Percy Stallard

Stallard had never ridden a massed event on the open road in Britain. The English cycle-racing authorities had, since the end of the 19th century, banned racing on the roads, fearing the police would ban all cycling as a result. The National Cyclists' Union, the governing body, demanded races be held only on tracks and, later, on circuits such as airfields that were closed to traffic. Although time trials (races between individuals competing against the clock) had started as a revolt against the NCU's ban – the races were held at dawn on courses kept secret from the public with riders dressed from head to toe in black to complete the secrecy – there were no races on open roads between riders starting together.

Stallard reintroduced massed racing to British roads for the first time since the 19th century. To the question of whether Britain would have moved to massed racing anyway, without the BLRC, Peter Bryan says not, saying that the established cycling authorities had become entrenched in their positions, their own rivalry overshadowed by their joint fears and interests.

Stallard believed that he had never been asked to manage a British team or take a national position in the sport because former NCU officials ran the BCF and resented what he had done. Just before his death on 11 August 2001, Stallard wrote:

In June 1989 he wrote to the journalist Les Woodland: "I regret very much my endeavour on behalf of age-related [racing]. While there is a definite call for this type of riding, a big majority of the LVRC membership look upon the organisation as a means of providing them with a few extra races, nothing more, and have no allegiance to it whatever."

In 1988, the BCF offered Stallard its gold medal for services to the sport. The magazine Cycling wrote: "Are we being over-optimistic in believing that the bitterness caused by the rift of the Forties and Fifties has now faded away?" Cycling was indeed being overoptimistic: Stallard refused the medal. Cycling reported:

He drew up the rules from a hospital bed in 1985, when he was having a hip replaced, and the League of Veteran Racing Cyclists (LVRC) began in 1986. This time, the rest of cycling left him to it.

He also walked over Mount Whitney, at 14,496 feet, in the US, but came close to dying after running out of water while walking down into the Grand Canyon and back out again along mule tracks. He also crossed the Sierra Nevada in four days of 1973.

Stallard continued cycling into his eighties. In 1965, he rode alone over the Theodul Pass between Zermatt in Switzerland and Italy. The Rough Stuff Fellowship, an organisation for enthusiasts of cross-country cycling, acknowledged that it was probably the first time a cyclist had done it. The pass is 10,976 feet high and Stallard made it in less than 15 hours, sometimes through deep snow.

The race continued until the 1960s, organised by Stan Kite, until it fell foul of traffic on the main A5 road – riders sometimes had to stop at traffic lights – and international limits on race distances.

He died leaving three children, Mick, Yvonne and Olwyn. He divorced in the 1960s. His brother Dennis, lived in Perth, Western Australia.

In 1959, the NCU and the BLRC agreed to merge, by which time both had become mentally and financially exhausted by their civil war. Stallard saw the merger as treason by "just three people [who] were allowed the freedom to destroy the BLRC" and until his death saw the new British Cycling Federation (BCF) as a reincarnation of the NCU.

Percy Stallard believed not only that Britain could have racing and a race like the Tour de France but he was inspired by the distance of events such as Bordeaux–Paris and on Saturday 9 June 1951 organised a race from London to Holyhead. It started from Marble Arch at 5 am and finished 267 miles later in Holyhead. Thirty-five riders were listed at the start, all professionals or semi-professionals (known as independents – the BLRC, contrary to the other cycling bodies in Britain, had promoted the idea of independent riders, who were intended to be trying their hand in professional racing while not yet committing themselves to leaving the amateur class). The BLRC official and historian Chas Messenger wrote:

With nowhere to go but insistent that massed racing was the future, Stallard was instrumental in creating a breakaway organisation, the British League of Racing Cyclists. It was formed in November that year, bringing together regional groups already forming in the Midlands and the North. Stallard won the 1944 BLRC championship, and served as events organiser for a time, before being expelled for criticising the standard of events. He was also a moving force behind organisation of the fledgling Tour of Britain.

Chamberlin was not impressed. Stallard protested that the airfields and car circuits which were the only place that the NCU would allow massed racing had been taken by the army and RAF. On Easter Monday 1942 he called a meeting at the foot of Long Mynd, a hill in Shropshire that was popular with cyclists, and announced his plan for a 59-mile race from Llangollen to Wolverhampton on 7 June.

Stallard went ahead with the event on 7 June 1942 and it finished, without incident, in front of a crowd at West Park. Cycling reported:

The report – in which the frequent mention of the police reflected the magazine's concerns as expressed by Stancer – went on to explain that the race had been banned by the NCU and by the time-trialling body, the Road Time Trials Council, but that there had been no incidents other than a lorry backing on to the course. Fifteen riders finished and all those involved in the race were suspended by the NCU. Stallard was banned indefinitely for refusing to account for himself to the NCU's management. The suspension, often referred to as "for life" was in fact sine die, meaning without defined end but allowing Stallard to appeal. The weekly magazine, The Bicycle, apologised to the NCU on 20 May 1942 for misreporting the penalty as a life suspension, although the consequence proved the same because Stallard did not appeal and the ban was never lifted.

