139. Tom Simpson: World Champ and Cycling Legend, with Chris Sidwells

0:00I've been riding with the Hammerhead Karoo for a fair bit now and beyond the slick screen and the 35 hour battery life I'm really getting into the Karoo's climber function. Now what climber does is show you any upcoming climb on a ride whether it's a pre-planned route or not and then when that climb comes up this data page pops up on screen and you get this little climb profile with gradients and colour coded sections for steepness and the distance to the top in length and elevation. so it's amazing for places I've never ridden like on a sportive where you've never ridden the course before but the crew guide you up a climb in this predictive way so you can pace out your effort it's like having a little team ds on your handlebars you can also look ahead at a route and see all the climbs on it so a bit like having a profile sticker on your stem like you see the pros have in races only this way it's way more detailed as you can pick out a climb and look at its specific details as you go.

0:59So check out our full review of the Hammerhead crew at cyclist.co.uk and see why we gave it our cyclist recommended award. Then head to hammerhead.io and use the code cyclist to get a free heart rate strap with every purchase. Just be sure to add the strap to your cart then apply the code at checkout. Hello lovely listeners. I just wanted to tell you that cyclist isn't just a podcast. No, cyclist is also a beautiful print magazine. It's packed full of all the best rides from around the world, the newest bikes and kit, and loads of in-depth articles featuring guests just like on today's show. So head on over to cyclist.co.uk slash subscriptions and check out our latest cyclist magazine subscription offers.

1:53Welcome back to the Cyclist Magazine podcast. I am your very lonely host, James Spender, because Will, dear old William Strickson, is in Zanzibar, which is an island off Tanzania, as everybody knows and didn't have to look up on Google before hitting record on this part of the Cyclist Magazine podcast. He's there on his honeymoon. He didn't get married there, although that is a good way of sorting out the wheat from the chaff when it comes to a guest list. So I can only imagine it takes quite a long time to get to Zanzibar and it's probably quite expensive. But it is a wonderful name. It's nice to say, isn't it?

2:27Zanzibar, Zanzibar, Zanzibar. While you guys keep saying that, I will introduce to you our guest today. Friend of the show, I think we can call him that because he has been on before. And he's also a really nice guy that makes you feel like you are his mate. It's fellow journalist, author, prodigious cycling historian. I was going to say talent. I'm not sure if you can be a talented historian. You probably can. But he is a cycling encyclopedia. It's Chris Sidwell's. And he's also, many of you will know from the previous podcast that Chris came on, he is the nephew of Tom Simpson. His mother was Tom Simpson's sister.

3:03And he's written extensively about Tom, researched lots of Tom's life. And today, he's on to really dig deep and tell us some interesting, often I think probably unpublished, quite personal stories from the Simpson family and the kind of Simpson legacy. But in particular, he's here to celebrate Tom Simpson's 1965 World Championships win, which came on the 5th of September, 60 years ago. So tomorrow, depending on when you're downloading this podcast, this comes out on a Thursday. 60 years since Tom Simpson became the first British world champion in cycling. And to celebrate, there was a huge festival happening in Harwich, which is somewhere up north.

3:46I'm just going to have to look that one up because I do know where Zanzibar is, but I don't know quite where Harwich is because no one ever taught me much about UK geography when I was at school. And it's not even Harwich, it's Harworth. I'm so sorry. I think I even made that mistake in this interview. So I'm really sorry, Chris. It's the Tom Simpson Cycling Festival in Hartworth, and that's in Nottingham Shire. And it kicks off on the 7th of September, and it runs for a week until the 14th. And within those days, on the 7th, there'll be a sportive, which includes a world championships length course, 253 kilometers for those brave enough on the 8th there'll be a talk at Harworth Town Hall by Chris himself about the Tom Simpson legacy and lots of other stories besides and on September the 11th there will be the reopening of the Tom Simpson Museum which has been reinvigorated rejuvenated and is now ready to be reopened to the public because Harworth of course of course I say that like I know this.

4:48I learned this again from talking to Chris. Harworth is where Tom Simpson grew up. And just another little bit about Chris. Chris is also the owner, founder of an independent publishers called Cycling Legends, which is why you can find out about the Tom Simpson Cycling Festival at cyclinglegends.co.uk because it kind of comes under their banner. And Cycling Legends has also put out a large number of brilliant cycling books. I've read quite a few myself. So do check them out. Okay, right. On that note, Will, I know you'll be listening to this on a beach somewhere. So thank you for that. It's nice to know that even in your downtime, you enjoy working with me, or at least I'm going to make your ears work with this next hour, because there's a lot to get into.

5:33So without further ado, please welcome to the show, Mr. Chris Sidwells.

5:44we're 50 years on 60 years on sorry from tom simpson's 1965 world champs win and you guys are celebrating that um up in harworth which we'll talk about in a bit but i really wanted therefore to talk about tom simpson so as tom simpson's nephew lots of people know you um also as a cycling journalist and author and podcaster. So you are the expert from a historical point of view, as well as from a kind of insider trading point of view. So I was hoping you could kind of, for people who will know a fair bit about Tom, because he just permeates so much in cycling culture, if you could give more of a kind of richness and context and contrast sort of for his early life particularly like where did this guy come from like what what kind of birthed him into cycling because britain wasn't in any way a cycling nation back in what was he born in 1937 yeah 1937 um he was born in the northeast of england he wasn't exposed to cycling up there when he was 12 my grandfather like my father was a coal miner and the the seams were exhausted in the northeast and there was there was rich coal seams in harworth in north nottinghamshire and in south yorkshire and like many people from the northeast they traveled down here with his three youngest children and and my grandmother alice tom's mother and um and tom got exposed there was a big cycling club in harworth and you know like every kids he rode around the block and they timed each other him and his brother were very competitive and the joint his brother saw in the cycling club, so like little brothers do, he followed him.

7:31And he was hopeless at first because he was tiny. He couldn't hang on to them at all. But right from an early age, this is a weird thing, he found magazines and got exposed to continental cycling. And I've got this scrapbook here in this room with me that he had as a kid. And it's full, a lot of pictures of British cyclists, there's some of Reg Harris and stuff like that, but it's Fausto Coppe and Gino Bartali. He had this attraction and he used to, he said to his mum at those ages, this is when he's getting dropped on every club run, that I'm going to be like one of those one day. And he just had this, he weighed four stone, they reckon, and they used to call him, in the Arworth, they pronounced Fausto, the club, four stone, so they called him the four stone copy.

8:21But then 16 he grew, started winning, two years later, he's in Melbourne, wins here. a bronze medal when teenagers didn't win cycling bronze medals at the olympics at the olympics and and just took off two years later he's fourth in the world pro road race championships only tom and mark cavendish that ever finished higher than that but his background was very humble he got qualifications and he wasn't going to have to work down the coal mine if cycling didn't work out for him but uh once it did work out for him and he started earning money he loved it yeah Yeah. I mean, I'm struck by how much ingenuity and initiative you have to have at that age, during the 50s, late 40s, 50s, just after the war, to be able to get yourself a cycling magazine, to be able to know who to talk to, who to talk about.

