Across the great divide

In the early 60s, a young Ulsterman set his sights on a career among the cycling elite. As the Giro prepares to roll into town, Procycling salutes Ian Moore, Belfast’s finest…

Growing up in post-war Belfast wasn’t so very complicated. There wasn’t the money for that, and nor was there much to spend it on. Come to think of it, stuck out there in the middle of the Atlantic, there wasn’t that much of the world to experience either. You might make a day of it in Carnlough or head up to the Giant’s Causeway but the rest of the planet you’d read about or dream up yourself. And dream you did, for the world was a very big place back then…

You weren’t about to be troubled by a bewildering array of choices then, and sport was a case in point. You pretty much played either soccer, Gaelic or well-to-do Rugby, and that was that. Motorbike racing was popular but for that you needed serious brass. You might fancy yourself as the new John Surtees – who didn’t? – but the notion of affording the machinery was ridiculous. And that was why matter-of-fact bicycle racing was so popular.

The big star back then was Reg Harris, from Lancashire. A big, strutting, preening sort of a bloke, he was a sprinter par excellence and a British Sports Personality of the Year. Though Harris race on the track, he became so ubiquitous that the imprecation, “Who do you think you are? Reg Harris?” issued by way of chastisement to the wayward or reckless cyclist, promptly entered the English vernacular. So it was that Harris, like all great cyclists, became both the principle marketing vehicle for a bike brand – in this case Raleigh – and a catalyst for a general boom in participation. He so fired the collective imagination that working-class streets the length and breadth became authentic race tracks. At least for those who could afford a bike…

Back in Belfast, a kid from precisely such a street (two-up-two-down, outside toilet, more or less room to swing a cat…) got down to business with his old man. Bikes, he was told, were expensive, but with a fair wind, a concerted effort at school and a good result in his music exam he might just stand a chance. It was 1950 and 11-year-old Ian Moore, reluctant pianist, set about perfecting his scales.

Youth hostels are all but extinct now but back then, the British Isles were awash with them. Tens of thousands of young cyclists would head for them on any given Saturday morning, dreaming dreams of the Giro and the Tour. The Belfast crowd would tramp east to Bangor, north to Cranny Falls, as far south as Dublin. Pretty soon Ian Moore, his arpeggios an increasingly distant memory, was tagging along. Who did he think he was? Reg Harris?

He joined Windsor CC and, as keen as mustard, started riding time trials. Testing was the bread and butter of the British (and Irish) cyclist, and he was good at it. Thumping up and down the highways and byways of County Antrim taught you to pedal but also reminded you, yet again, of the accidents of your birth. So, too, did a cursory glance at the Miroir du

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