Bradley Wiggins and Cambridge cycling

Cambridge Sports Tours attended Bradley Wiggins promotion of his book 'Icons' at the Cambridge Literary Festival Event on 25th November 2018.

So why did Bradley choose Cambridge to promote his book? Perhaps because Cambridge is currently the cycling capital of the UK, given a third of its residents cycle five times a week, or that it has some impressive cycling icons and history of its own? Let's see...

Cambridge's cycling champion
Cambridge can boast its own amateur GB cycling champion from the 1870s thanks to the Hon. Ion Keith-Falconer, a student from Trinity College. Another iconic student there, at the same time, was John Graham Chambers who in addition to instituting national championships for cycling (in the era of penny farthings), invented the modern rules of boxing, rowed for Cambridge, founded inter-varsity sports, became English Champion walker, coached four winning Boat-Race crews, staged the FA Cup Final and the Thames Regatta, instituted championships for billiards, boxing, wrestling and athletics, and rowed beside Matthew Webb as he swam the English Channel - all in his short life of 40 years. John Graham Chambers is certainly an unsung sporting icon from the Victorian era.

Increasing popularity of cycling
Whilst rowing was very popular in Cambridge in the 1860s, its popularity, amongst its townspeople subsequently declined owing to the counter-attraction of cycling.  At the same time the Cambridge University Bicycle Club was established in 1874 with 11 members, which within five years had grown to 260.

Cycling and 'the physical liberation of women' - and a setback
Cycling had a major impact on "the physical liberation of women" in Cambridge according to Kathleen E. McCrane (The 'Lady Blue') - set in the context of Emily Davies (Foundress of Girton College in 1869) believing that her students' health was so important that free time for physical recreation was provided each afternoon. However such progress was slowed when in 1897, in an act more powerfully symbolic than they probably realised, the ‘gentlemanly’ Cambridge undergraduates hung an effigy of a woman on a bicycle in front of the Senate House in celebration of the Senate’s rejection of degrees for women, and by so doing, in one fell swoop condemned the intellectually and physically liberated woman.

The growth of cycling at Girton College
Until the bicycle’s advent, Girton College’s distance from the centre of Cambridge kept students safely secluded from town and undergraduates, and forced them to travel about in horse-drawn cabs irreverently called ‘Girton hearses’. Fearing the effects of the new mobility on university opinion and students’ morals, college authorities at first subjected cycling to strict regulations. Students who wanted to ride had to pass a proficiency test before they could go into town, and they were not allowed to ride on Sundays until 1900 nor around Cambridge until 1903, by which time female cyclists had ceased to be stared at as an extraordinary novelty. The following year students gained permission to ride to lectures after dark, unaccompanied by a don, as long as at least three went together; and by 1906 all restrictions had disappeared.

Cambridge's recent cycling Olympic medalist

Whilst Cambridge has no individual to match Bradley Wiggins Olympic haul of medals, Emma Jane Pooley (born 3 October 1982) won an Olympic silver medal in the cycling time trial in 2008, and was world time trail champion in 2010. Emma had been a student at Trinity Hall.

Cambridge as host of the Tour de France, and......!!??

More recently Cambridge hosted both the start of a stage of the Tour de France on the 7th July 2014, and over the last 4 years, the World Naked Bike Ride, which operates across the world to highlight cycle safety in built up areas and the problem of road pollution.

So what did Sir Bradley Wiggins have to say?

Bradley was interviewed by Matt Barbet, a television presenter and journalist. He started by sharing something of his very challenging childhood, given his father ( - a professional cyclist 'on the circuit') left home when he was 6 months old, so Bradley's mum and grandparents had to bring him up. Rather than turn to a life of smoking, drinking and petty thieving, common amongst his peers on the London estate where he lived, he pursued his cycling dream, that came at a cost given the abuse he received, as a Lycra-dressed teenager. It was at this time that many of the Icons he features in his book had a critical impact on sustaining his enthusiasm and passion for cycling. These icons included Miguel Indurin, Eddy Merckx, the British rider Tom Simpson, and controversially Lance Armstrong. The book shares key pieces from his collection of memorabilia, amassed over the years, from its greatest and most controversial figures.