9:16Those things must have been like hen's teeth. And again, a fact that kind of you'll know this already, I'm sure, but just struck me that not only... So Simpson born in 1937. That was also the first year that any British rider had even attempted the Tour de France. So the Tour de France has been on for 33, 34 years by that point. No Brits even tried. They had Charles Holland and Bill Burl riders, and they didn't finish, probably way beyond anything they'd come across, insane stage racing. How did Simpson manage to get into cycling? because he's from a mining town. There's no internet, obviously.

9:57I suspect that writing letters is probably quite expensive. It's not just open to anybody just to go and get this information. No, but he did write letters. And for the cost of a stamp, you can get anybody in the world. And once he started winning, he looked at people writing articles in cycling, you know, coaches and stuff. So he'd write to them. He wrote to one of the Pellissier brothers. Oh, yeah. Yeah. who kept it people kept tom's letters he wrote to a man called george berger who raced with the cycling clubs in um was coaching a few riders at hern hill and um he was a very early influence on him and and got him to concentrate on the on the pursuit first and he did you know he did research things out and and and tried things and and wrote things and uh wrote letters and got information back so he was he was he also had that talent yeah and people wanted to help him i mean his story george burgess said right you want to become a pursuiter first so enter the 4 000 meter pursuit when he's 18 national championships he wrote off to fallow field to enter the race and so what's you know what's your best time he hasn't got a time for 4 000 meters and he's a willing lad so they said well you can come across and and ride a trial so he rode got a day afternoon off work he's 17 18 got an afternoon off work and rode over woodhead pass to buff halifield in manchester took his brake off and thought he could and put his best wheels in and thought he could ride they wouldn't let him ride on that bike but the silver medalist in the 1948 world championship cyril cartwright was there training and said well he can land my bike and he did the fastest time that had ever been recorded on fallowfield wow straight out of then he was into the world he was into the national championships a week later he beat he qualified fastest beat norman shield iranian world amateur champion in the quarterfinals progressed through the semifinals and his bottle went a little bit in the final he didn't win the final but he suddenly got a silver medal from nowhere nobody had heard of him and where do you go with that because one of the things i love this little um little snippet of info that really speaks to the kind of pro-kill nature even so so you had a british cycling scene but you had simpson competing at one point and getting suspended by the british league of racing cyclists for six months for running a red light and now you know we see doping bans at the world tour level have probably been implemented for less time so we've got a really again like he's making waves but he's making waves in a really small pond yeah how does he manage to get over to the continent because i'm guessing you know that's where it's all happening.

12:39But as we've already discussed, there's no precedent really for a guy like him to go and start racing in France. He gave himself a limit, talking with George Berger, of 20 years old to be world pursuit champion. And in 1958, he was national pursuit champion, qualified fastest in the world championships, but he crashed. In the last few meters, he qualified fastest and went over the line on his backside because he was just making too much effort head down so he didn't get that and he knew that that and george berger said right you've you've got to go if you're going to be a road rider because that was the long-term ambition ride the tour of france you need to go to brittany and he put him in contact with a family in brittany that he knew so the next year he arranged to go with a family he borrowed a hundred pounds from the managing director of carlton cycles in workshop gerald donovan and with two bikes a rucksack on his back with all his racing gear in, a spare pair of wheels.

13:38He got on the bus in Harworth, went to Doncaster Railway Station. 24 hours later, he's in Sambria in Brittany, and a few days later, rode his first race. By the end of that week, he'd won. And by the end of that month, he'd won enough money to pay Gerald O'Donovan back. He progressed so quickly through the amateur ranks, winning all the time and riding bigger and bigger races, that he was the hottest thing in French cycling and the Mercier team and Saint Raphael by the end of 1959 were having a bidding war with him and he signed for Saint Raphael which Brian Robinson rode for yeah Brian Robinson said that he was asked by the manager to be there because he spoke French and could explain things to Tom and he says I got good at reading contracts upside down in French Brian and he says he was getting paid more than me he was that talented and i'd won two stages of tour of france by then what's amazing is he was riding because you say that he was earning more money than uh brian robinson i think he was was he supposed to be on something like 80 pounds ish a month which i think translates to basically the equivalent of about 25 grand a year which you just think yeah is is insane but also crazy compared to what these guys would win in the criterions and the Kermesses.

14:58Was that where the real money was? Was that how you made money? You basically raced a big race, did quite well, and then you got invited to the contract races, and that's where you started making your money. Yeah, you could get paid, you know, even as he got, well, that's where he made his first load of money because the following year, he was fourth in the World Championships in 1959 and fourth in the pursuit, pro pursuit, and really only Mark Kavanagh and Tom have ever finished higher in that race than fourth and this is when he's 21. And then the following spring he wins the Grand Prix Montfaron, he'll climb, beats Federico Bajamontes in that, he wins the Tour de Sud-Est in March and in April he's Paris-Roubaix, first time, finds it difficult to ride on the cobbles, thinks I'd be better off on my own so he attacks and for 56 minutes of the last hour, he's in the lead of Paris-Roubaix and he was caught at the gates of the velodrome and finished ninth.

15:58So this is massive for a 22-year-old. Yeah. And he got, Brian said, they were sharing a flat in the Port de Cliche and he said that he had a ton of contracts after that and the preems, they got paid in cash and it was from the preems of a month of criterium contracts that he bought an Aston Martin. Which one did he buy? He bought a DB2. And it was British Racing Green. And it was French, so it was left-hand drive. Yeah. But that was his first thing that he spent all his cash on. How was that sort of... Did that kind of start building this reputation amongst the French for this very kind of aristocratic Brit, which in a way he probably was the antithesis of that, having grown up in County Durham and Nottinghamshire as the son of a minor.

16:49How much further, more working class could you get than the guy with a bowler hat that drives a DBT? Yeah, but he could act, and he acted the part. And I mean, the start, what he really played up to it was that winter he got married to Helen Sherbin, who lived not far from Doncaster, but she was from a completely different world. And this is how, without class, Tom was anymore in Europe, because he would have never even met Helen Sherbin. She was educated privately, daughter of a quite wealthy Yorkshire farmer. Wouldn't have ever moved in the same circles, but she was an au pair in Sambria. So they met there.

17:27He went and she was working in Germany, and it was very romantic after his first tour of France in 1960. Went across in the Aston Martin, picked her up. They were in the Black Forest, you know, like Doncaster's Cary Grant and Seville-Lorraine. She says, you know, she says, I'm driving around the Black Forest in this open-top Aston Martin. They got married. And the following year, he won the Tour of Flanders. First attempt. And we've talked about this. 23 years old. I mean, even today, with the prodigies we have today, that doesn't often happen. Especially not a first time in that race. And afterwards, the reason he played this aristocrat was there was a series of French books by an author called Pierre Danino called The Adventures of Major Thompson.

