St Ives Cycling Club
The club started in about 1983 in the front room of my house in St Ives. It was just after the first St Ives fun bike ride and I had asked a few of the cyclists on the ride if they would like to start a cycling club. On that first meeting over 20 people turned up and filled my lounge. Out of all the people that were at that initial meeting only Syd Smith and I remain in the Club. The St Ives CC was called the St Ives Wheelers before the war. Over the years we have had several club houses one of which was at the Seven Wives public house in St Ives. The landlord of the pub let us use a garage at the rear of the pub and on most Wednesdays it was full of cyclists discussing their last outing or future races.
In the early days we only did road racing and time trialling. We had a number of good time trialling courses; our best being on what is now the A14 from Fenstanton to Bar Hill. It was a very fast course and if I remember correctly our former President Ian Cammish did 19.30 and I managed a 20.45. We had to stop using it because the road became too busy so we went to Warboys for a few years. We are now at Sawtry where we will hopefully stay for a good many years.
Members of the Club would go to Guernsey for Easter. We would travel down on the Wednesday and cross on the ferry, which was a good laugh. The first race would be on the Good Friday morning and was a 25 mile time-trial. On Saturday there was a ten mile race in the morning and in the afternoon a hill climb. On the Sunday was a road race that we all took part in, which was very hard. Monday would see us in a two up time-trial of 25 miles, which was good experience for the youngsters.
We used to run a mountain bike race in Hinchingbrook Park. It was an all-day affair with about three hundred riders.
In 1990 Phil Oxborough became the National Champion for the 24-hour time-trial. Phil along with Gary Ford and Graham Williams also won the team prize.
Tony Cork, Club President
Click here for more pictures from the club archives.
Early History of Cycling in St Ives
There was a St Ives Cycling Club much longer ago than its current form. The Cambridge Independent Press 3 May 1889 wrote of the ‘desirability of resuscitating the St Ives Cycling Club’, which originally ran from 1877 to 1884. An article in the Cambridge Daily News a week later told of the first meeting of the reformed Club, there being ‘about sixteen bicycles and a good number of spectators’.
In 1905 Charles Robert Bullard, a basket weaver from St Ives, invented the treaded tyre. He was offered a large amount of money for the rights but chose to patent it himself and unfortunately ended up in bankruptcy.