrol was in short supply throughout WWII for obvious reasons. It was needed for the war effort, plus off shore oil had yet to be discovered in the UK. Oil had to be imported, and petrol was strictly rationed.

Rationing did not end at the end of WWII, in fact in 1948, (Three years after the war ended.) The Motor Spirit Regulation Act was passed by the British Government, and red dye was added to some petrol. The red petrol was for agriculture and commercial use only. A private motorist caught with red petrol in his tank, could lose his driver’s license for a year, and a petrol station selling red gas to private motorists could be shut down.

The scarcity of petrol throughout the war and the five years that followed, meant there was very little motorized traffic on the roads, and even when petrol rationing ended in 1950, the average working man did not rush out to buy a car, many had never owned, or even driven a car. Traffic was light even into the mid to late 1950s.

In the late 1940s, my pre-teen years, I would ride my bike after school, in the dark using battery lights, with no fear for my safety from my parents. This era is now referred to as the “Golden Age of Cycling.” On the Continent of Europe, cycle racing was the number one sport.

Looking back, it was a great time to ride a bike. Many of the cars on the road were pre-war from the 1920s and 1930s. New cars produced were like the Morris Minor (Above.) and the Ford Anglia, (Below.) had a tiny engines around one liter. (1,000cc.) About the size of many motorcycles today.

You could forget about zero to sixty in a few seconds, for most vehicles, even the new ones, *60mph was the top speed, and that was probably downhill with the wind behind you. Throughout the 1950s, on city streets, there were still as many bicycles as cars, there were even a few horse drawn carts still in use.

A car driver did not sit fuming at a traffic light because there was a cyclist or a horse and cart ahead of him. The driver was lucky if he could get above 20mph between lights, and a fit cyclist on a lightweight bike could get away from a light faster than he could.

The first Motorway (Freeway.) the M1, did not open until 1959. It was approximately 70 miles long from London to Birmingham. I remember within the first few weeks it was littered with broken down cars, as people took their old clunkers out and took them up to speeds they were never built to maintain. The Golden Age of Cycling ended from that point on, as throughout the 1960s and 1970s, more motorways were built and other main roads were widened and straightened.

During the 1950s, most of the people driving cars had grown up riding bicycles, their parents probably still rode a bicycle as their personal transport. They didn’t get upset with cyclists on the road, and they were content to cruise along at 30mph, occasionally reaching 50 or 60 on a straight road that ran downhill. At least they were in they were protected from the rain and cold.

Gradually all that changed, and now you have a generation who never rode a bike to school as a kid. Owning and driving a car becomes ever increasingly expensive, and with the spending of all that money comes an attitude of entitlement. 

However, Britain is still the same size as it was in the 1950s, but with a far greater population. Improved highways mean that you can drive from one city to another in a very short time. But what do you do when you get to the big city, where there is nowhere to park, and streets where built for horse drawn vehicles?

The cars of the 1950s and before may have been underpowered by today’s standards, but they still got people from A to B. They were cheap to buy, used less petrol, and they were simple to work on. A person could do their own maintenance. Most of all because of their lack of power and speed they were less of a danger to pedestrians and cyclists.

*Footnote: I am sure someone far more knowledgeable about the Morris Minor will tell me it had a top speed was in excess of 60mph. But just as many of today’s cars have a maximum speed well over 100mph. few are ever driven to that limit. 

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What advice would I give a young artist today?

I recently watched a Bill Maher video where he talked about the issue that back in the 1990s someone had the brilliant idea that one should not just reward excellence but give everyone a trophy just for participating. In addition to this kids were told they could be anything they desired, simply by wishing it were so.

The result is we have a generation of young people who all want to be celebrities and cannot understand why they are not. Yes, one must believe in themselves and their ability to achieve success, but it takes time, often years of practice and repetition, and only then if one has something called “Talent”.

Life is a journey, and the journey means more than the destination. You don’t climb a mountain and say, “Damn this is hard work, but it will be worth it when I get to the top and see that wonderful view,” What if you took a cable-car or a helicopter to the summit. You would have the exact same view, but there would be no sense of achievement in getting there.

Likewise, you don’t say, “Damn this is hard work but when I become a star or a celebrity, then I’ll be happy.” Happiness is a choice; it does not require fame or fortune. There are poor people who are happy, and rich people who are miserable. Life is a journey, happiness is the means of travel, not the destination.

Don’t say, I am miserable because I have no friends. No, you have no friends because you are miserable. No one wants to be around miserable people. Be happy without friends, and friends will be drawn to you. If your happiness is reliant on the approval of others, you leave your self open to be controlled by others. How can you be happy without friends, well smile for a start, fake it? People will soon begin to wonder what you have to smile about.

Get in touch with your inner self. What is that? Remember when you were 5,6 or 7? The thoughts you had, was that not the same person that does the thinking now? Even though you look different in the mirror. That is your inner self. It is that which never changes throughout your entire life.

While you are at it, get in touch with Nature. For there is but one creative source, and artists are merely the vehicle through which art appears. The Native American called it “Hand Magic.” The Great Spirt guiding the artist’s hand as he made the pottery or wove a blanket. Everything in Nature is beautiful, if the artist is connected to Nature through their inner self, he or she will create beautiful art. It doesn’t matter if it is painting or sculpture, creative writing or songwriting, singing or acting. It is all art.

All art forms have a craft side. Tried and true ways of doing something. These can be learned from books, classes or even YouTube videos. Once you learn the craft, it depends on practice, repetition, and in the end Talent. Talent I believe is that connection with Nature, the Great Spirit. Some are born with it and often don’t even know it. Others have to find it, but it is there to be found.  

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