CONTENTS

Foreword – A Man in Full

by John Wilcockson

‘Our Man on the Spot’

by Adrian Bell

Clubmen and Gentlemen

Called up to the NorthArnold’s ‘Unbelievable’ 24Wadley – A Gentleman and a Champion

Record Breaking

Kemps Breaks ‘Bath and Back’ RecordGeorge Laws on the ‘Bath and Back’A Cornish Comeback

The Classics

Shay was ‘King’ of the Flemish MountainsIncomparable ‘Derby’Stablinski Shows the Way from Paris to Roubaix

Interviews

Rest Day in Luxembourg with Nicolas FrantzGeorge Ronsse who Learned to Ride at Shepherds Bush Eugene Chris-tophe - the Greatest Loser of the Tour

The Vélodrome

First Visit to GhentSprinters ... Stayers .. AmericainesSix Appeal

Tour de France

Bahamontes Wins from the FrontInto the AlpsTime-Trial Without Bracke

Cyclotourisme

27th Brevet de Randonneur des Alpes

A Tribute to Jock

by Neville Chanin

Sporting Cyclist

– the journal for which J.B. Wadley is best remembered. After four issues as a quarterly called

Coureur

Sporting Cyclist

appeared each monthfrom May 1956 to April 1968. Its front cover, designed by Art Editor GlennSteward, was invariably clean and uncluttered.

TOUR DE FRANCE

J. B. Wadley always remembered the rst time he heard that mysticalphrase - Tour de France. It was one night in March 1929, and he, not yet15, was out on the Colchester Rovers’ mid-week club run. In darkness,barely pierced by their acetylene lamps, they veered off course and brakedto a halt on a narrow, sloping farm track. ‘Cor,’ exclaimed one of the olderriders. ‘Just like the Tour de France.’It was another 26 years before JBW got his rst opportunity to followthe race from start to nish and, then, in 1955, he was the only British journalist on the Tour. But he was lucky, René de Latour used to say,because he got there just in time, when journalists were still having touse their eyes and not rely simply on what they heard broadcast overRadio-Tour. In fact, Wadley never stopped using his eyes. He developedthe habit of jumping out of the Press car at the critical moment of a stage,closely watching the entire peloton pass, and then, by prior arrangement,getting picked up by one of the following cars.In those early days he did his Tours the hard way, organising his ownaccommodation on the spot. Nothing was booked in advance; he wouldseek out lodgings in the stage town at the end of the day’s racing. Whathe liked was the kind of cheap auberge paysanne where you could go intothe kitchen and rell your own glass of wine or cognac from the barrel. Hewas a fully-edged Francophile, as well as being in love with the Tour.For his second Tour Wadley asked Brian Robinson to keep a diary, andin the week after their arrival in Paris (where Robinson nished fourteenthoverall) they polished his personal, day-by-day account which then formedthe basis of the fourth edition of his

Coureur

.lt was an instant sell-out,and it established a pattern. From then on, every September’s issue ofSporting Cyclist was devoted to the Tour.It would be impossible to do justice to J. B. Wadley’s work withoutincluding one of these reports in its entirety. In 1959 he was able todescribe a particularly interesting Tour, for here was Bahamontes withmore serious ambition than ever before, not content simply to secure theclimbers’ prize, and aided in his intent by some remarkable intrigue withinthe French national team. And from the British viewpoint it was a goodyear - Vic Sutton transforming himself in the mountains to become therevelation of the Tour, and of course, there was Brian Robinson. Not onlydid he win his second stage by a massive 19-minute margin, he was theanimator of a scorching stage through the Massif Central. It was surely