38 Facts About Percy Stallard

Percy Thornley Stallard was an English racing cyclist who reintroduced massed-start road racing on British roads in the 1940s.

Percy Stallard was a successful cycling coach and team captain.

Percy Stallard joined Wolverhampton Wheelers and rode his first race on 8 May 1927, when he was 17.

Percy Stallard rode only time-trials until 1932, when his papers suggest he may have ridden in local grass-track meetings or perhaps on a hard velodrome.

Percy Stallard could have tried cyclo-cross because that year he took part in a race between cyclists and runners, traditionally held on cross-country courses.

Percy Stallard was chosen for the 1933 UCI Road World Championships team and finished 11th, the best of the British entry.

Percy Stallard had never ridden a massed event on the open road in Britain.

Percy Stallard finished 17th and inspired by what he had ridden.

Percy Stallard insisted that if there were few or no other road-users, massed racing on the road was unlikely to bring objections.

Percy Stallard protested that the airfields and car circuits which were the only place that the NCU would allow massed racing had been taken by the army and RAF.

Percy Stallard obtained sponsorship from the Wolverhampton Express and Star newspaper, offered any profits to the newspaper's Forces Comfort Fund, and recruited 40 riders to take part.

Percy Stallard's plan brought strong opposition from the cycling establishment, particularly from the veteran administrator and writer George Herbert Stancer.

Percy Stallard went ahead with the event on 7 June 1942 and it finished, without incident, in front of a crowd at West Park.

Percy Stallard was banned indefinitely for refusing to account for himself to the NCU's management.

The weekly magazine, The Bicycle, apologised to the NCU on 20 May 1942 for misreporting the penalty as a life suspension, although the consequence proved the same because Percy Stallard did not appeal and the ban was never lifted.

Percy Stallard won the 1944 BLRC championship, and served as events organiser for a time, before being expelled for criticising the standard of events.

Percy Stallard was a moving force behind organisation of the fledgling Tour of Britain.

Percy Stallard remained bitter about the NCU and even his own invention, the BLRC, for the rest of his life.

Percy Stallard saw the merger as treason by "just three people [who] were allowed the freedom to destroy the BLRC" and until his death saw the new British Cycling Federation as a reincarnation of the NCU.

Percy Stallard sacked him the next day he came into work.

Percy Stallard rode his last race when he was 56, in Doncaster.

Percy Stallard argued that veterans' races should be organised in age-groups and he clashed again with cycling authorities by forming an organisation to make that possible.

Percy Stallard drew up the rules from a hospital bed in 1985, when he was having a hip replaced, and the League of Veteran Racing Cyclists began in 1986.

Percy Stallard fell out with the organisation he had founded, saying in his private papers that the LVRC was not "up to expectation" and adding:.

Percy Stallard [Stallard] wrote: 'Whatever the award is intended for, whether it is my activities of 48 years ago, or my present struggle on behalf of age-related racing, the significance of the award is nil as it does not open the locked doors of the BCF to me or to anyone else with progressive ideas.

Percy Stallard believed that he had never been asked to manage a British team or take a national position in the sport because former NCU officials ran the BCF and resented what he had done.

The pass is 10,976 feet high and Percy Stallard made it in less than 15 hours, sometimes through deep snow.

Percy Stallard walked over Mount Whitney, at 14,496 feet, in the US, but came close to dying after running out of water while walking down into the Grand Canyon and back out again along mule tracks.

Percy Stallard crossed the Sierra Nevada in four days of 1973.

Percy Stallard travelled 25,000 miles across America by Greyhound bus and organised more than 100 coach trips for fellow walking enthusiasts.

Percy Stallard died leaving three children, Mick, Yvonne and Olwyn.

Percy Stallard had the most abrasive nature that I have ever met.

Percy Stallard didn't have, let us say, the delicacies of negotiation.

Percy Stallard was a bright and energetic man with a vision for his sport but he was not a man to tolerate argument or those with other views.

Critics said Percy Stallard had lost sight of the intention of the BLRC, which had been to bring racing to the open road and that, once achieved, there was no further point in rival cycling administrations.

Percy Stallard's actions cast British cycling into a civil war that lasted longer than World War II.

Percy Stallard reintroduced massed racing to British roads for the first time since the 19th century.

Percy Stallard's success was that he alerted the UCI to a problem in British cycling which led the UCI to threaten Britain with exclusion from world cycling unless it sorted out the conflict between the NCU and the BLRC.