Reg Harris: The rise and fall of Britain's greatest cyclist

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Arguably the SBDU became lost as a skunk-works type commercial, marketable, entity and became a development laboratory for Raleigh: for example in developing the new tubesets from Reynolds (2055, 2060, 2070, 2080 and the Titanium main tubeset 2325) with cast aluminium lugs using new adhesive technologies branded Dyna-Tech. With war still raging in Europe, he was invited to perform in a series of exhibition races in Paris in 1945 and became a huge favourite of the Parisian crowds. His popularity saw cycling group Claud Butler offer him a job and the use of their equipment. Once the war was over, this investment helped him claim his first World Amateur Sprint title in 1947, once again in Paris. Had the Second World War not interrupted his career, Harris most likely would have conquered Britain by the end of the decade. Instead, having returned from serving a tank regiment in the deserts of North Africa, he won his first national title in 1944 and his maiden rainbow jersey three years later. Such swift success owed much to his talent but only narrowly less significant was his rare perfectionism, a quality perhaps best shown after the 1948 Olympic Games. Harris claimed two silver medals following a summer curtailed by injury yet dismissed the achievement at Herne Hill Velodrome. “Wins are remembered,” he said. “Wins are what you fight to achieve. The most important events have got to be Olympic and world title events so anything less than gold is such a disappointment that I had a token to mark the failure.”

From that, you might be able to work out that Dineen's biography is one part Lance Armstrong's War (the world against Reg Harris and Reg Harris against the world) and one part Paul Howard's Sex, Lies And Handlebar Tape. Let's now jump to another quote, this from toward the end of the book. An important source for some of the story Dineen tells is Harris's daughter from his first marriage, Marilyn Harris: Introduced at the November 1948 British Cycle and Motorcycle Show, the Lenton Sports was widely praised as marking a new commitment by Raleigh towards the lighter, sporting machines in its post-war range. With the new model joining the Clubman and the Record Ace, Raleigh now offered the leading sports models in three distinct price ranges. I rode races," he said, "with a single–minded outlook, and that was to win. And I didn't take it very well when I was beaten." He bore grudges, he confessed. His biggest row was with Arie van Vliet, a Dutchman with a long, bony face and the air of a boffin. Harris, for all his genteel manners, came from a mill family and – until he chose to change it – spoke with an accent that could drop pigeons from the sky. Van Vliet, by contrast, was from a prosperous business family and van Vliet had no intention of working anywhere else until his brother persuaded him. The following year, van Vliet was Olympic kilometre champion.Every year Reg Harris and Ted Green, tree ecologists and the brains behind Thinking Arbs events, present an award to someone in arboriculture in recognition of their contribution to trees and our industry. We are proud to announce that this year’s award goes to Simon Richmond, the Association’s Senior Technical Officer. Reg sent us the following article explaining why he and Ted chose Simon for this honour. Combined with his reserve and ruthlessness, such pursuits did not endear him to the British cycling community. In viewpoint typical of the many contemporaries of Harris whom I interviewed, Norman Sheil, the former world amateur pursuit champion, said. “You never got close to him to know him. You didn’t socialise with him. Or let me put it another way: he didn’t socialise with you. He was out of our league financially and every other way.” Sturmey-Archer FM alloy shell medium-ratio hub gear OR Benelux 4-speed derailleur OR Fixed and Free, large flange rear hub.

Reg Harris left school without qualifications and his first job was as an apprentice motor mechanic in Bury, soon moving from the workshop to the salesroom. During this period, at the age of 14, he bought his first bicycle, and entered a roller-racing competition organised by the Hercules bicycle manufacturing company. Read even more about Reg Harris at Wikipedia Traded items with a signature of Reg Harris I never thought twice about accepting the offer,' he said. Apparently he understood that guilt was corrosive. 'Acquiescing in a transaction of that nature would have started an inward deterioration that could have had only one end.'"Transfers/Decals - there are changes between the 1950 and 1951 catalogue illustrations. The 1950 illustration shows a smaller downtube RALEIGH transfer with a smaller, single arrowhead than in 1951. The 1950 picture shows no white lining, nor is it mentioned in the specification. In 1951 white lining is apparent in both picture and text . His first job was as an apprentice motor mechanic and he bought his first bicycle at the age of 14.