Given he was promoting his book on Icons he said nothing about the controversies that have followed cycling, which was a shame, however it was a privilege to hear from the only rider to have combined winning both World and Olympic (x 8 medals) championships on both the track and the road, as well as winning the Tour de France, and holding the iconic track hour record. A remarkable sportsman - an icon.

11th November 2018

Cambridge Sports Tours on the 11th November 2018 remembering the sporting people of Cambridge who served and died in World War 1, one hundred years after it ended.

By way of preparation Cambridge Sports Tours asked via its social media for local stories to be submitted and the best one, submitted by Neil Harvey (Historian at Cambridge City Football Club) tells the story of Hop Halls. 

Hop Halls - Cambridge Town footballer
Hop played football for Cambridge St Mary's and Cambridge Town (now Cambridge City), making 161 appearances and scoring 73 goals including against Le Havre and Racing Club of Paris before the outbreak of war. Away from football, Hop worked at Cambridge University Press and married one of Sir Jack Hobbs (the famous cricketer from Cambridge) sisters. Hop Halls and Jack Hobbs both played football for Cambridge St Mary's, the top team locally in the early part of the 20^th century, with Hop scoring his first goal in 1906 playing in front of 2,000 spectators on Parker's Piece. He also played for Cambridgeshire County, considered a major honour in those days, as well as a few games for Norwich City Reserves. In WW1 Hop served as a Driver with the Royal Field Artillery, and was killed tragically on the 29^th March 1918 by a horse. The news of Hop’s death must have been especially tragic to the Halls and Hobbs families, however Jack was fortunate to survive the war but not without receiving some criticism for not signing up to fight as early as many other sportsmen. Jack was conscripted into the Royal Flying Corps on 12 October 1916 as an air mechanic, to maintain and repair biplanes, having worked initially in a London munitions factory. His cricket career with Surrey and then for England saw him make 61,237 runs, including 197 centuries and between 1908 and 1930 he played in 61 Test matches. He was the first cricketer to be knighted.

Searching for more local stories

Despite plenty of effort by the current historians at both Cambridge City, and Cambridge United they can find no other definitive evidence of other local football players serving and dying for their country – so if you are aware of any please let Cambridge Sports Tours know.

The most decorated local sportsman

Cambridge Sports Tours believes the most decorated sportsman with a local link was Bernard William Vann who won both a Military Cross in 1915 and then Victoria Cross in 1918, before being killed by a sniper later that year. He was the only ordained clergyman of the Church of England to be awarded the VC. Between 1907 and 1910, Vann had been a student at Jesus College, Cambridge and was a 1910 Cambridge University hockey blue. Before studying at Cambridge, Vann had played football for Northampton Town, Burton United and Derby County.

Footballs 'kicking off an advance' at the Somme

A further student who attended Jesus College was Captain Wilfred Percy Nevill who died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme aged nearly 22. In an effort to support and encourage the men he commanded, Captain Neville kicked off their advance with two footballs. Unfortunately Wilfred was killed by machine gun fire just short of enemy lines.

Rugby Union

John Argentine Campbell played rugby for Scotland and won three rugby Blues whilst at Cambridge, where he was a student at Trinity College. He also played cricket for Argentina in their first cricket Test match against England, and was one of the best Polo players in the world. At the start of WW1, given this talent with horses, he joined the Lancers, then the Dragoons. However, in a suicide attack, where the promised tank support did not materialise, he was injured and died a day later from his injuries, on 2nd December 1917.

