Ion Keith-Falconer - Cycling

Cycling

A teacher at Harrow School, E. E. Bowen, said:

His bicycling feats were one common subject of interest between us. Bicycles were just coming into fashion when he went to the University; he was an enthusiast in the use of them and an admirable performer; and when he appeared in riding costume at Harrow, with his tall figure mounted on the enormous machine that he rode, it was a sight to see. He kept up the amusement for many years: for two or more he was certainly the best bicyclist in England, and his delight in success only shewed in more than common relief the charming modesty with which he carried his honours.

The cycling historian Jim McGurn said:

Keith-Falconer came from an aristocratic family in the Scottish Highlands. Having ridden a low velocipede at Harrow School he took to the high bicycle as a student at Cambridge. He was 6ft 3in tall (1m 87), an exceptional height for the period, even for an aristocrat of well-nourished stock. He could master a very high machine, which gave him a competitive advantage. Keith-Falconer also had the money to buy the best bicycles and the leisure to tour extensively. Although he may have been the fastest cyclist in the world, his cycling interests were of secondary importance to him. So amateurish was his attitude that on at least two occasions he forgot about racing engagements and turned up at short notice to win in heroic style.

It was while at Cambridge - where he was elected vice-president of the university bicycle club on 6 June 1874 - that he won his first bicycle races. In a letter to his sister-in-law on 11 November 1874, he wrote:

Yesterday was the ten-mile bicycle race. Three started. I was one. I ran the distance in 34 minutes, being the fastest time, amateur or professional, on record. I was not at all exhausted... Today I am going to amuse the public by riding an 86-inch bicycle to Trumpington and back. There is a little scale of steps up it, up which I am helped, and then started off and left to myself. It is great fun riding this leviathan: it creates such an extraordinary sensation among the old dons who happen to be passing.

In 1875 he won a club race over the 42 miles (68 km) from Hatfield to Cambridge, and on 10 May won a race against Oxford University from St Albans to Oxford, 50 miles (80 km). The following April he won a four-mile (6 km) race, described as "the amateur championship", at Lillie Bridge, setting a record time. On May 15 he won the Cambridge club's 50-mile (80 km) race at Fenner's in 3h 20m 37s.

On 11 May 1878 he won the National Cyclists' Union two-mile (3 km) championship at Stamford Bridge. It was probably this race that gave him the status of world champion. Until the creation of the International Cycling Association, the NCU's championships were considered the unofficial championships of the world.

In 1882, Keith-Falconer rode from Land's End to John o' Groats, the length of Britain, in 13 days. He rode 215 miles (346 km) in his last two days. His last race of importance was the amateur championship on 29 July 1882, at Crystal Palace, outside London. He won, seven minutes better than the record, in 2h 43m 58s.

On 28 May 1881, Keith-Falconer went cycle-touring through Oxford, Pangbourne and Harrow, a warm-up to his Land's End - John o'Groats ride, that started on June 4. Riding from one end of Britain to the other was, in the 19th century, a journey of poor or unmade roads, riding a high-wheeled bicycle with precarious balance and poor brakes. It demanded good weather. When it did not come, Keith-Falconer left Penzance after four days and returned to London and Cambridge.

Keith-Falconer's views on cycling were not always those shared by cyclists of lesser breeding. On 20 August 1881 he wrote to his friend Mr Charrington, with whom he worked in the East End of London (see below):

It is an excellent thing to encourage an innocent sport (such as bicycling) which keeps young fellows out of the public-houses, music halls and gambling hells and all the other traps that are ready to catch them. It is a great advantage to enter for a few races in public, and not merely to ride on the road for exercise, because in the former case one has to train oneself and this involves abstinence from beer and wine and tobacco, and early going to bed and early rising, and gets one's body into a really vigorous, healthy state. As to betting, nearly all Clubs forbid it, strictly... A bicycle race-course is as quiet as a public science lecture.