Grass track racing
The local park has always been at the heart of the British cycling scene
It can seem a peculiarly British phenomenon. A summer’s weekend of sporting endeavour disturbing the normal peace of a park, locals watching the action while sat under the shade of trees. It is a scene you might expect to come with an occasional shout of ‘howzat?!’ but here the sounds are of tyres on turf, not leather on willow. For this is the unique sport of grass track racing.
Massed-start bicycle races in parks have been held at least as far back as August 1869 when the Illustrated London News reported on the “athletic sports of the 1st and 2nd Depot Battalions,” held on the Great Lines at Chatham. “Four officers entered the bicycle race,” reported the newspaper. “It was well contested and was won by Lieutenant Mitford, 73rd Regiment … Time: 3 min. 10 sec.”
With the popularity of the bicycle growing, soon it became common practice to include a bicycle race alongside ‘flat and field’ races during an athletic club’s annual sporting event. With such events taking place in local parks and comprising a number of handicap races over various distances, the foundations of grass track cycle racing had been laid.
Grassroots of cycling
With National Championships introduced
“Massed-start races in parks have been held since at least 1869 ”
in 1932, by the 1930s grass track racing had become incredibly popular, a “natural consequence of the scarcity of built-up tracks,” according to Cycling. A photograph of a close finish in the 1935 10-mile race at Bournville for the famous B.S.A. Gold Vase, won by J.H. Tipping, shows the banks full of cycling fans.
Despite being both exciting and lucrative — in 1961 Vin Burns won nearly £200 in prizes on the summer grass track circuit, nearly a quarter the average wage of a first-division professional footballer at the time — grass track racing began to struggle against the lure of the road.
However, in recent times the likes of Nicole Cooke, Victoria Pendleton and Laura Kenny all cut their teeth on grass. Today, British Cycling pushes grass track as an introduction to racing as part of its Go-ride initiative and promotes national short-distance and endurance grass track leagues as well as National Championships.