FEATURE: PEDAL CLUB LUNCH REPORT (APRIL)

Report from Chris Lovibond of the April Pedal Club lunch with Ian Tierney and a birthday card for 88 year old Doug Collins

FEATURE: PEDAL CLUB LUNCH REPORT (APRIL)
(by Chris Lovibond)

The club’s speaker for April was Ian Tierney who is the CEO of Wheels for All, the largest cycling charity serving disabled people. It is all too easy for the able bodied to forget the problems of the disabled, who represent an increasing proportion of our ageing population. Even among our non disabled citizens, about one fifth are inactive, but for the disabled this figure doubles to 42%; inactivity often creates ill health and depression and bikes can give the opportunity of exercising to many of those who, left to themselves, might be condemned to sitting indoors.

The Wheels for All website ( https://wheelsforall.org.uk/ ) demonstrates the great amount of ingenuity which has gone into constructing machines which make the seemingly impossible….possible.

Ian Tierney came from that lively area for club cycling and racing, the Wirral peninsula (nr Liverpool), and he is himself an ex-racing man. So Wheels for All is quite a way from his entry point into cycling but, he told us, there is much support from the club world for his organisation, which has 160 ‘hubs’ throughout the country.
A collection at the meeting raised £220 for the charity.

A feature of the lunch was the signing and presentation of an eighty-eighth birthday card for Doug Collins, a longstanding member and former president of the club. He had a great racing career as a young man which he followed with many years of work for the sport, including race promotion and officiating at events. He first gained real attention at the age of nineteen in 1956 when riding the Oats Circuit of Britain which was a forerunner of the Milk Race and had a good quality field. The final day was a split stage with a time trial in the morning and a road race in the afternoon: Doug won both. He turned independent in 1961 riding for Condor (see photo). Since 1964 he has been involved in race promotion (including the winter series at Hillingdon, pictured) and even now he is still active in supporting the Victor Berlemont Trophy Race which he revived fifteen years ago.

The meeting attracted thirty five members and guests and was again held at the Civil Service Club in Whitehall.

— Chris Lovibond,