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Savernake VC 10   14th July 1989                   Back to Rides in 1988 and 1989

 

My first record certificate is dated July 1989, and was from the RTTC. 

It all happened at the Savernake VC 10 near Swindon.  There were 17 tricyclists on the card, with teams of three from "Tricycle Association (London East)" and from "Antelope Racing Team".  The Antelope riders were me, my brother Tim, and our ‘leader’ Glenn Longland. 

Tim was riding my second tricycle, a Ken Rogers machine that I’d acquired to use as a spare when doing record attempts.   Glenn had borrowed a fairly old tricycle from a gentleman named Keith Mosedale, and had upgraded some of the bits (but not everything!). 

Tim was off early, Glenn was number 21, and I had the last seeded spot, at 25.   We were all after records.  The TA riders had an objective of beating the Team Competition Record, and we (Antelope) were after the Individual and Team records.  The TA riders expected us to be faster than them overall, so they had to be sure that their third rider finished before I did.  

The first piece of drama related to Tim who unshipped his chain after about a mile, and had to stop to replace it.  He was sure that those valuable seconds would cost us the record, but still ended up with a personal best of 24.50.   Glenn was our next rider in, and he smashed the individual record with 21.05.

Although I didn’t realise it, the third TA rider had set off just 2 minutes ahead of me, and I was reeling him in.   Luckily for everyone, he was comfortably across the line by the time I finished with 22.59, and so they had the team record (for 35 seconds!) before I came in to take it across the car park to the Antelope camp.

For the record, the TA riders were Nick Stead, Ian Sheen and Bob Merrill, and they clocked an aggregate time of 1.11.21.  The Antelope figures were 1.08.54.

On the same evening, the tandem bicycle figures were beaten by Vic Haines and Antony Stapleton, with 17.58.

Don’t forget that this was all before tribars or disc wheels were in use….

Back to Rides in 1988 and 1989

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