Time Trial / Time Trialling / TT

Post 15319
"I'd only do it for myself"

A very noble attitude, but this was not the way people thought back in the golden days of record breaking. I think we need to consider some history here.

Let's go back to one of my favourite characters - Marcel Planes. He won the 1911 'Century Competition' with 33,200 miles in the year, which was the record (see photo below). This competition was run by Cycling (as the magazine was then known) which naturally gave it a lot of publicity. Journalism and bike racing are inextricably linked - look who started the Tour de France.

Marcel was unsponsored, as he had to be since the competition was specifically amateur. It's amazing that he managed to do the rides that he did since he was, for much of the time, literally penniless. Towards the end of the year he gave a testimonial to Hutchinson Tyres for which he doubtless received some (hard earned) payment.
This led to a terrible row in 1912 which saw him drummed out of his club for professionalism and, shamefully in my opinion, excluded from cycling club life until he joined the Veteran-Cycle Club in 1955, which didn't care about this sort of thing.

The relevance of this is that between the wars record breaking was the only outlet for professionals in Britain as all racing was strictly amateur. But we still had an industry, which not only made bikes, but profits! Furthermore it was convinced, on no good evidence, that it was the best in the world.

The industry could afford, and saw fit, to pay a few elite riders to go for records on the grounds that it made good copy for adverts, and where would these ads appear? Well, obviously in 'Cycling'. So the magazine had an interest, an obligation really, to give plenty of publicity to record attempts. Examples are Frank Southall (Hercules), Sid Ferris (Raleigh)
Marguerite Wilson (Claud Butler). It's interesting that there was then no way back into amateur racing, no possibility of redemption (although this came in the 1960's) so it was a huge, career ending commitment. In fact I believe that the people behind this rigid pro/am distinction actually brought amateurism into disrepute which has contributed to the unsatisfactory situation existing today.

Just suppose we had a significant cycle industry today - I'm confident the police would be more than happy to marshal record aspirants through town centres.

So I see the problem now as being lack of financial interest rather than the impossibility of
breaking records. How could this be overcome? Find powerful sponsors (may be possible, but I certainly don't know how) or look for obscure regional records that could still be broken. (Barnet to Bedford?)

A final note: skinny recognises that Phil Griffiths' 1977 record looks unbeatable and it may well be: Phil was a very talented rider. However, speeds generally have gone up significantly since that time, so let's not give up hope.

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