Another rugby player was Frederick William Jervis Goodhue who despite being born in Canada represented Scotland and won nine caps over three seasons. He also won two rugby Blues in 1885 and 1886 whilst a student at Cambridge University, and was a founder member of the first Barbarians rugby team of 1890. As far as his involvement in WW1 is concerned Goodhue joined the Royal Fusiliers (23rd Sportsmen Battalion) in 1914 as a private, having given his age as 43, when he was actually 49. Although a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons he was discharged as unfit for trench life due to his age, in 1916.

As far as England Rugby Union internationals with local connections are concerned there were four who served and died in WW1 including Alfred Frederick Maynard who died on 13 November 1916 having been a student at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His father, William Maynard had represented England in their very first Association Football international verses Scotland in November 1872. 

Another England international was Reginald Oscar Schwarz, more commonly known as ‘Reggie’ who died 18 November 1918 from flu, having won the Military Cross and been mentioned in dispatches. He had been a student at Christ’s College, Cambridge (1893-95) and also played 20 Test cricket matches for South Africa, where he became the only player in Test match history to be dismissed off the bowling of Jack Hobbs.

Rowing

There were many rowers who served and died in WW1. Here are just three examples:

George Fairbairn was a British rower who competed in the 1908 Summer Olympics where he won a silver  medal. He was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, following his nephew Steve Fairbairn who was famous for developing innovative rowing training methods. During the First World War, Fairbairn served as a second lieutenant with the Durham Light Infantry and was killed in action, aged 26, at Bailleul.

Oswald Armitage Carver was a British rower who competed in the 1908 Summer Olympics where he won a bronze medal. He died of injuries received in WW1, with his widow, Elizabeth Hobart who he had married in 1911, later marrying Lieutenant-Colonel (later Field Marshal) Bernard Montgomery, famous for leading the British Forces in WW2.

David Louis Clemetson was one of a very small number of black officers serving in the British military during WWI. He was born in Jamaica, and later attended Trinity College, Cambridge in 1912, studying Law and rowing in the Lent Bumps. At the outbreak of war in 1914, Clemetson left his studies to serve in the Sportsmen’s Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, resulting in him being wounded and invalided back to England. He was then transferred to the 24th Welsh Regiment of the Pembroke Yeomanry. Lt. David Louis Clemetson was killed in action in Perrone in 1918.

Olympic medal and Nobel Peace Prize

There has only ever been one person who has won both an Olympic medal and a Nobel Prize. Philip Noel-Baker who had been a student at King’s College, Cambridge won a Silver Medal in the 1500m at the 1920 Olympics, and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1959 for his work in disarmament. Despite being a very committed Quaker, when the First World War began, he and a group of other young (Quaker) Friends founded the Friends Ambulance Unit. He served in France and Italy and won the Mons Star, the Silver Medal for Military Valour and the Croci di Guerra. Given his experience of war, he later wrote “our generation must get rid of the militarization of the world… It is a deep-rooted and malignant disease for which palliatives do not suffice, and of which civilized society may die if it be not ended.”

'The bravest cricketer of them all'

A similar view was expressed in the context of the game of cricket by the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who had been a student at Clare College, Cambridge from 1905 to 1907. According to an article published in the Telegraph in 2011, Siegfried Sassoon should be considered ‘the bravest cricketer of them all’ firstly because of his physical, military bravery, when he led his men over the top several times in the First World War, including at the Somme, armed only with a pistol resulting in him being awarded the Military Cross in 1916 “for conspicuous gallantry”. However what set Sassoon apart was that he risked being shot when on leave from the trenches given his statement of protest against the mad futility of the First World War. This was read out in the House of Commons by an MP, and whilst pacifists such as Bertrand Russell had protested against the war, nobody had done so, having ‘been there and done that’. So Sassoon was sent to Craiglockhart hospital, where he protested even more eloquently in his war poems, inspired by the company of Wilfred Owen, for example:

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin

They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,

And in the ruined trenches lashed with rain,

Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats.

As I finish this article let us be very grateful to the very many people connected with Cambridge who played sport, and served their country in WW1, some of whom gave their lives as the ultimate sacrifice.