18:17And this Major Thompson was what the Brits all thought retired mages dressed like if they were living in Paris. Bowler hats, King Charles checked suits and stuff. So Tom had a nice suit. All they had to do was the bowler hat. So the key journalists took him out and got pictures of him with his umbrella and his bowler hat and the carnation in his lapel. And he played up to that. Helen thought it was terrible. said he you know he looked stupid it's only him and a few journalists thought he looked good in it um but but that's what he played up to this major thompson tom simpson major thompson so that that's where major tom then monica came from yeah yeah and so in 1961 how was he kind of taken for example by the belgian press post tour of flanders because that's a race which is just absolutely dominated by Belgians back in those days.

19:13I think you've got a field of 50-something riders and 30 of them are Belgian. And that's just, those were the guys that did the race and those were the guys that the fans expected to win the race. And then this plucky Brit comes along, who, like you said, four stone copy, you know, the sparrow, doesn't look like the Flandrian lion. Is he then, because I know in cycling, it can be a little bit tribal. Are they accepting of him or are they a little bit like, well, who's this guy? We're not really sure. I think it was a bit of that at first, because at that time, Tom still lived in Paris. So it was the French press that made more of a fuss of him.

19:49And the Tour of Flanders was, to be fair, more international than that by then. I mean, in the 50s, Fiorenzi Manny had won it three times in a row. You know, the Italians were riding it. So it was a bigger field. But I don't think he made the huge impression. I mean, Swiss riders had won it. So it was just one of those years where it was more that Rick van Lui, who was world reigning world champion and the best classics rider of his generation had fallen off, I think, in the Belgian press. But then he was popular in Belgium and he made a big impression on Flemish bike fans particularly. And one, Albert Burek, who had a cafe in Ghent, kept nagging him to come and live in Ghent, where it was cheaper, cheaper than Paris.

20:31So that winter they all moved, Helen and Tom moved to a rented cottage just outside Ghent because they were having their first child. And that was terrible. I mean, although we had this show and the Aston Martin and everything, this Helen said this rented cottage was terrible. It was near a chemical works and she couldn't put the kids' Jane's clothes out to dry because the smell from this chlorine factory or something. My grandmother Simpson from Harworth had to go over and help her for the first six months and live with them because Tom was all away. so it was really really hard but helen says i mean she features played a fantastic role in tom's career she came from a completely different world but threw herself into living in this really terrible cottage she wasn't used to stuff like that she says it was necessary and i believed in him and i knew he was gonna and he did it very quickly he was he was winning more races led the Tour of France in 1962.

21:32Could have finished third overall. Not a lot of people know this. He was sixth overall. But on the last Alpine stage, he crashed on a descent and he broke two fingers in, I think it was his left hand. And he was third overall at that point. A good weight in front of fourth. But the penultimate stage was something like a 70 or 80 kilometer time trial. Right. And he couldn't hold the handlebars very well. and that's why he dropped down to six. But that made him a big thing, an Englishman in the yellow jersey, and he posed in the bowler hat for it, and it was on the front page of Le Keep next day.

22:09And he had a special... My grandmother was sent over by the Daily Express to the Parc des Princes with Helen to see him come, and she says that they gave him a special bouquet of flowers, and he had to ride round, do more laps of honour than the winner, Jacques Angatil, because he was that popular. I've seen those pictures of riders with those bouquets, and also Tom. And you just think, how on earth can you ride a bike at all with this huge bunch of flowers, let alone after having just completed the most arduous race on the planet? Yeah, but there's some lovely pictures from that day. And it just sort of went on.

22:46Once they were established in Ghent, Helen Feinig persuaded him to ditch the bowler hat. And he always says that... 1963 was a day... Like, it was up there in the top six in every Cobble Classic, all the early season Cobble Classics. It was thereabouts, but not winning. He got rid of the bowler hat, and five days later, he won Bordeaux-Paris, which was a classic in those days, but 365 miles in one day. Which is insane. And, you know, just because we often work in kilometres, 560, yeah, 557, which was because it was motor-paced, not to detract from it, But that's how riders managed to complete it.

23:25Because it's something like about 14 hours it would take, but they kick off at like 2 a.m. behind Dernies. The start was 2 a.m. and the first, it was like the first half was without Dernie pace. And then the second half was Dernie pace. So it was just getting through the first half. I mean, they all stopped to have a change of clothes after the night. It's absolutely insane. It's one of those races I wish they would bring back. And another one that Simpson, I think, enjoyed taking part in was the Trophyo Baraki. Yeah. Is that right? Which was a kind of two-up race, which was unusual because you would potentially partner up with someone who wasn't on your team necessarily.

24:02And he raced against Copy. And that's quite a two-up time trial, I think, is quite a special sort of race. It was a very special race. There's some fantastic pictures from it. You know, because also in the time trials in those days, the only tip to aerodynamics was to wear a silk jersey and turn your cap around the other way around. but those silk jerseys had a particular sheen to them and the 28-spoke wheels they used to use, which were always chrome spokes with silk tyres on. And yeah, in 59, he rode against Coppe, and according to his best friend George Shaw back in Sheffield, he wouldn't stop talking about it all winter.

24:38It got changed in the same changing rooms as Fausto Coppe. And the organisers of that, that was a contract race as well, because they picked the best 30 or 40 riders and put them together. And they would sometimes put teammates and they would sometimes put rivals together, people who didn't get on at all, because they put Jacques Oncatil and Raymond Poulidor together. And Raymond Poulidor told me, and it's in my book about Jacques Oncatil, he told me that they were leading. When the time check came through, they were leading. Jacques started to say, I'm not feeling very well, and we've come through.

25:12And where did they finish? They finished second. And so thus continued the famous... Yeah, he wanted to keep him eternal second. He wasn't even going to give him a victory if it cost him it. Goodness me. So there's a lot of buzz around Tom on the continent. He's winning races, and there's plenty of stories about his personality away from the bike as well. And even the Daily Express, you say, sends somebody out to report on him. But how is he really being received at home? Because, again, cycling is a completely different sport. Does it translate in any way? I remember speaking to Chris Boardman on this podcast, and after he won, was it the 94 Olympics, where he got a gold medal on the track and he said the only time he sort of felt famous was when he went in his chippy, his local chippy, back home and then the guy behind the counts went, you can have that for free.

26:04And he just said no one really knew much about him. It didn't translate despite the success. So was there a similar thing for Simpson? He goes home and he's just another bloke, son of a minor. No, it was, he did get quite a bit of publicity. If you look, I've got in the pages again of the book that we sell on cyclingledgers.co.uk that I wrote about Tom, there's a whole two pages of clip-ins from him in a yellow jersey from Daily Telegraph, Daily Express. They did send reporters. They were sent reporters, I mean, if he retired from the Tour of France, they'd bring the reporters home. They weren't reporting the race.