When the Second World War began later that year, the roads emptied because of petrol rationing. Stallard insisted that if there were few or no other road-users, massed racing on the road was unlikely to bring objections. He wrote in December 1941 to A. P. Chamberlin of the NCU:

In June 1936, though, the Isle of Man allowed a race over one lap of the motorcycling Snaefell mountain course. The island is a separate jurisdiction from the United Kingdom and did not fall under British police control. The island also saw the race as a potential tourist attraction. In time the race, expanded to three laps and known as the Manx International, became the main event within a week of cycling festivities that followed the motorcycling week.

The 1936 race was spectacular for the crashes that it produced, because for the first time riders were required to negotiate everyday winding streets rather than the smooth bends of a motor-racing course. Stallard finished 17th and inspired by what he had ridden. There were more races on car circuits and airfields – Stallard won the last race at Brooklands, in 1939 – but to Stallard they were just a shadow of the real thing.

Next year, in the 1934 UCI Road World Championships at Leipzig, Stallard was selected to ride with Charles Holland and Fred Ghilks. Their accompanying official from the National Cyclists' Union was from Herne Hill Velodrome in south London and knew little of road-racing. The circuit was nearly six miles round, to be covered 12 times. The marshalling was by Brownshirts. The race averaged 26 mph with one lap at nearly 30. Holland rode 60 of the 70 miles with three broken spokes and came fourth. Stallard and Ghilks finished over two minutes later, Stallard seventh and Ghilks 26th. The race was won by Kees Pellenaars of the Netherlands, who went on to manage the Dutch team in the Tour de France.

Confronted by a decision it could not get reversed, the British governing body, the National Cyclists' Union (NCU), allowed the Charlotteville Cycling Club in Guildford, Surrey, to organise a series of races on the Brooklands car circuit. The largest, on 17 June 1933, was billed as the 100-Kilometre Massed-Start World Cycling Championship Trial and the NCU said it would choose its next team for the world championship based on the outcome. The organiser was Vic Jenner and the business manager Bill Mills, two international riders. Mills went on to start the weekly magazine The Bicycle as a rival to Cycling. A crowd put at 10,000 watched a "race like kick-and-rush football, tactics limited to random and eccentric attacking by the best, hanging on for the rest."

Stallard was chosen for the 1933 UCI Road World Championships team and finished 11th, the best of the British entry. The British favourite had been Frank Southall, but although his speed got him into the group of 38 leading riders, his inability to change pace on the shallow rises of the Autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry near Montlhéry, gave him difficulties. The writer and race organiser, Chas Messenger, wrote:

He rode only time-trials until 1932, when his papers suggest he may have ridden in local grass-track meetings or perhaps on a hard velodrome. He could also have tried cyclo-cross because that year he also took part in a race between cyclists and runners, traditionally held on cross-country courses. Track races became more common from 1933.

Lone racing against the clock was a British speciality and in 1932 Frank Southall came sixth in the Olympic Games cycling road race in Los Angeles when it was run that way. Shortly after came an announcement that henceforth the Olympics would be run as a massed-start event, a form of racing which (see below) the British cycling authorities had banned since the 19th century and at which British riders therefore had no experience.

Born in Wolverhampton, at his father's boarding house in Broad Street which later became his bike shop, Stallard became a member of the Wolverhampton Wheelers Cycling club and a keen competitor in cycle races, competing for Great Britain in international races during the 1930s, including three consecutive world championships (1933–1935). He was also a successful cycling coach and team captain.

Percy Stallard joined Wolverhampton Wheelers and rode his first race on 8 May 1927, when he was 17. The competition was a 10-mile individual time trial on a course described as "the Cannock road". By the end of the season he progressed to riding 50-mile (80 km) events and the following year to a 12-hour endurance race

Southall eventually abandoned and the other rider, Jack Salt, who had won at Brooklands, came 21st and last. Stallard and the team created interest in France. Stallard said: "The trip to France was a real education to me, and during my short stay I learnt more about bike racing than I had done during my six years as a time-triallist. I went equipped with a 20-inch 'contraption' that may well have been the latest design 20 years earlier, but certainly not later. My handlebars were really the things that fascinated most. They were a lovely pair of 19½-inch Highgates, and when referring to the antediluvian equipment of the English team, the French Press likened my bars to a pair of 'cow's horns.'"

Percy Thornley Stallard (19 July 1909 – 11 August 2001) was an English racing cyclist who reintroduced massed-start road racing on British roads in the 1940s.