News: The Pedal Club Lunch (July)

The club’s speaker for July was Chris Sidwells, a cycling journalist of twenty-three years standing (news by Chris Lovibond)

News: The Pedal Club Lunch (July)

The club’s speaker for July was Chris Sidwells, a cycling journalist of twenty-three years standing, now founder of Cycling Legends Media and sponsor of Simpson Nouvelles U23 Women’s Cycling Team.

Photo: Chris Sidwells receive his Pedal Club badge from President John Wheatley.

Tom Simpson was Chris Sidwell’s uncle, so it’s not surprising that Chris is the ‘go to’ expert on Mr. Tom, but his knowledge and influence now go far beyond this starting point and there are twenty-seven books on every aspect of cycling, plus a large archive of periodical articles to his credit.

Naturally much of his talk related to his uncle; Chris was approaching his eleventh birthday when Tom died, so he was quite old enough to to have clear memories of a man who was a close member of his extended family. There cannot be many in the cycling world who are not familiar with the Simpson legend – it is among the best of all cycling stories and has been discussed endlessly for the past fifty-eight years since his death, so this report does not seem a good place to retail content which has long been widely available.

However, because of Chris Sidwell’s intimate knowledge of his subject matter, his talk must have made the audience consider again what might have been had Simpson lived. He was undoubtedly a great bike rider, but he was also a man with an unusual genius for publicity: for example, the bowler hat and umbrella image had an element of satire which would appeal to the French, but was also in line with the British spirit of the time. Less understandable for home fans was his clever pun on the French words fature/ fracture (The tour will foot the bill for the leg I broke skiing), but the French do love a pun and admire an outsider with such ability in their language; there are many other examples. It is clear we lost some one who could have had a great post racing career as an ambassador for cyclesport.

A significant committee decision arising from this meeting was to donate £1,000 to the Victor Berlemont Trophy Road Race. Although the Pedal Club has never organised open competitive events, the Victor Berlemont has been, over the past decade, the closest the club has come to promoting a race. The origin of this event goes back to a Southern Velo race first run in 1951, with the enthusiastic support of Victor Berlemont and his son, Gaston. The original series continued until 1996 after which there was a gap until 2010 when Doug Collins started its revival as a Surrey League event. Since then Doug has shown a steely determination to keep the event going, and each year a large number of Pedal Club members have turned out to help.

However, road races have become very expensive to run and last year’s event made a significant loss. The club believes that the survival of this type of event is important and wishes to do all in its power to keep this race ‘on the road’, hence the donation. More information on the background to the Victor Berlemont will soon be on the club’s website.

The meeting attracted 43 members and guests and was again held at the Civil Service Club in Whitehall.