26:42It was just this image of this English gentleman, which they played up, you know, with, beating Johnny Furner, if you see what I mean. Because, you know, it's not long after the war and we've always had this English entitlement kind of thing. So he did, I mean, he captured imagination enough, we're going forward a little bit in the story, to win the BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1965, which is incredible. And the first cyclist. The first cyclist ever. And he beat Bobby Moore, the England captain, dinner was to win the world cup the year before wow so there was there was nothing about cycling but there was a lot of interest in tom yeah and then how did the interest grow back in the cycling scene who where where is this big move next so incredible year at flanders and then brilliant year at the tour de france in 1962 first rider british rider to wear the yellow jersey i'd say bordeaux parry milan san remo two really long races so kind of proving himself he's got this incredible endurance and kind of resolve mental mental resolve so that goes into 1965 who's he riding for then and this is his year isn't it this is his world champs year where it's all really coming together he's riding for Peugeot and he's established Peugeot BP which is a French institution as a team uh he wasn't happy in it because he didn't always get the support right that he thought he deserved.

28:08He very often had to attack early just to make sure they'd work for him. But he was established as one of the top five riders in the world probably by then. He'd been world number two in 1963 behind Jacques Angatil on the season rankings. He would be world number two again in 1965. He'd won Milan Saint-Rimo, like you say. And it was a frustrating season, the first half of 1965. The Tour of France was his problem. He wanted to, he raced all the classics, and he wasn't the strong, he didn't have the strongest constitution, so he'd very often be very tired by the time he got to the Tour of France.

28:45Peugeot had a little deal with him, where they'd never give him a more than a year contract, even though he was the team leader. Because he said if he signed for another team, they wouldn't pick him for the Tour of France, and you needed that as your shop window to get into the very lucrative post-Tour criteriums. So he was in a bit of a stranglehold. that becomes interesting later on because he really wanted to get out of Peugeot and a lot of teams wanted him. But he crashed in the Tour of France, got an infected wound and had to leave the race, went back home, didn't get many contracts for Criterion, but at least once he got better, he could prepare.

29:23And he prepared the way the old Belgians used to prepare for the World Championships, riding to KMS races, riding the KMS race and riding back home again. So you'd sometimes get 300 kilometers in a day. And he'd done that several times, riding two or three Camesses a week. So he was absolutely flying by the time he got to San Sebastian. The course suited him. It was very hilly, very wearing. And on the day, it was raining, which he loved the rain because he hated the heat. He loved the rain. And he knew he was good. And he got, the British team was only six strong, but they were all full-time pros on the continent now in Europe against nations that were 11 strong.

30:07He had a plan. He'd also paid. He paid for, because British cycling didn't pay for professionals in those days. He paid for the amateur team and bought in hotels, but the professionals had to go to the World Championships on their own money. So Tom paid for them to stay in a good hotel in San Sebastian. And because British cycling's jerseys that they had, the national team jerseys, were awful, that were made by a material that if it got wet, the pockets hung around your knees that were just terrible. So he bought six Vittoria Gianni jerseys. He had them custom made for the team. So he says, we're going to look like the best.

30:44They're going to look like the Italians. And the plan was to Barry Holborn get in an early breakaway. And if it looked promising, Tom said he'd get across to it. he wanted Alan Ramsbottom and Vin Nensen to help him get across to it like lead him out like it was a sprint to get him at least halfway across to it and that's exactly what happened told Barry not to work and then Barry says at halfway Tom joined us in this breakaway a couple of other good riders did Peter Post amongst them and it looked good so Tom dug him, Barry in the ribs and said come on let's work and we just went for it and Rudy Altega joined them by then.

31:24And that was the winning breakaway. There was no French riders in it. Jacques Onquetil, the French couldn't get across. Jacques Onquetil, I was told by Keith Butler, people who live in the South will know Keith Butler. He rode with San Rafael that year, Onquetil's team. And he was in the British team. And he told me this, Tom had given him the job of marking Onquetil. I thought, oh, thank you. and Jacques did a whole lap on the front to try and pull this back and he says, I was absolutely dying because Tom had told me to hang on to him I was dying and at the end of the lap, Jacques got fed up because I hadn't closed the gap he says, he pulled off and I stopped, I packed I couldn't ride a pedal turn any further the break got established Tom was a master tactician raced a lot like Julien Laphilippe he'd attack to get across to a break and then attacked to whittle it down and then he had a killer sprint.

32:21Which borrowed from the track, I guess. Yes, came from the track because he was a really fast pursuit rider. I mean, he could do... He actually broke one of Reg Harris's kilometre records when he was a teenager. Standing start kilometres. So he was fast. Went away with Rudy Altig, who was probably a better sprinter, but Tom was flying that day. And Altig told me that they worked really hard together there he said uh tom was going too fast on the hills i asked him to slow i did a lot of the flat but we we were skis and we agreed to separate with a kilometer to go and not ride tactically and just do our sprints like he said like a jewel he says but the moment we separated he said i was in the like the 54 14 and tom had i didn't notice tom had changed down a few gears so he was in a lower gear so the moment we split he attacked i couldn't get i didn't think oh shift down i I tried to get on top of the gear, couldn't get on top of the gear.

33:19And he's just gone. And he's gone. And he says, my legs are gone, 500 metres to go. And he was world champion. Wow. And there's still a lovely story about parochialness of the Brits at that time. World champion, you get, the agents are all around you. You've got a ton of contracts straight away. So he had to be in Paris next day to ride a track meeting. So he had to fly to Paris. and hadn't had the chance to celebrate with the rest of the British team. And Vin Denson says, at the end of the World Championships, there was a firework display. And he says, we're in this hotel and we're celebrating.

33:56He says, there were these couple of old deers that were doing a tour around Europe, English women. And they said, what's all the fuss about? One of the answers is, oh, I believe a young man from Doncaster's won the firework display competition.

34:13Incredible. So, yeah. And that was, I mean, then he was British world champion. Yeah. You know, he was in demand everywhere. He shared a room with John Stablinski that night. And the night before the Paris track meeting. And John says, I kept waking up because he's moving around. And eventually I put the light on and I looked at him. And he's, through the light from the hallway, he's looking in the full length mirror on the back of the wardrobe with his world champion jersey on. and he says he says what are you doing he said i'm world champion john i can't believe it i'm world champion he said well just keep the rainbow jersey on and go back to sleep for goodness sake

34:56i've been riding with the hammerhead crew for a fair bit now and beyond the slick screen and the 35 hour battery life i'm really getting into the crew's climber function now what climber does is show you any upcoming climb on a ride, whether it's a pre-planned route or not. And then when that climb comes up, this data page pops up on screen and you get this little climb profile with gradients and color-coded sections for steepness and the distance to the top in length and elevation. So it's amazing for places I've never ridden, like on a sportive where you've never ridden the course before, but the Karoo guides you up a climb in this predictive way so you can pace out your effort.

