Major Taylor. Despite becoming World Sprint Champion in 1899, Major found the discrimination against him so intolerable that he gave up racing in his own country.
Meanwhile, the world itself was moving on. By the 1930s, the days when bicycles were competing only with horses and trains were long gone. Motorised transport had increased and diversified enormously. This was no longer a case of a few stately cars poop-pooping down the dusty roads preceded by flag-waving flunkeys; in the decade after 1945, the numbers of cars on the road increased threefold. In a world where an Austin Seven or a Model T cost £175 and a bike £5, it was evident that two wheels had lost to four. The national highways were now full of trucks, military vehicles, private cars, taxis, buses, ambulances, police cars and motorbikes. Even then, the bicycle still somehow held on. In 1950, 11 percent of all journeys were made by bike, and there remained twelve million regular cyclists in the UK. To get some idea of how awe-inspiring a figure that is, it’s worth remembering that in 2010 only 3 percent of all UK journeys were made by bike, and that was double on the previous decade. Even more peculiar, throughout that entire period the bicycle industry managed to remain healthy. In 1976, 15 percent of UK households owned a bike. By 1986, that figure had risen to 25 percent and by 1995 to 33 percent. People were still buying bikes, they just weren’t using them much beyond the age of ten.
Meanwhile, back on the roads, the consequences of a complete non-policy were predictable. A 1937 Ministry of Transport survey found that a third of all road accidents involved cyclists; 1,421 cyclists were killed on the roads that year. Bicycles were not merely old-fashioned, they were fatal. Unfortunately, riders couldn’t always look to cycling organisations to support their cause. In an echo of its curious act of self-sabotage in banning mass-start racing in the 1880s, the main cyclists’ organisation, the CTC, chose to oppose the establishment of a national network of cycle paths during the 1930s on the grounds that it might interfere with their right to use roads. By the time the future of travel was being considered in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, ‘transport’ was taken to mean only ‘things with engines’. The first motorways were built and the London Underground expanded. Tram systems came and went. Beeching axed half of Britain’s railway network, and cars, instead of being a temptation, became a necessity. London’s population rose steadily through the millions. In the committee rooms of Westminster there were inquiries into the high cost of rail fares, working parties on roundabouts and Royal Commissions on buses. And the motorist reigned supreme. Until, almost without anyone noticing, something interesting began to happen.
Chapter Three
Feral Cycling and the Serious Men
Here lies the body of Jonathan HayWho died defending his right of way.He was right – dead right – as he strolled along;But he’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong.
QUOTED IN GEOFFREY BOUMPHREY,
BRITISH ROADS
At the Earl’s Court Cycle Show, the Serious Men are out in force. They are walking the aisles between the stalls, eyes a little narrowed, intent. They’re looking for something, even if they don’t necessarily know what it is. It could be anything – a chain ring, a new brake, even an ordinary ding-dong bicycle bell – as long as it gives them the edge, the thing which will raise them from middle-aged, middle-weight mortality to the Olympian heights of which deep down they know they are still capable. And somewhere amid the coloured rims and the briefcase panniers in matching purple leather, it’s got to be here.
This, for the hard-core urban cyclist, is retail heaven, pure, gasping bike porn. It’s porn because it’s desirable and illicit and a little bit sad, and because most of these men have a private file on their laptop full of tubular things they’d like to stroke after everyone else has gone home. And because it’s porn and because they know it, the Serious Men also know that it’s essential to compensate for that knowledge by pretending to their peers that the difference between Shimano and Campagnolo is right up there with the difference between protons and electrons. For the next three days, lots and lots of cyclists come to worship here, to feed the European economy and to celebrate the fact that bicycles really are adults-only now. Most of them are dressed in normal weekend wear – jeans and trainers, the occasional hardy pair of shorts – but if you look closely, they always have one or two items of cycle gear flagged up like a password. Some have got the right sort of jacket, others are wearing the distinctive quasi-Edwardian combo of plimsolls, thick black leggings and thin plus fours. There are a few with stripy Bianchi caps and others with copies of vintage Arcore jerseys. Others have done no more than roll up the legs of their jeans or forget to take off the second bicycle clip. Quite a large number of them have long-standing hair issues: either it’s in the act of being misplaced or it’s gone completely. Others have accepted the inevitable and are now modelling the new Fall of Saigon-style helmets as a substitute.
Beside the bikes out on the floor are more men, arms folded, waiting in line to give each bike an experimental lift by its crossbar. That casual heft upwards is the urban cyclist’s equivalent of dogs and lampposts, part territorial signature, part statement of intent. When demonstrated outside on the street to a bike one is sizing up or to the ride of a rival, it says two things: one, that the lifter knows enough about bikes to know that weight = cost of materials = amount of money spent = devotion to the cycling cause, and, two, that it will really piss them off if the rival’s bike is lighter than theirs. And so round the bike stands the Serious Men go, lifting crossbars with the same air of familiar authority that perhaps a hundred years ago they would have slapped the rump or checked the pasterns of an attractive yearling. The gaze of the stallholders follows them around, hopeful and assessing. They know perfectly well the Serious Men have money and that they’re prepared to spend it. The trick is to find exactly where, and how.
The Cycle Show is held annually at Earl’s Court and is as good a place as any to gauge the state of the nation’s relationship with bikes. In 2008 during the financial crisis, this place had a conspiratorial quality to it, a sense that here among the long-converted there was some kind of answer to the mayhem beyond the doors. There were relatively few people and those who did appear had probably been riding bikes for twenty years or more. Then, things were still transitional. Many of the stalls still carried with them a sense that cycling was something esoteric, a throwback to a past time. There was a residual air of both apology and of defiance. This was the old campaigning face of British cycling, used to being shoved into the gutter, laughed at, written off. The stalls weren’t particularly professional and only a few places had really bothered to put on a show. The point was really just as much to hang around drinking smoothies and congratulating yourself on having got out of the petrol market before oil exploded in everyone’s faces.
Two years later, there’s a different feeling. It’s more professional. More time and money have been spent, more businesses are emerging. The feeling now is that the bicycle market is a serious contender with proper money to be made and proper middle-aged incomes to be tapped. The big brands have arrived, and are putting on a show. As you walk in there’s a fenced-off area with a cycle track. It’s been done up as a kind of fantasy landscape, with a few plastic trees, a tiny little MTB area and a circuit with a lot of corners.
At present, various bikes are being test-ridden. For a second, if you squint very hard, it almost looks like Amsterdam. The number of people flogging different sorts of cycle-related