12 Dangerfield

12 Dangerfield (1992–1997) ‘Four weeks of comfy, one-hour rides and he’s back on form.’ There are few riders in the history of domestic time trialling as quick as Stuart Dangerfield. He tore across the dual carriageways and hilly circuits in the 1990s and early 2000s, only to became another of the lost riders of previous generations, those drowned by the unceasing wave of wide indifference to cyclosport and a myopic governing body. Within the current landscape, ruled with wit and formidable guile by Sir Dave Brailsford and by Sir Bradley Wiggins, it’s hard to imagine a time when things might have been different, when cycling was a niche sport in which odd people wore odd clothes and the myths were written in French. Nowadays, everyone has an opinion on the Tour, or bike racing, and anything other than continuing British success seems strange. The Olympic 169 Development programme marches on and key clubs like the Maindy Flyers feed a conveyor belt of talented youngsters up through the ranks. Heading for the continent, like so many neo-pros, has become just one of the routes into professional cycling. It took a while for cycling to build up to its current mainstream popularity in the wake of Chris Boardman’s success and it wasn’t until Athens, fifteen years later, that a causal link became evident between greater investment and greater success. There is a clear argument that the planets began to align: the congestion charge resulted in more people buying and riding bikes; Olympic success raised the profile further; the cycle-to- work scheme made it all somehow more affordable and an obsession with all things retro as somehow ‘authentic’ led to the resurgence of fixed wheel bikes in London. There is another book somewhere about how and why we have reached peak bike, and even how the all-consuming bike boom has resulted in plagues of wayward sportivistes clogging the landscape on any given weekend, locked into a perpetual war with the startled locals in the New Forest, but it’s not this one. If Stuart Dangerfield had had the foresight to be born just a few years later it might all have been different. As it is, he fell into the gap between the continent and the nascent British road scene. Dangerfield spent at least some of his career locked in a battle for selection with a short-sighted British Cycling Federation, wary of sending the best time triallists abroad to do battle with the frisky continentals. Early on, he cut his teeth on the National Championship Hill Climb, coming back time and time again. His name first appears in the medals in 1990 on Widecombe, where he came third to Boardman. The following year he repeated the trick on Park Rash, but in 1992 in Durham, he had grown in strength and came into form to take the title. One of the other names that comes up at this point and throughout the later 1980s is Pete Longbottom. A clever and intelligent bike rider, he turned down the alluring promise of a 170 pro career with Wolber in 1982 to stay in the North and continue working as a civil engineer for Ryedale Council. He had missed out on Olympic selection in the early 1980s, finally making his debut at Barcelona in 1992 in the men’s team time trial. He also experienced Commonwealth success, with a bronze alongside Chris Boardman in 1990 and a silver in 1994. He finally retired in 1996, but two years later was killed by a lorry whilst riding on the A64. His sense of humour and supportive nature is evident in the interviews in the press when he was racing, and also in the sense of loss when he was killed. He was ‘the heart and soul of his sport’, and all the more impressive for the Corinthian and amateur ideal, of working and riding.* The 1992 climb took in St John’s Chapel in County Durham. It’s in the heart of the North Pennines and a very long way from anywhere. As the aerodynamic revolution took hold many of the field had begun to dabble in exotic equipment. Dangerfield opted for a pair of four spoke Corimas weighing 650 grams each. Throughout his career he had his frames built by Arthur Needham of Argos Cycles, a bespoke Bristol framebuilder. Many of the design flourishes were ahead of their time, including recessed and hidden brake calipers, tear drop profiles and elaborate tube shapes. Dangerfield was the ideal customer for Needham. He kept rows and rows of maturing silk tubulars under the bed, each one being aged slowly until ready to race. At County Durham Dangerfield beat Jeff Wright into second place, the second year running Wright had missed the top step. Dangerfield’s margin of victory was a whopping 20 seconds, with Longbottom 45 seconds adrift in third place. Wright made it a hat trick of near misses in 1993 when the race went even further north, stopping at Newlands Pass in Cumbria. It’s a tough climb and another one-hit wonder, cresting out at 1,093 feet. It’s made more challenging by several eye-watering * Robin Nicholl, ‘Obituary’, The Independent, 13/2/1998 http://www.independent.co.uk/obituaries/obituary-peter-longbottom-1144459.html 171 sections of steepness. It pitches up to 20% out of Buttermere, climbing steeply on the pitted road surface, easing for a time, before throwing a 25% bend in at the end, just in case you felt like you might make it up in one piece with legs and lungs intact. This time Wright had narrowed the gap to a more credible four seconds In 1994 the Championship moved to Huddersfield and the climb out of Jackson Bridge. In the years from 1988 to 1998 the championship visited an entirely new course on each occasion. Jackson Bridge is a tough and technical ascent with undulations in gradient, the requisite amount of steepness and is long enough to pose a challenge. It’s also the home event for the Huddersfield Star Wheelers, an event these days organised by Andrew Pearson. The winner takes away the Granville Sydney trophy, with the first name etched on the cup being that of Graham, in 1974. Since then it’s been won by all of the great hill climbers. It forms part of a classic double-header with Holme Moss in the morning. I rode the event in 2012, opting for a 57” gear. I found myself out of the saddle for most of it. Matt Clinton won by some distance. I think I was sixth. My mediocre placings aside, I remember the road names being unusual. It starts on Staley Royd Lane, which then turns into Tenter Hill, before changing into the evocatively named Scar Hole Lane. It finishes just short of Tinker’s Monument at the junction of Scar Hole and Dick Edge Lane. I looked for concrete evidence of Tinker’s Monument but found none. On paper, the climb suited Jeff Wright, but his nearly-man status counted against him. Few could see beyond Dangerfield for another title. His power, fitness and form made him the irresistible favourite. The course record was Chris Boardman’s four minutes dead, which would take some beating. Jeff Wright had been riding the Japan Cup road race eight days previously and it was suggested he might be tired and jetlagged. A stiff tailwind, the remnants of a storm in the morning, helped the riders up the hill, but the technicalities of the course 172 made it an easy one to get wrong. The hope of the home club, Chris Giles, blasted up the first section but tailed off towards the end. Despite the changes in gradient, most riders opted for a fixed gear, with 59” being the order of the day. In new money it works out at 42:19. Steve Marchant rode well, but was unable to add to his long list of second places. Wright was off at 110 on the card, providing the opportunity to pile the pressure on the scratch rider. He climbed with purpose and a ruthless efficiency, controlling the bike and staying on top of the gear, getting up out of the saddle to maintain the cadence then sitting back down where necessary. The clocks were stopped at 3’-49.9”, hacking an enormous eleven seconds from Chris Boardman’s record. It was a startling achievement and Dangerfield must have felt there and then that the game was up. He dug in, finishing a distant second, seven seconds back. It was the first championship with a tailwind for a while, favouring the lighter riders. Further down the pack, a young Dean Downing managed fourteenth and his brother Russ was in the middle somewhere in 5’-05.5”. That same year, 1994, the biggest show on earth had made its way to the South of England. It was welcomed by parachute teams and a strange pompom lady in one of those slightly dated and painfully high cut red swimsuits, as modelled by Erika Eleniak every Saturday tea time in a slow motion waltz along a beach somewhere hot with David Hasselhof.* Sean Yates, replete with earring, turned out for Motorola, whilst Boardman was looking to make good in an escape and keep the fans entertained. Three years previously he had been honking up Park Rash. Now he was wearing the yellow jersey (and losing it in the team time trial when he seemed a bit too fast for his dishevelled GAN teammates) and returning to the UK as a very different rider.

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