35:37It's like having a little team DS on your handlebars. You can also look ahead at a route and see all the climbs on it so a bit like having a profile sticker on your stem like you see the pros have in races only this way it's way more detailed as you can pick out a climb and look at its specific details as you go. So check out our full review of the Hammerhead crew at cyclist.co.uk and see why we gave it our Cyclist Recommended award then head to hammerhead.io and use the code cyclist to get a free heart rate strap with every purchase just be sure to add the strap to your cart then apply the code at checkout

36:20how did they manage to orchestrate you know across a team tactics in a race in 1965 because this is without team radios and you know there's support no team manager yeah so how are you communicating this is it have you got people by the side of the road holding up boards with time cuts on it or something or are you literally just shouting and trying to remember what someone told you three hours before before you set off well they had that simple plan someone's briefed everybody said everybody this is their job and how does he know when that's happening there was there was time gaps uh on a motorbike like on a chalkboard okay you know so there was one motorbike rider in the races in those days who was the official time gap keeper and the guy on the back would get he had a radio so he would get told what the time gap is write it down and go up and down the peloton and up and down the breakaway to give them the time gap so once tom was seeing that this break was established that was his cue it wasn't coming back that was his cue to go so he'd actually tell vin densen and alan ron's button now we have to do it yeah and then when he got to barry he gave his instructions to barry his last his last instruction to barry because franco balmamion a giro winner wasn't working in the breakaway and he said how are your legs barry tom said to him he says uh i'm absolutely knackered tom he says well if you feel like falling off can you fall off in front of Balmami and because he's not doing anything.

37:58I love that. So just communication and racing nous and feel for, you know, it was a smaller feel and you knew who was in form and you knew who the favourites were. So I suppose they did it like that. A lot more communication between riders. And to sort of, if I were to describe what you've just relayed about how he raced a race like that and other aspects of Tom on a bike. There's a steeliness, there's a kind of slyness almost, there's a tenacity, as well as there's the talent. Was he like that away from the bike? What was he like in his kind of private life? And so this is him, he's in his early 20s at this point, just got married, he's got a kid or maybe a couple of kids at this point.

38:41So he's coming into proper adulthood. Was he that guy off the bike, brimming full of confidence? Yeah. Well, no. he made out he was full of confidence and he was always a guy he took risks he wanted to make money because he wanted he told my mom this is that i don't want to be have a job i want to make enough money for our family to be secure and he was investing in property development so he was very active in that in that sense helen knew the real tom very few people knew the real tom he he could lack confidence he could he could also think that everybody was conspiring against him he wouldn't let out to the other riders that but he you know he he did suffer some i think some anxiety if you you know suffer from anxiety sometimes and helen said he had a certain look and you just did you couldn't talk to him just don't talk to him he had to come through whatever it was on his mind but his persona was very yes let's go out, let's go to this let's do this and he was funny and that's one of the reasons the other riders liked him he had a great sense of humour he was always clowning about and had a great sense of timing and telling jokes you know he even told jokes at these sports writers dinners when he was presented to Harold Wilson in the winter of 1965 as world champion, who was the Prime Minister then, Labour Prime Minister.

40:13He said, well, welcome, Mr Wilson. He says, in a way, this was his speech, in a way we're both in the saddle, but I hope your backside doesn't hurt like mine. That's his sort of mansion house speech to Harold Wilson. And also the kind of, the sense of occasion and not letting that overwhelm him still being cheeky. Oh, yeah, he was still cheeky. You know, and he did arrest Royal Albert Hall and on the Spurs personality of the year. he was very very self-possessed very charming and by this time he spoke french he spoke phlemish he spoke italian so you know it was very much and still loving his cars big white mercedes my mum talks about because they were close my mum and her and tom were close he had a maroon jaguar like they like the cray twins drove you know the 4.8 liter jaguar with with um spoke wheels oh yeah yeah And they got a nice house of his own.

41:09He bought after 1965. Remember, at 65, he wins the Lombardia in the rainbow jersey. And he's really on form now because he won it by three and a half minutes on his own. Wow. And he won the Brussels sixth day. He paid a lot of money in the six-day races that winter on the track. So he made a lot of money. And he bought a lot of land in Corsica that he was developing into holiday homes. and they had a holiday home in Corsica. So he had two flats in a town near to Ghent, two apartments that he bought and the proceeds of Milan San Remo and they were called Primavera and San Remo. And I think those apartment blocks are still there today.

41:53Wow. I mean, yeah, it's something I'd like to ask you about, like the legacy. But before that, sticking with kind of present day Tom, as it were, he's coming into 1966 off the back of Estella 1965, but 66 isn't a good year at all. Why is that? Again, it's own fault. Like I say, he was a risk taker, and now he is in the real top flight. They're going to parties with Jacques and Janine Oncatillo. I've got postcards that were sent to my mum from Helen writing that, oh, we were home at 4.30 this morning because we were in St. Moritz celebrating Jacques's birthday, there's just pheasants and champagne everywhere yeah and he always the cyclists would always the top cyclists would always go together to Saint-Gervais in the winter to go skiing and they were all good Jacques-Layne, Jacques-Ancate the French you know some of them were born in the Alps they were natural on skis and so Tom had took up skiing and you know maybe he'd had some lessons but it shouldn't have been downhill skiing I was a kid from a coal mining town in North Nottinghamshire going to be a downhill skier.

43:06And he broke his leg. He fell and broke his leg. And that cost him a lot of money. Couldn't cash in as world champion because he was off the bike a long time. He had to do rehabilitation on the leg. And it was, you know, just by wanting to be in crowd sort of, party people, you know, and there was this crowd there would be um singers and actors like them patula clark was a regular she was a friend of tom's and um sasha distel french singer it did cost him a lot of money and he got himself back together in the tour of france i think he had about three or four second places on stages in the tour but once the tour's gone that was his year in the rainbow jersey which had is part of the story of Mont Ventoux.

43:56It sort of starts there. Okay. Because he hasn't made the money he should have earned. So he goes into 1967 needing money for this building development. And he'd also sort of lost a little bit of the limelight in the UK. He was Britain's number one sports person in 1965, a sports personality year, but then England had won the World Cup. So he was a little bit sidelined. And he wanted to get back. And the big thing, what I believe, the big thing to get him back and he believed it, would we win the Tour of France? Yeah. He'd got out of his contract with Peugeot because the Tour changed the rules.

44:33They changed it from trade teams, from trade-sponsored teams, to national teams for 1967, which freed Tom up. Peugeot couldn't hold him to this, you have to ride the Tour, otherwise we won't give you a contract next year. Yeah, yeah. So he signed for like four times the money. Maltini and Salvarani wanted him. and they'd wanted him since 1965. So he'd signed to be a teammate with Rudy Altig and Felice Gimondi. And it would have worked well together, because Gimondi, they were all friends. And that was what he was going to ride for in 1968, for many times the money he was getting at Peugeot. And he built a lovely villa in Maria Kirka, in a nice area of Ghent.

45:17And I've stayed there. And there's a Salvarani kitchen in there that was part of the contract fee and everything. So win the Tour of France was his big goal. So he turned his back on the classics and that would have made him a lot of money. And he won Paris-Nice very well, beat Jacquin Cotille in the time trial, you know, was ahead of Jumondi in the final time trial. And he worked very well with Eddie Merckx in Milan-San Remo, set Merckx up to win Milan-San Remo for the second time. They were really close that spring. He won two stages in the Vuelta as a preparation for the Tour of France because that was in April back in those days.

