Since having the idea of The Chopper vs The Hour, the most obvious question on my mind is: “How far can I ride a Raleigh Chopper in an hour?” Having only wrestled the thing along lumpy Oxfordshire country lanes and up a very big hill in France, very slowly, once, I have absolutely no idea how fast I can make it go on the flat. Obviously, I can't hope to go as far in an hour as anyone who set a record on a proper racing or track bike, no matter when they set it. No cycling record has ever been achieved easily and they are always set by the most exceptional people of their time: but what about those who held the first few "The Hour" records? Perhaps I could equal their performance. If so, it would surely be because their attire was even less well suited to performance cycling than denim cut-off shorts and trainers and their bicycles even more unwieldy than a 1970s children's bike.
According to several sources, the first person to ride a formally recorded hour on a bicycle was James Moore of Suffolk. Mister Moore is also regarded by some as the first winner of an official bicycle race, which took place in a park at St Cloud in Paris in 1868. The course was over 1,200m of gravel to a fountain and back. There are doubts about whether it really was the first official race as there may have been a race slightly earlier the same day. So what?: I say. Nobody remembers the day clearly enough to refute Moore's claim that he won the first race. In any event, Moore certainly won the world’s first road race from Paris to Rouen a year later with an average speed of around seven miles per hour. He was thus labelled by cycling journalist of the day, Victor Breyer, a “crack" velocipede rider. Racing cycling has always had a tempestuous relationship with chemicals but, despite the fact that cocaine would not have been a banned substance at the time and that it was routinely used by cyclists as a stimulant (1923 Tour de France winner Henri Pelissier poked it into his eyes to stoke himself up) Breyer's comment was not about this. Crack or no crack, Moore was practically unbeatable in England and France between 1868 and 1877. Getting to the point, in 1873, at the height of his powers, Moore rode a penny farthing 23km in one hour at the Molyneaux Grounds in Wolverhampton. As there was no governing body, the feat was never officially ratified and, for reasons I haven’t been able to discover, many writers ignore it and refer to Frank Dodds as the first Hour record holder.
It seems then, that the first genuine The Hour was set in 1876 by a man called Frank Dodds on a penny farthing in Cambridge and, as far as I can tell, that’s all that can be agreed on the subject. Frank Dodds’ record wasn’t ratified by any governing body either because there wasn't one, so I have no idea why his ride should be more significant than James Moore’s eight years earlier. I’ve pored over all the cycling books I own and plenty that I don't, which is quite a few, and none of them say anything about this momentous occurrence. Even Michael Hutchinson’s excellent book, handily titled “The Hour”, does not refer to Frank Dodds, though James Moore gets a mention. Having scoured the Internet for information, including web sites such as that of the Road Records Association, I can find only articles that don’t cite any sources or simply refer to other web sites that offer no provenance for their content. The variation in the facts reported is staggering. Some articles, for example, say Frank Dodds was an American while others claim he was English. Some agree that the record was set at the "Cambridge University Ground", which seems to have been either an athletics or a cricket ground. Most irritatingly, Frank seems to have managed a distance which, depending on the information source, was 15.8, 15.85 or 16.471 miles. More confusingly, this distance equals, allegedly, 25.4km, 25.508km, 25.51km, 25.598km or even 26.508km. My research on the subject, such as it is, has taught me little except that: the early history of cycling is murky thing; journalists can be very lazy; and that I need to investigate this subject further, though I’m not sure where to begin.
Happily, things begin to clarify considerably when the French begin to apply themselves to The Hour, which is interesting in itself. It is generally accepted that the first holder of the real, proper The Hour or l'Heure record is none other than Henri Desgrange, lawyer and the organiser of the first Tour de France. He set the record in 1893 on something at least resembling a modern bicycle. It had two wheels of roughly the same size and, unlike Moore's and Dodds' penny farthings, a chain that drove a gear on the back wheel. Monsieur DesGrange set this, along with eleven other world records, on a cycling track. His Hour was undertaken on the brand new, concrete surfaced, Velodrome Buffalo, so named because it was built on a site that had hosted Buffalo Bill Cody’s circus for a while. As he was French and didn’t think in miles, there is less confusion about the distance Desgrange rode, which is uniformly cited as 35.325km. This is just under 22 miles. Anyone who has ridden a bike in anger will know that 22 miles is a jolly long way to go in one hour, other than perhaps down a very big hill with a following breeze. When one takes into account the bicycle used, not to mention the drag caused by Monsieur Desgrange's prodigious moustache, the feat seems even more extraordinary.
