An introduction to my story…
So, who am I? I never won an Olympic or World Championship medal. I never won the Tour de France. I was never good enough to be a professional cyclist, never selected to compete for Great Britain even. Unless you are a serious follower of cycling, you may never have heard of me.
And yet I rose to the top of the sport. I was described as the Most Powerful Man in World Cycling by more than one media outlet.
Now here I am, in my late sixties, back in my home county of Lancashire in the North West of England, after a lifetime of commitment to the sport. Still riding one or other of my bikes most days. Still dreaming about winning another race. Still attacking the hills of the Forest of Bowland, on a good day, as if I’m aiming to be the next British World Champion. Still organising bike races. Still concerned about the future of the sport. Still hoping to put the world to rights.
Though my own racing career was modest, as an ambitious 19 year-old I was road race champion of my region - then known as Lakeland Division of the British Cycling Federation. I’ve managed teams at home and abroad. At the last count, over a 50 year period, I’ve organised over 100 days of racing, including the Tour of Lancashire (which at the time was the second-biggest race in Great Britain) and the National Road Race Championships twice.
I’ve worked for the sport as a local, regional, national and international official for forty years. I spent nine years (1984-93) as a member of the British Cycling Federation’s Racing Committee.
Then in November 1996, when the entire BCF Board was removed from office on a vote of no confidence, I headed up an Emergency Committee that took over the running of that organisation. I became its President, leading its transformation from a basket-case into an award-winning organisation, with British riders winning multiple Olympic and Paralympic medals, numerous world championships, and most of the greatest races of the world cycling calendar.
By the end of 2012, Great Britain won almost all the cycling golds at the London Olympic and Paralympic Games, we were the world’s top-ranked cycling nation, cycling had become arguably the nation’s most popular participation sport, and British Cycling was in a period of exponential growth, winning numerous awards for its achievements.
Next came the sport’s world governing body the UCI, l’Union Cycliste Internationale. In serious difficulties thanks to its mishandling of a series of major scandals, this organisation too needed new leadership. And in September 2013, in the great hall of the astonishing Pallazio Vecchio in Florence, where 500 years earlier Machiavelli had worked his devious plots, I was elected President after a bitter and controversial election campaign - the first time the incumbent President of any international sports federation had been defeated for some 40 years.
For the following four years, I worked with the UCI’s Management Committee and with my Executive Team to try to bring about a re-setting of the sport’s image and credibility, and to ensure that this was achieved through the reality of the highest possible standards of ethics and good governance. We achieved many good things in that four years. After the all-time low of being threatened with removal from the Olympic Games, a new level of credibility was achieved.
There were many frustrations too, of course. Not least that, at the end of that period, with much work still to do, I lost the next election.
Of all this, there is more on this website, I’ll write more in blogs and articles from time to time, and even more will follow in the book I am writing.
How did all this happen to a boy who grew up on a council estate in Lancashire? Along the way I had a day job too – a mainstream career outside the world of cycling. I married and had a family - three children, two boys and a girl, all grown up now and all seemingly doing well with their lives. All the while, I kept riding my bike as much as possible. I wrote articles in cycling magazines. I organised and officiated. I tried to cross-fertilise my professional and my voluntary experiences, and to fit them into my personal and domestic life.
I have had some fantastic experiences in my life. I’ve been present at some of the great moments in cycling history. I’ve met some of the great names of the sport – known some of them better than others, given some of them opportunities that they never would have had (though many of them probably don’t realise that).
So now is the time to start to tell my story, which I jokingly refer to as – with apologies to the Monty Python film – The (Cycling) Life of Brian.