46:05And he was leading. The British team wasn't strong, but they weren't going to double-cross him. They would ride for him. And he started that with all confidence. He told my mum, my mum's birthday is the 23rd of July, and that's when the Tour finishes. she says i'm going to win it for you and and he took these last words to helen were when she put him on the train to go to the start was i'm going to win i am i know i'm going to win the first week was great the roubaix stage he was up there the uh abalone d 'alsess mountaintop finish stage he was up there in that fourth or fifth he finished on the stage so he was nicely in seventh overall ahead of the eventual second and third in paris so it was good and then he just fell ill in the um in the alps got a really bad stomach bug didn't that wasn't broadcast around the tour but he wasn't keeping food down there was no doctor for the british team and very little medical help in in the tour of france and felice giamondi told me that he was actually getting rehydration trips from the italian team doctor really yeah so it was a bit of help to because he was in really dehydrated state and this went on for three days and then he came to the mont want to and he's racing across those three days he's racing across those three days and he kept his seventh place but he'd lost some time on the leader but he was still ahead of eventual second and third on the morning of mont want to yeah he some people who knew him who knew this story were really getting concerned about this because he wasn't in a fit state and it was very very hot and of Indensen has told me that he'd said to him, Tom, you can't ride over the Vontu.

47:48It's going to be terrible today. And he said, I've got to. He was sixth the night before. He was second in the Vontu sprint in Marseille the night before. He said, I'm feeling better. I get over this. It's an easy day. Then it's a rest day. Then I've got the Pyrenees. I'm still looking good overall. I can still get on the podium. I need to get on the podium because he'd, you know, he'd got these investments that needed paying for. it was builders needed pain there was there was you know a lot to play for and that was his mindset on the morning of that stage and we know what happened he drove himself he he couldn't have taken it easy he had to stay with the leaders and it collapsed uh well he collapsed once before but the team mechanic he he said that would you know tom was in terrible state at that point and i he He never really forgave himself.

48:41He says, Harry Hall, his name was. And he said, you know, for putting him back on his bike again. Because he didn't say put him back on a bike. He said, no, on, Harry, on, I've got to go on. And a few hundred meters later, he fell again. And that was it. And he was probably dead when he fell. And yeah, there's all sorts of stories have grown up about it, about his death. Tom made no secret about taking amphetamines. Everybody did in those. So one rider told me that if amphetamines had killed Tom Simpson, we'd have all died on one, one, two. Right. Who was riding that tour. And he didn't like it.

49:18He told my mum about it. He told a journalist that he really trusted Roger St. Pierre, that he said, I don't like doing this, but I'm not going home. And if it means somebody who's not as good as me beating me, I'm not having that. I've got these things that I need to do. He told my mum, he said, I want to get out of the roadside. by the time i'm 32 it's because you know there's things that i just don't like about it and ride the the six-day races and in the winter isn't it like i'm a you know he always made a joke i can have my holidays with my kids in the summer and and that's it i mean they i it's a tragedy barry holman always says it was a perfect storm he was ill it was hot yeah maybe the amphetamines of course because they they do increase your internal temperature and they do block out he must have felt well i just need something i need some help maybe he took more than he should i don't know and did he did they and was he someone that was also sipping brandy because that's another story i've heard bandied around the the guy who that comes for us colin lewis and that was he told this to some journalists and it was it was made a big thing of in in i think around 2000 okay but colin said to me he'd gone on one of these cafe raids because they were only allowed two bottles of liquid.

50:39Tour of France would only allow them two bottles of liquid. Insane. So that's why they did these cafe raids. Yeah. Chasse à la canette, chasing the cans, chasing the, you know, to get anything they could. And Colin had been a bit further behind and all he managed to grab was this half bottle of cognac. And he said, Tom said, did you get anything? I said, I've got this. He said, well, it might help settle my stomach. Yeah. So he took some, a mouthful. that honestly that i'm not defending him because he's my uncle or anything and that's what colin told me yeah he'd also told other journalists and it's turned up to be half a bottle he didn't he can't drink half a bottle of cognac i was going to say i mean it's enormous isn't it especially in a situation like that you're absolutely dehydrated you're hungry it's hot and you're riding a bike you'd be sick you'd just be sick your stomach wouldn't take it especially his stomach because his stomach was yeah already it was already and then they it does It does bug me.

51:36It does hurt a bit when you see, oh, he died with this lethal cocktail of alcohol and vitamins. Yeah, well, did he? You know, he died because the official autopsy, after 20 years, I think it is, it's destroyed. So I wasn't even a journalist then, so I couldn't look for it. And me and Joanne, his daughter, tried to find it, but we were told that that's French law. If nobody contests the cause of death, that's it. It's gone. The matter's gone. and um i haven't so i didn't see it i have spoken to three people one of whom was the guy in charge of doping in in the 60s in in of doping you know investigation 60s and 70s professor denbacher from belgium and they said that they he read it and the official cause of death was heart failure due to heat stroke and severe dehydration it did say there were traces of amphetamine metabolites in his body.

52:35So that's all. I haven't seen it. I can't vouch for it, but that's what it was. I don't believe there was an inquest. So if there was any thoughts of it wasn't anything other than that natural kind of death, there would have been. Yeah. How is it reported in the French papers? In the French papers, there's a tragedy. And quite a lot. And the Tour of France, well, it didn't race next day, like after Carcetelli. and and barry holman was given the stage by john stablinski was a sort of captain the father of the peloton by then and john has told me that it was barry we decided barry should have the stage and and you know they were they were just stunned it didn't affect them none of them believed it was amphetamines yeah there were a lot of them were in den island still still have it over the years that i've spoken to them no it wasn't no it wasn't and but i don't know yeah but you know No, it was reported as a tragedy.

53:33In the UK papers, then, it was sensationalized a bit when this traces of amphetamine came out. But then the Europeans had a different attitude to doping completely. And you've got to remember that amphetamines were a prescription drug given to people in Europe. Barry told me that many years later, when he married Helen Simpson in 1969, and they had a child of their own, Daniela, and Helen was trying to lose some baby weight. She went to the doctors and the doctor gave a prescription. She brought the pills back home. Barry says, these are amphetamines. It was dexam method or whatever, you know.

54:15Wow. He says, you don't want to take these. That was a slimming drug. Yeah. And it is a slimming drug. I can remember an old Belgian bro telling me, if you're a few kilos overweight, he says, just take a bottle of water, two amphetamine tablets, go out for five hours, you'll be fine. You won't need to eat. And there's nothing new under the cycling sun because one of the things they take now is a Zempik, isn't it, which is a weight loss drug sort of designed to help diabetics. And then the other one was taking sleeping tablets after your training ride so you sleep through lunch. That was widely used in the World Tour a few years ago.