Henri Desgrange, wishing death on all cyclists except one, on an annual basis
Perhaps I'm a pessimist but it seems to me absurd to suppose that I could ride a Raleigh Chopper anywhere near the distance Henri Desgrange managed on his track bicycle. This was a brutal man who believed that variable gears are only for people over 45 years' old when decrepitude has weakened them sufficiently to require such nonsense. He insisted that the perfect Tour de France would have the perfect winner if only one man survived. In addition to wishing death to all but one cyclist on an annual basis, Desgrange was almost as tough on himself as he was on everyone else, flogging himself hard on foot or on a bike throughout his life. He was 28 years' old and at a physical peak when he set The Hour record. As a 48 year old solicitor with two young children, a full time job, no track cycling experience and no bristling moustache, the only thing I have in common with Monsieur Desgrange is the legal profession. Sadly, this one similarity is irrelevant for these purposes. Perhaps then, I should aim instead for James Moore’s distance of 23km. On a really good day, perhaps I might even think about trying to equal one of Frank Dodds’ many distances: 25.4km, 25.508km, 25.51km, 25.598km or 26.508km. At least I could take my pick. I have a feeling, however, that all of these might be too ambitious. Penny farthings are not slow. The reason the machine’s front wheel is so big is that when riding a direct drive machine on which the pedal axle is also the wheel axle, riders found that the bigger the wheel, the faster they could go. Yes, that's right: the penny farthing was a red hot, thoroughbred racing machine. According to the Road Records Association, The Hour record for a penny farthing is 38.17km (over 23 miles) set at Herne Hill velodrome in 1891 by Frederick J Osmond. Mister Osmond rode further than Henri Desgrange two years before the latter’s record was set but, critically, Mister Osmond’s ride was paced. These days, paced means that riders follow a small motorcycle or "derny". I have no idea what it meant in 1891 but whatever it meant, it certainly didn’t mean one person on a bike on a track, alone for one hour, so it doesn't count. Thus, it seems I'm back with James Moore or the mysterious Frank Dodds, both of whom must have been very fine athletes indeed. Of course, I have no idea how a Raleigh Chopper compares with James Moore’s, Frank Dodds’ or indeed Henri Desgrange’s bicycles. I don’t, therefore, have any basis on which to set a target other than a method derived from measurement and monitoring of my speed on the Chopper; but what should be measured and how? In any case, at the moment, even James Moore's 23km seems horribly daunting and enough to wake me up early and stare at the ceiling while I wait for my children to come in and jump on my bed. The fact that Moore seems to have ridden his Hour record in a collar and tie, knickerbockers and some sort of double breasted blazer with lovely piping and a matching Homburg hat makes it all the more unsettling.
James Moore, right, not with his penny farthing and not having just broken The Hour record and, possibly, not
ever having won the first ever bicycle race
Luckily for me, there is a resource I intend to review very thoroughly. Published in 1975, the same year my Raleigh Chopper was manufactured, “Cycle Racing: Training To Win” is by Les Woodland. The author's name alone shouts 1970s, flared trousers, jumble sales, a quarter of pear drops and a Sunday afternoon bike ride to the local swimming pool followed by tea on a tray in front of the telly. Subsequent editions of Les Woodland's book have been published, the second of which was released in 1986, so I’ll ignore them all on the grounds that they're too modern. Les Woodland 1975 will be my guru and will get me through this. Come on, Les, let's show the world what's possible on a Raleigh Chopper.
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