Frederick Thomas Bidlake - Attitude To Other Cycling

Attitude To Other Cycling

Bidlake's time-trialling was a rebel's exercise against the dictates of the National Cyclists' Union, but in time the two parts of the sport collaborated. Both agreed that massed racing on the road was undesirable and placed all cyclists at risk. The Isle of Man, which being outside the United Kingdom was not subject to the NCU's ban nor in fear of British police, was proposed in 1914 as the site of a world championship road race.

Cycling quoted Bidlake as calling massed racing - the sort now seen in the Tour de France - "a superfluous excrescence." He continued: "Unpaced solitary speedmen perform magnificently, unobtrusively, with no obstructive crowds and give no offence. I can't believe that our road men want to alter all this to make a Manxman's holiday."

The First World War ended the idea.

Bidlake also objected to the way women had begun to wear knickerbockers to ride a bicycle. He said: "A skirtless lady on tour is bound to suffer much. She is singularly conspicuous, a centre of observation and exposed to such contumelious ridicule as the ordinary sensitive feminine nature hesitates to provoke.". Women who wore other than skirts to ride a bicycle called what they wore Rational Dress. Bidlake ridiculed it in Cycling as Laughable Dress. When the Cyclists' Touring Club defended a woman member turned away from a hotel because she was wearing it, Bidlake insisted that the CTC was defending not the outfit but the CTC's contract with the hotel to serve any member of the club.

Of women racing, he said:

Cycle racing for women is generally acknowledged to be undesirable. My ideal of a clever lady rider is one who can ride far, who can ride at a really useful speed, who mounts hills with comfort, and makes no fuss or show of effort. The stylish, clever lady stops short of being a scorcher, but if women's races were to be organised, the participants would have to run to their limit, or else make a mockery of racing. And that limit is not pleasant to contemplate... the speed woman, dishevelled, grimy and graceless. I believe in a high standard of cycling ability as really worth while attaining by women, but not as racers... Imagine women dressed for speed, on bicycles built for speed, in attitudes necessary for speed, grabbing speed food, taking acid and finishing dead to the world.