Albert Crimes & John Arnold
Record-breaking, tandem tricycle-riding northern double act from the 1950s
There can be few more stirring sights in all cycle sport than watching a tandem tricycle hurtle around a roundabout at full bore. Back in the 1950s, Albert Crimes and John Arnold were the masters of the now virtually extinct but then popular discipline.
It was an almost exclusively British form of cycling, so fame, fortune and international recognition were not on the table, but in the closeted realms of time trialling the duo were superheroes. In a campaign that spanned the 1953 and 1954 seasons they smashed records at distances from 25 miles right up to the Land’s End-John O’Groats and 1000 miles, several of which still stand unbeaten.
That End-to-End effort was the ultimate evidence of their sheer class for they not only beat the existing tandem trike figures but bettered the solo bicycle record of the time as well. They continued riding too, logging a time of two days, 13 hours and 59 seconds for a 1000-mile record that comfortably broke all other records over the distance – tandem trike, tandem bike, solo trike and solo bike!
London-York, London-Liverpool, London-Bath and back, and Land’s End-London all fell to their three fast-spinning wheels.
It was a bonanza which would surely have continued for a clean sweep of all the Road Records Association place-to-place record tables had Arnold not fallen seriously ill.
When their partnership began, Crimes, the steersman, was 32 – some six years older than Arnold, the stoker. Both had already carved big reputations as maestros on solo trikes.
Back in 1949, Mancunian Crimes had set RTTC competition tricycle records at every distance from 50 miles to 24 hours while Arnold, Yorkshire born but Lancashire raised, had emerged as the only serious rival to his domination, setting 10 new solo trike records between 1951 and 1953.
Clothed in the regulation black jersey and black shorts of the day, though Arnold often added a jaunty air by wearing a white scarf and racing cap.
While their constant battles on solos continued apace, it was an obvious move for the twosome to join forces. Their first outing together was a successful attempt on the Manchester-Carlisle record and soon after they lopped a whopping two hours off a Liverpool-Edinburgh record that had been on the books since 1932.
In the same vein, many Crimes-Arnold bests have stood unbeaten for decades while their exploits inspired ‘barrow’ riders like Dave Keeler and future cycling commentator David Duffield in a run of epic rides that captured the cycle racing headlines through the 60s and 70s.
they smashed record s from 25 mile s rig ht up to la nd’s end-jo hn
O’groat s