54:57My goodness. different times was there a sense around the team that tom had been mismanaged because he's obviously he wants this and he is a force but there's people that are employing him and there are people that are managing him and should they have stepped in and said look mate i know that i know you need this but this is just not going to be good for you it was the british team remember so it's all volunteers and as harry hall said tom was the ran the british team The manager had no say. It was Tom's team. So nobody could have stopped him. Barry said, some people have said that his own agent, Daniel Doucet, was the number one agent.

55:38You know, they were important, powerful people. He was Honkertil's agent as well. Had visited him and said, come on, Tom, you've got to do something in this tour because your value is going to go down. And that put in due pressure on him. But Barry says nobody could put pressure on Tom more than Tom. he put the pressure on himself he made that decision I don't want to portray him as a victim because he made that decision Peugeot had sort of washed the hands of him because he'd gone a lot of the tea a lot of riders of that era point the finger at the Tour of France about duty of care and medical help and whether it was good enough and whether they were even set up for something like this which they had to accept could happen yeah you know and i wonder sometimes whether that's why a lot of the blame has been shifted onto tom for his death but that's a whole different thing we can't prove anything about that yeah so i'm assuming that because nowadays they have uh you know aso tour de france doctors yeah who kind of work alongside teams yes and probably back then it was everything was just dealt with by the team and it was you just showed up on the line if you wanted to and your team said you're fit.

56:51And if you didn't, then you're a DNF. There was no one sort of doing extra checks on behalf of the organisation. Now you've got, like, each team they'll have three doctors, won't they? And there's a fleet of doctors on the Tour of France and they've got equipment and there's first responders and all sorts of things. ASO do take their duty of care seriously and have to because it's a much more litigious age, isn't it? but not in those days, no there was one doctor and a nurse on the toll of the Tour of France the British team didn't have a doctor that's why Tom was seeing the Italian team doctor and soigneurs were a bit of a dark force you know, because a lot of those were there were Spangalis and miracle workers but how did they create their miracles?

57:42and they were uncontrolled unpoliced, uncontrolled Yeah, I mean, they're the guys that were sourcing you the amphetamines and goodness knows what. Yeah, very often, very often. So where did that leave Helen and Tom's family? Because you say he was desperate to do this, to ride. He wanted to give up, you know, he's 29 when he dies. And you mentioned he wanted to retire by the time he's 32. So he's already trying to cram in a lot in these next three years. Where does that leave the family? because he doesn't manage to complete his program of, well, he doesn't manage to kind of complete his career.

58:21Are they all financially kind of in the hole and ruined? And, you know, besides the fact that obviously it's absolutely tragic and they're grief-stricken. And he's got two young kids as well, right? I'm not sure how old they are at this point, but they can't be, you know, they can't be old. Three and five. Tragic. And Joanna was very involved in this story. The youngest can hardly remember him. She's spent the last 20 years trying to find out about the dad she didn't know. It wasn't good. It was a very bad situation. Helen not only was grieving, but she had people saying, I want this and I want that.

58:55And, you know, it was difficult. Her father helped her a lot. I'm not saying with money, but like he could. And Barry was there. Barry did a lot of, you know, because he could speak French and he was part of the thing. And they managed to come out of it okay. They kept the big, the nice Maria Kirker house. For a while, they kept the house, the one house in Corsica. They managed to sell a lot of the stuff. Because although he was, you know, there was builders to be paid, there was value in the land and the properties he had. So they could recoup those values. So, you know, they managed like that.

59:33They weren't left destitute or anything. Yeah. I mean, you're, well, two things actually. So for people who might not have heard the name Barry Hoburn before until this episode, teammate of Tom's and rode the Tour de France in 1955. No, 64 was his first tour. And he won, up until Cavendish, he'd won the most stages as a Brit. He's still number two. He's still one ahead of Chris Froome. Amazing. And he ends up marrying Helen. I mean, that's the kind of story in itself. how did the family take that was he well received or was it was there a strangeness there because you're like tom's you know not been dead that long and his best mate teammate is now you know marrying his widow yeah it should be i mean you should you should be the recipe for all sorts of conflicts and stuff but it wasn't uh and that's and that's a tribute to barry and i've said this barry did took over tom's role with great dignity and hidden the autobiography he wrote with me bazy barry that's again on our website he said that he had to think long and hard before marian helen he'd fallen in love with her they were in love together he said but i wasn't tom simpson i was a good rider but tom was one of the top five in the world I couldn't give her the same life.

1:01:00You know, I couldn't build all these properties and give her the same. I just didn't have the earning power that Tom had. But he did. And, you know, they got well together. He took over bringing up Jane and Joanne. That wasn't easy, especially when they both admit, when they were teenage girls saying, you're not my real father, you know. Yeah. And that was difficult, but he did with great dignity. And I felt, and always, especially as he mellowed as he got older, I mean, Barry was a force, only British Ghent, Leville Ghent winner, he was fifth in the Tour of Flanders, he was third in Paris-Roubaix, third in the Higbaston, he was eighth stage in the Tour of France.

1:01:50It was a hell of a bike rider. That gets overlooked. And he was a force of nature. He was a tough guy. He didn't mess with Barry. everybody says when he when he's in his prime and very competitive and we always say it had to be barry's way on or no way you know it was uh but he mellowed and he just had he became part of our family and he recently passed away and i was very and i we me and barry became very close over the years and i was one of the four people he asked to laid down to carry his coffin uh which was an honor that was a sort of and and i you know i felt like he was as he got older it was this i said to helen at his funeral how am i going to make a life decision now without barry to consult and i said she said well you had to consult me because he'd tell you anyway what he thought but he did he did he did definitely become part of our family and um he was barry and it was difficult for him because he said to me once when they're in Belgium there are still people that call Helen Madame Simpson yeah because Tom was such a larger than life massive character and when we talk about all these victories some of which have never been won by British cyclists three monuments only Mark Cavendish has won a monument Tom's won as a man three times more monuments and all of the rest of british male cycling he not only the best luke rose had fifth in flanders hasn't he tom had a third first and a fifth you know the the three best places in that race and all of this was in a seven-year pro career yeah it's incredible so it was an incredible thing and it was a that's why he was one of the best in the world and yeah that's why we want to celebrate is victory, which I can tell people how to become part of it in a minute when you let me.

1:03:50Well, no, perfect time. So yeah, tell us more about the festival which is coming out. So this is going to go out on the Thursday before the festival kicks off, which is on the 8th. Is the festival starting? It's the 7th it starts. 7th, sorry. 7th of September. It ends with a well-established Simpson Retro weekend, which is the 12th to the 14th. That's in its fifth year now. And it probably will be the biggest retro cycling event in the country this year, the way the entries are coming. And that's pre-1995 bikes. It's pre-1995 bikes. People bringing out the kind of old school stuff, a bit like Eroica, British version.

1:04:26British version of Eroica. And that's what we think it is. And it's just two and a half days of joy and smiles and people sharing interest and getting dressed up like they're heroes, you know. Brilliant. Tubers around their necks and balloons. It's lovely to see. We've got goggles, we've got bikes going back to the 20s and 30s. and they're our best in show. You have to have the team kit as well to match your bike to win that. But let's go back to the start. It starts with the Sackle Sportive, which is a new venture for us and that's nicely. We need entries for that. And those are the three distances.

