The sense that aerodynamics have been a complete game-changer in modern time trialling is repeatedly confirmed by anyone with experience across the eras.‘It’s another leg,’ said Dr Jamie Pringle, who worked as the head of science and technical development at the Boardman Performance Centre. Chris Boardman himself agrees and, having been head ‘secret squirrel’ for British Cycling between 2004 and 2012, became an authority on aerodynamics. ‘We found that expenditure to go the same speed can differ enormously,’ he said. ‘It’s mostly about body position. Efficiency has changed because of knowledge and technology.’ She won her first national medal in 1957. It was a silver in the national 100- mile individual time trial championship. Viking Cycles Limited was formed in 1939, producing 800 bikes per year. By the end of the Second World War production was over 2000 bikes per year. Then Viking decided to get into racing. The company sponsored a men’s professional team from the birth of road racing until the 1960s, and many successful amateurs raced on Viking bikes ‘loaned’ to them by the company.

The cast of four, who play multiple characters, have great comedic skill and excel under Rebecca Gatward’s creative, physical direction, even if this theatre sometimes feels a little too big for such a character-driven homespun yarn.We all know Maxine Peake is one of our country’s best stage actresses, but can she write? Absolutely. Women weren’t included in the Olympic cycling program until 1984, when one event, a road race, was introduced in Los Angeles. Beryl Burton was 47 when that happened, still racing but well past her best. When she was just 11 years old she had chorea and rheumatic fever and had to stay in hospital for 9 months.

A gloriously happy, funny and moving play ... puts the record straight and restores the legacy of this amazing woman” – Islington Gazette Ken Nichols and Maureen Nichols, Mud Sweat and Gears: A History of the British Cyclo-Cross Association, Mousehold Press, 2011. I don’t think people who knew her outside of cycling necessarily knew she was a great cyclist…she wasn’t showy,” Wilson says.Maxine Peake, a British actress, wrote and starred in ‘Beryl: a Love Story on Two Wheels’, a radio play based on her life, with contributions from her husband Charlie Burton throughout. Burton’s achievements on the bike were intimately tied to, and often indistinguishable from, her life off it. Cycling was her sport, hobby, social life and means of transport. However, in an era when professional cycling did not really exist – especially for women – it was not a job. Wilson’s book, along with a play written by Maxine Peake in 2012 and William Fotheringham’s 2019 biography, aims to relocate Burton from the relative wilderness to a place among the greatest British athletes of all time. Burton worked on a rhubarb farm, cleaned houses, and worked on the biscuit counter at the local Co-op supermarket alongside her record-breaking exploits. One of the best bits of Peake’s writing is her confidence with breaking down the fourth wall to provide a sardonic commentary on events. When the play starts, the actors talk about how they had to google Beryl Burton before their auditions. At one point, an actor blames a crap prop on ‘David Cameron and his arts cuts’. It’s an endearing, playful device, almost like being on a school trip and having your mate next to you whisper in your ear.

Burton also managed to set or break over 50 National records and her 10-mile, 25-mile and 50-mile records stood for two decades before being broken. Burton’s 100-mile record stood for almost three decades while her 12-hour record still stands. Take everyone to hear her story. It’s so exhilarating, hopeful and heartening and Peake’s script is superbly funny” – Everything Theatre After dying at the age of 58 of heart failure whilst cycling a a memorial garden was made in her honour in her home town in Morley, Leeds. The camera is on a low section of a field looking up at a cyclist who rides down the hill, then gets off her bike, lifts it over a stone wall and runs down the rest of the hill carrying the bike. A couple of other cyclists do the same thing. Disley’s methodology was fairly straightforward. By mounting a bike inside the wind tunnel and then blowing air through the area as a rider pedals, he can calculate how efficiently a bike and rider are moving, which is known as their drag coefficient (CdA). Disley specifically needed to know Beryl’s CdA once Rhodes-Jones had replicated her positions and fired up the two bikes to a speed of 45kph (which equates to 21min. 30sec. for 10 miles).Many of the participants – such as Jean Smith, Barbara Conway and Pauline Hunter – have since been largely forgotten, although the Croucher sisters, Brenda, Maureen and Carol, of the East Bradford Cycling Club, are perhaps better remembered. Valerie Rushworth was national road race champion in 1964 and won 11 British Championships between 1959 and 1966, going on to represent Great Britain internationally, as a rider and later as coach and team manager. The National Cyclists' Union was formed in 1883 – in a merger of the Bicycle Union and the Tricycle Association – ­and soon after, in 1890, they banned road racing out of fear of the reaction from the upper classes to the sudden increase in working class mobility – to become law in 1896 (H G Well’s novel of that year, Wheels of Chance, indicated the danger). A new body, The Road Racing Council – later to become the Road Time Trials Council (RTTC) - promoted time trial races, done in secrecy, instead. In 1942 a leading rider of the time, Percy Stallard, defied the ban and formed the rival, and dissident, British League of Racing Cyclists (BLRC). This was to eventually merge with the NCU in 1959 to form the British Cycling Federation (BCL), who lifted the ban, although Stallard apparently remained disgruntled. Thus the ban on road racing had only recently been lifted when this was filmed in 1962; the year when Tommy Simpson became the first Briton to wear the yellow jersey on the Tour de France. As her powers declined and her dominance waned, Burton refused to retire. In 1984, when Burton was 47-years-old, the first women’s Tour de France was held and women were allowed to compete in the Olympics for the first time. She lobbied for a place in both teams but was ultimately not selected.