First medallist had to sew the Union flag on her racing vest
Bronze winner Scales was accused of not taking the sport seriously enough, she tells Jeremy Wilson
Aquiz question that would probably stump even the most knowledgeable cycling fan: who was the first woman to win a world championship pursuit medal?
The 87-year-old answer might have taken up a rather different sport but the competitive spirit has evidently not receded and she is now a regular at the Budleigh Salterton Croquet Club in Devon.
Kay Scales (nee Ray) was part of the British track team that competed at the Parc des Princes velodrome in 1958 and, after losing in the semi-finals against the Soviet Union’s eventual champion Lyudmila Kochetova, rode her way into the history books. “The bronze ride-off was before the gold,” says Scales.
Her team-mate Stella Ball would also win pursuit silver while Beryl Burton followed that up with five golds between 1959 and 1966. Scales can recall arriving for the championships having sewn on her own Union flagjack badge to the sleeve of her racing vest, while the women’s events in Paris that first year were simply fitted in ad hoc between the scheduled men’s competitions.
“We had to be there at 9am in the morning and would leave at 9pm at night – our events were put in when there was a space,” says Scales. “You just sat there waiting all day. There were no changing rooms. You were so naive and new that you didn’t know any different.”
Scales was upset after her semi-final defeat when a journalist clumsily asked if she took her racing seriously enough but says that Reg Harris, the former world sprint champion, was important in helping her regain focus for the bronze medal ride-off.
Having got her first twowheeled bike shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Scales would join a cycling club in Wood Green and also competed with Burton at the world championships in 1959 and 1960.