He certainly gives the impression he does. Consider this story. A typical match sprint is one rider against another. In 1951, the world championship format was changed to three riders, at the prompting of a powerful French bloc within the UCI. The motive? An attempt, Dineen insists, to stymie Harris (who had won the professional title twice already) and punish him for spending the Winter of 1950/51 riding on rollers on the cabaret circuit in the UK instead of attending exhibition events on the Continent. Not that this stopped Harris making it three titles on the trot in 1951. Though it is rolled out again as an excuse for Harris's failures in 1952 and 1953. After which the UCI reverted to the two-up format and Harris secured his fourth professional title. It's finished now as a big attraction, of course, sprinting. No more do huge crowds file into velodromes to see huge–thighed men they recognise as gods and legends. A shame in a way, but then all things change. Even Harris's anger. Although right to the end, the grudge lived on. Dineen, Robert (2012). Reg Harris: The rise and fall of Britain's greatest cyclist. London: Ebury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-09-194538-1. The Lenton range was last offered to the British market in the 1961 model year. Raleigh completely revamped its sporting and racing range with new models such as the Gran Sport, the first Raleigh to feature Campagnolo 10-speed derailleur gears, and the Blue Streak with a 10-speed Benelux derailleur. The last of the Lentons appeared in the 1962 North American catalogue as the Lenton Convertible featuring a three-speed AW hub and a three speed Cyclo-Benelux derailleur combination. By 1963 the Lenton was completely out of production. That year Sturmey-Archer ceased production of their classic club and racing FC, AC, FM, AM and ASC hubs. It was truly the end of an era, not only of a remarkably successful model, but of a quintessential British form of cycling. The Lenton was gone and with it the classic British club bike. All of which is by way of explanation as to why so few people today, outside of the UK, know who Reg Harris was.Plattner raced several times in Australia during the European ‘off’ season and after one of these visits left this machine with the English Olympian Peter Brotherton who had settled here. Brotherton had been at the 1952 championships and knew the frame well. It was raced sparingly in Australia, Brotherton winning the prestigious Bendigo Golden Mile and once defeating Sid Patterson in a Match Race on it.

He also won two silver medals at the 1948 Olympics just three months after breaking his ribs in a road accident. In early 1937, he was confident he could support himself as an athlete, selling the prizes he won as an amateur, [3] and left the paper mill to focus on the summer cycle racing season, returning to the mill the following winter (repeating the process the following year). He continued to win races and attract attention, and by the summer of 1938 was able to beat the existing British sprint champion. At the end of that season, he joined Manchester Wheelers' Club, and in 1939 won a major race in Coventry, leading to his selection for the world championship in Milan, Italy. He travelled to Milan and had familiarised himself with the Velodromo Vigorelli when World War II broke out and the British team was recalled to the UK. Reginald Hargreaves was born in the tiny hamlet of Birtle, near Bury, Greater Manchester, the son of a musician who died when he was six. His mother subsequently remarried and Reginald took the name of his step-father, a textile worker called Harris. In 1971, he returned to racing, winning a bronze medal in the British championships in Birmingham after hardly any preparation. With much more training behind him, he approached the British championships in Leicester in 1974 in more confident mood, and beat Trevor Bull to win the title at the age of 54. In 1975, he returned to Leicester, but was narrowly beaten by Bull in the final and had to settle for the silver medal. He continued to cycle almost to his death.

Raleigh would also build, alongside the new technologies framesets in steel for professional teams like Raleigh-Weinmann, Panasonic, Systeme U, Castorama and Raleigh Banana to name four. Dineen's solution to this issue is as simple as his solution to doping: all of Harris's major titles were hard earned, of others the same cannot be said. When Antonio Maspes defeated Harris in 1955, winning the first of his six professional titles, Dineen notes that Harris had been offered a fee to throw the race in the Italian's favour: This success saw him entered for more competitions and he repeated the process of working over the winter and racing in the summer for the next two years. In the summer of 1938 he went up against the British sprint champion and beat him – propelling him onto the national selectors’ radar. The coming of war Full details of Peter Kohler’s TI Raleigh SDBU 1976 Time Trial Special, including a comprehensive history of the machine and of the SBDU production facility in the period when Reynolds 753 frame tubing was introduced. During the late 1970’s and 1980’s the unit was not only supplying bespoke frames to the most successful professional teams it was producing frames for discerning British riders and complete bicycles handbuilt by one builder. Harris moved from the motor mechanics job to a job in a slipper factory, then, in early 1936, found a position in a paper mill that he felt would pay him enough in the winter to allow him to spend the summer training and competing in his chosen sport. During 1936, he competed in and won his first events in a proper velodrome, at Fallowfield in Manchester.