Cyclopedia (38 page)

In 1999, however, globalization hit the UK operation. First the company stopped making frames in Nottingham, retaining painting and assembly. Losses increased, one financial restructure followed another, and a proposed move to a site outside Nottingham was aborted when planning permission was contested. Assembly of bikes in the UK ended in 2002, but the company relaunched a UK-based road racing team for 2010. There are hopes that if this squad flourishes the name Raleigh may eventually return to the Tour.

 

RÁS
Irish term for cycle race, pronounced Rohsss, but usually referring to one Rás in particular. The Rás is an around-IRELAND stage race run in late May, dating back to 1953, and is unique because it offers amateur cyclists their only chance to participate in a full-length national tour alongside professional squads. It should not be confused with the professional Tour of Ireland, a shorter event for pros only.

Attempting to survive the Rás is a highlight of any amateur cyclist's career. As well as being a tough race in itself, with daily 100-mile stages, the “night” stages are legendary: the music and drinking among the caravan (and some of the tougher riders) can last until the next day's stage start.

The first Rás was a two-day event named the Rás Tailteann, setting the tone for an event in which sport and politics rubbed shoulders. The Tailteann Games were a legendary Celtic sports festival that had particular significance for the Irish independence movement; the first trophy was a wreath of laurels picked at the site of the original Tailteann Games. The link was explicit when the first race started from in front of the General Post Office in Dublin, the focus of the Easter Uprising. The field were all members of the National Cycling Association,
a body which did not recognize Irish partition and was thus banned from international competition.

Irish cycling was divided at the time between a body that recognized partition, the CRE (Cumann Rothaiochta na hEireann, which translates as the Cycling Association of Ireland), and the NCA. The Rás was born mainly to create an alternative Irish tour to rival events run by the CRE; an article in the 1961 race program described CRE members as “traitors,” “scabs,” “a brood of vipers,” and “reprobates.” An early Rás organizer, Joe Christle, was also editor of
An Phoblacht
, the Republican newspaper; it was, says the Rás's official history, understood that “a core of individuals” within one club that contributed heavily to the Rás organization “were active within the IRA at that time.”

In the early years of the Rás, Christle explicitly linked the race to the struggle for Irish nationhood, but there were other characteristics that made for long-term success. The race visited rural parts of Ireland, stages finished in the early evening so that locals could finish work and then watch, the distances were at the limit of what the riders could manage, and the field included teams from the Irish counties to maintain local interest. There was also an emphasis on Irish culture.

The first around-Ireland Rás, in 1954, was billed as “the greatest cycle race ever,” in spite of widespread doubts that anyone would be able to complete the 900 miles and a lack of sponsorship; the budget was raised by raffles, dances, stories sold to newspapers by one organizer, Kerry Sloane, and a large unofficial donation from the Gaelic Athletic Association. A field of 60 started the race, which had stages to Wexford, Cork, Tralee, Ennis, Athlone, Armagh, and Newry—the latter symbolically important, being over the border in Northern Ireland.

The Rás rapidly established
itself as the centerpiece of Ireland's cycling calendar, the one event all amateur cyclists aspired to finish. To be a “Man of the Ràs” meant braving bad weather, ill fortune, and poor roads. “Let's hear it for the Men of the Rás,” booms the race public address half a century on.

The Rás created its own cycling culture, populated by heroes barely known outside Ireland such as the 1955 winner Gene Mangan and, half a century later, the “Godfather” of the event, Philip Cassidy, who figured prominently from 1980 to 2001. There were legendary episodes such as the “Cookstown incident” of 1956 (see IRELAND) and the Italian affair of 1992, when Irish cyclists ganged up to intimidate the Italian national team and there were scuffles on the bike, and there were legendary families such as the MacQuaids, four of whom won a dozen stages between 1974 and 1988, and one of whom, Pat, is the president of the UCI. The spirit is typified by the greatest Man of the Rás, Shay O'Hanlon, a multiple stage winner between 1960 and 1975, who is still working as a volunteer on the race 30 years later.

The weather is always unpredictable and so too the racing. The term “Rás break” refers to a move that looks insignificant but ends up expanding in numbers and is decisive. If the night stages are legendary, so too is the camaraderie among the caravan, where the men who run the broom wagon consider it an affront if a rider climbs in who is not utterly spent. Incredibly, thanks to long-term sponsorship from FBD insurance and the Irish National Dairy Council, plus a sympathetic organizer in Dermot Dignam, the race retained its unique character into the 21st century.

 

 

Further reading:
The Rás: The Story of Ireland's Unique Stage Race,
Tom Daly, Collins Press, 2004

 

(SEE
IRELAND
FOR OTHER MAJOR IRISH RACES AND STARS;
POLITICS
FOR OTHER CYCLING EVENTS THAT HAD MORE THAN A PURELY SPORTING IMPACT)

 

RECORDS
When humans first put their legs over bikes in the mid-19th century, the question was obvious: how far can I get under my own steam on this thing, and how long will it take me? That Victorian spirit of self-discovery lives on in the sport's various records: place to place, speed records, and distance records—the longest distance in a set time—of which the HOUR RECORD has carried the greatest prestige since its inception in 1895.

In GREAT BRITAIN, the Road Records Association (founded 1888) administers place to place and distance record attempts such as the END TO END, and in British TIME TRIALLING there are “competition records” set in official races over their standard distances.

Some famous records:

RECUMBENTS
Bicycles or tricycles where the rider sits in a bucket seat close to the ground, with the pedals in front of him and a long chain connecting to the rear wheel. They come in two kinds: long wheelbase, in which the front wheel is in front of the pedals, and short, in which the chainset and pedals are at the front. Drive is usually to the rear wheel.

They first appeared in the late 19th century amid fevered experimentation with bike position; the first one is said to have been the Normal Bicyclette built in Ghent in the early 1890s. Racing recumbents known as Velocars were commercially available in France in the 1930s and were used to win pursuit matches and set RECORDS. In 1934, Francois Faure used one to set a new HOUR RECORD.

The UCI reacted by banning recumbents from organized events. Restrictions on cycle
length and AERODYNAMIC aids had been brought in in 1914, while UCI Article 49 of 1934 effectively limited bike design to safety-type machines. Further development was delayed for 40 years, until the inception of HUMAN POWERED VEHICLE championships in California.

The principle benefit is aerodynamic; by being lower down, the overall profile of the bike is reduced. Their adherents also maintain that they are more comfortable and safer because having a low center of gravity, they are more stable. However, recumbents have never caught on. Opponents would claim this is because they are less safe to ride, because the low profile means the rider is less visible to traffic and also because less power can be put out from a relatively upright sitting position; enthusiasts claim the aerodynamic benefits outweigh any inefficiencies.

Particularly when a smoothed-out fairing is fitted, in some cases completely enclosing the rider, a recumbent can travel considerably faster than a road bike, although enclosed machines create a new problem; the rider is not cooled down by air flow. The most popular version is MIKE BURROWS' Windcheetah. To prove its road-going potential, one version was used by long-distance specialist Andy Wilkinson to set an END TO END record; the time was almost four hours faster than a normal cycle and speeds close to 80 mph were reached on descents.