1:04:56There's a 90 kilometre, which we call the memorial, which is the same as his old memorial ride. We used to raise money for the Simpson Memorial on Mon Wontou because it was falling over in 1996. so we started this ride to raise money to save that and then we managed to raise enough money to build the steps and we sort of generally look after that with the memorial fund so that was a memorial ride but that was on a route that Tom did his Donny Chang he was part of the Donny Chang gang that's quite a celebrated training group and that sort of follows the rides they used to do with that the 200km race ride goes, cyclosporter goes into Lincolnshire following the club runs that he used to do And then we've got a 253, which we've called the champion's distance, which is getting on for 253 kilometers, getting up towards the world championship distance.

1:05:48Then there are community events after that until the Friday evening. This is like Harworth community. We're doing all sorts of things. The Friday evening, we'll have a dinner. And then it's the retrocycling weekend, so the 12th to the 14th. and we have pros come and do like 25 minutes of chat with me. We've got loads coming this year. And the most wonderful thing about it is we have ex-pros who've been our guests on the Friday afternoon who come back year after year to do the ride, the retro ride. Sid Barris is doing the retro ride this year. Denise Burton's doing it. Maurice Burton's doing it.

1:06:28You know, we've got several riders. and we're going to have a little bit of a tribute to Barry first off to kick off in the afternoon with a guy called Steve Jones who was a pro with Splendor team in the 80s who Barry took under his wing, British Riders. But there's also all sorts of things. And to get your tickets, it's cyclinglegends.co.uk If you land on the homepage, that takes you to the festival. Come to all of it, come to the bits you want. You'll love it, honestly. It's nothing but smiles. Really looking forward to it. somebody came once and they did a review of it and it says it looks like nobody's organizing it but somebody is because everything happens everything happens on time and perfectly incredible endorsement i love that yeah i i take that as a compliment because that's how relaxed it is yeah amazing and i think one of the things that amongst many amazing achievements of tom simpson is the way that he clearly inspired so many people to ride and people that much beyond his generation.

1:07:32And there's a really poignant story that you told me just before we came on air about Bradley Wiggins. And Bradley is somebody who is really into his memorabilia, his history. He loves cycling as a sport from a fan point of view. And you told me something really interesting about just how much he sort of has literally carried Simpson around with him as he won his own Tour de France. Yeah, I interviewed Bradley a lot of times, right from the days 2005 when I just got started in this and he was a track rider. And we'd always talk about Tom. At the end of it, he'd say, tell me this, tell me that.

1:08:10And as he developed into a road rider and he began to see himself because Tom had been a pursuiter he began to see himself in a similar role and particularly with Sky leading a British team in an effort to win the Tour of France because that was that was the promise in 2009 he had a when he had to hang on to his fourth place on that penultimate stage on Mont Mont-Mont-2 he had a picture of Tom on his top tube and he told me recently he said I kept looking down on it and he said I know this sounds gruesome but I kept saying to myself if you can die up here i can hang on wow you know if you if you can push yourself that hard i can push myself yeah and then we were talking about may probably april i don't know if it was the start of the giro d 'italia probably the year before and we were talking and he said look at you know what i'm thinking how tom must have been felt i'm 29 i've got two children i'm the same as him leading a british team in a really serious effort to win the tour of france and we we talked a lot about that and um i thought i wonder if because he'd know i'd known about this story about the tom's picture on this top tube i'd got the under jersey that that tom was wearing when he won the world championships so i cut the cuff of the sleeve off it and asked nigel mitchell the near me yeah the nutritionist who i've known for a long time would you give this to brad I know it's a bit of daft but Brad I don't know what happened to it then but he did tell me afterwards and it's in his book Icons they told him what it was he didn't tell the team and he put it in a little tiny envelope plastic envelope see-through envelope and put it in his pocket and he rode the Tour of France with a bit of Tom's jersey in 2012 when he won and said that I felt like on the Champs -Élysées I felt like I'd completed the thing that he was trying to do Amazing.

1:10:09And it definitely gave him strength. He said on the Vaughan 2, when he was looking at that picture, it gave me strength. I found some strength from somewhere. Because, you know, he's very spiritual. He's very deep thinking. I know he's Brad. I mean, he's a geezer now, isn't he? Yeah. It does strike me as a real sort of synergy between the two men, you know, decades and decades apart. But like you talked about, Simpson, cool, collected, confident, on a bike presents that way as well but there is a vulnerable side to him and i think wiggins would happily admit to being the same yeah and real characters so not just great bike riders but people who are almost great bike riders great personalities because they did things their way you might call them loners but in a positive sense not in a you know there's not there's not sadness about that they're more carving their you know planning their own furrows yeah very much so and he still thinks about Tom's, you know, because he says, I went through that Euro style where you're living in a terrible flat.

1:11:16And I said, I hated it. But he just blasted through it. And, you know, he said when we did a podcast together recently, he said, I just, it always strikes me, how did he feel on my one too? I said, I've pushed myself. I've been in really, you know, it hurts. But how do you feel on the point of death? what must he have felt like how did you drive on when you feel like that yeah which took me a bit he takes me back a lot of times with the things he says Brad's very deep well that's a very poignant moment to end on but end I think we must because you've got lots of engagements lots of stuff to talk about around the festival so that's the 7th to the 14th of September in Harlow Harworth Harworth Harworth sorry we'll edit that out or leave this bit in just so you can really know how genuine these interviews are in Harworth in Nottinghamshire so get yourselves down there Chris is also doing a talk on the 8th at the Town Hall at the Town Hall and yeah but cyclinglegends.co.uk that's the place to go more information and yeah sign up to the sport team and get yourself in your Mercia jerseys your Perzo jerseys team rally everything and you're biting, getting the best in show.

1:12:35Fantastic. Chris, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure. And yeah, best of luck with all of the planning and look forward to seeing some pics from the festival. Yeah, thank you very much. We'll send you some. Thank you. Chris Sidwells, ladies and gentlemen. Chris, thank you very much again for coming onto the podcast. It's really, it's a delight to talk to you. And it's lovely to know that you're kind of keeping the Tom Simpson legacy alive because he is an absolute crucial part of the British cycling tapestry. But also, he is much more than just a tragedy. In fact, the tragedy is just the sadness that underpins actually an incredible career.

1:13:14And that's why it's a tragedy, right? Because Simpson could have gone on to win many, many, many more races. So thanks so much for sharing. Do head down to Harworth if you're in the area. I would be going to the Best In Show if I were you because that looks pretty cool and I'm really into vintage bikes. and I'd also be up for doing the Eroica ride because what could be more fun than bopping around on an old steel bike with some tubular tyres hoping that you don't get a puncture. So on that note, thank you so much for joining me and we will be back in a fortnight's time with another wonderful guest.

1:13:47So that's it. See you later.