Sporting Cyclist - Closure

Closure

The last edition was in April 1968, volume 12, number 4. Wadley had already left and the final issue was edited by Green. His leader said:

This is a critical time for cycling and, consequently, for cycling magazines. The post-war bubble of enthusiasm for the sport and pastime burst many years ago; club memberships shrank, the industry shrivelled and other publications collapsed through lack of support.

Sporting Cyclist was by then owned by Longacre Press, which had bought Buchan's publications. Longacre also published Cycling and the two publications merged. "This new 'tandem' will be known as Cycling and Sporting Cyclist", said the leader, "and will bring the best of all home and foreign journalism within one set of covers every week." Wadley wasn't convinced and set up another magazine, International Cycle Sport, which after 199 issues in 17 years also failed, by which time Wadley's contract as editor had long since not been renewed. Roy Green left Sporting Cyclist to join Amateur Photographer.

Wadley wrote in his first leading article in International Cycle Sport

I had launched because I knew the cycling world wanted it. There was never any suggestion that it would make a lot of money for anybody. Yet within a few years, after a series of mergers and takeovers, Sporting Cyclist found itself under the control of a giant publishing organisation whose business, understandably, was to make money. A small monthly magazine supported by what it considered to be a "dying industry" was obviously of little interest to such a concern, and its eventual merger with Cycling was simply a matter of time. When the decision was taken I and my most able assistant Roy Green were given the chance of carrying on with the combined publication, but neither accepted the offer.

Sporting Cyclist ran as the centre pages of Cycling for some years before being dropped.