Category: Blog

24th March 2023

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 323: Bike Advocacy Woes In Motor-mad Malta

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: James Craig Wightman

TOPICS: Flush with EU cash Malta is deepening its car dependency by building wider roads, dystopian flyovers and paying just lip service to sustainable modes of transport. Urbanist bike commuter James Craig Wightman shows Carlton Reid what it’s like to live on a tiny island that’s being eaten alive by car use.

MACHINE TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 323 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show is engineered on Friday 24th of March 2023.

David Bernstein 0:28
The spokesman cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Turn has e bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit wwwternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com. To learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid. And that buzz you may be able to hear is the buzz of a sleeper train. I was a few minutes ago in Syracuse or Sicily. I was waiting to start the journey to Rome. It’s now started, and I bushed after a 75 mile folding bike ride from the ferry port at Pozzallo. I got there from Malta, and today’s show is all about the amazing car centrism of this 16 mile long by nine mile wide, Mediterranean island. My guest is British aviation executive James Craig Weidman, a 30 year resident of Malta. He took me for a bike ride and infrastructure Safari bike ride around the island trying to work out which bits of very wide bike paths were actually usable. I gawked at the multi lane highways and superfluous flyovers on this tiny island. Please be aware that there are some loud noises on this podcast including roaring engines on a racetrack road and daytime firework bombs at a saints feast day. Here we go. So let’s just let’s just fixate on the ground here. So we’re in st Julian’s, which seems to be like the hotel

James Craig Wightman 2:37
right December what I try and do they’ll take you far from nice touristy bits and bits please don’t get to see

Carlton Reid 2:48
so we’ve seen two cyclists already. Mountain bikers obviously out doing a trail somewhere. Okay. But that’s that they were part of that point. 7% And they were the first people we saw So we’ve seen a healthy proportion of the multi cycling population that

James Craig Wightman 3:11
we had years ago we had

Carlton Reid 3:15
Oh, you’re increasing. That’s that’s positive.

James Craig Wightman 3:17
I mean, at least it’s keeping up the top of the

Carlton Reid 3:21
water I mean, horrible thing to say here. But is there a decreasing of those numbers by killing?

James Craig Wightman 3:29
Not really actually very rarely fatalities? I think so. Perhaps because we’re candy back to repeat ourselves.

Carlton Reid 3:44
And you know where the danger spots are? You’re not going to go on the I mean, I’ve been motorways those so you could go on those major highways and we will because there are no other way sometimes getting through right oh, just knit behind you that because the car coming. The motorists do you think you’re freaks? Do they think what the hell is that up ahead? Or they just

James Craig Wightman 4:13
Yeah, it’s very much like the UK anywhere to where Britain when he wrote the Empire I think inherited the same

Carlton Reid 4:25
approach. But James, you’re now in the EU so you should be more Dutch. Oh, yeah. Well, and and maybe even Italian and German you should be more European in your in the country’s appreciation of cycling. Okay.

James Craig Wightman 4:45
Yeah, we should

Carlton Reid 4:49
see you when you are new getting me out here and you’re telling me to you know which roads to avoid and go this way and you were saying Google Maps doesn’t route you so bad You see the bees this path that way on the end isn’t is it marked so a lot of these things are just actually lucky yeah that’s it that’s a UK cycling sign oh now on a metal cycle track okay

Unknown Speaker 5:16
yeah

Carlton Reid 5:21
on the what sorry say that again and and tell me what that is

James Craig Wightman 5:30
it’s basically the natural kind of here which

Carlton Reid 5:37
is it volcanic what is it that doesn’t look like limestone that’s that’s weird you’ve

got an incredibly noisy generator Why is that

James Craig Wightman 5:58
so bad percentage of edible fish

Carlton Reid 6:05
so it’s still a mark cycle I’m gonna come on to a what an effective road? Sunday work so writing Sunday it will that make a difference? Well well, Jane, I’ve been impressed so far. You were you were you were you were telling me Porky’s about how bad it is here. This is this is okay. This is something

could I mean this is is this going somewhere to somewhere? No. So it’s nice, but it’s leisure but this is not something you could use going to work or anything? I mean, how many people are living here? 500,000 people?

James Craig Wightman 6:51
It’s roughly that Yeah, yeah, we’re just we’re just on the edge of Hoffman.

Carlton Reid 6:55
Is that is that one of the reasons why it’s so hairy and dicey on the roads and that there’s the the density of people here is just immense.

James Craig Wightman 7:05
There is there is an increase in density but we’ve got a big problem because we’ve made it easier for people to drive we’ve made wider roads rather than narrow one where everybody’s is narrowing roads make people come down and slow down. We’ve actually increased the widths of them sometimes at the cost of cycling lanes

Carlton Reid 7:22
to cycle lanes that were there had been ripped out

James Craig Wightman 7:26
thinned down to almost nothing and you’ll see a couple more of those today.

Carlton Reid 7:29
And when we’re saying when you’re saying cycle ends you mean paint or you mean concrete thinking okay? So even the what would be considered to be one of our word crap Yes. cycling infrastructure has been made crapper

James Craig Wightman 7:41
Yes. Very much. So yeah. Okay.

Carlton Reid 7:45
There are policies to say we want to increase cycling it’s just that their lip service very much. Right. But when we’re coming down here, and I was saying, Yeah, this is like really quite high quality and then you were telling me Porky’s because we need to go Dutch here. Yeah. The very fact that you are now or you have been for many years EU? Yeah, that should be really really ramping up. It is a no pressure from say the EU to say come on Malta, you’ve got to you’ve got to do more Dutch. Unfortunate and more perhaps,

James Craig Wightman 8:20
this changing now they’re starting there’s been a big push the last couple of months, wrote up the orgonite. The cycling organisation here for does that stand for? Groceries? motifs for bicycle. Ah, okay. So very simple, very, very iconic, you know, you know exactly what you’re getting. But they’re also pushing now for active funding for the pushing for walking as well. They have protests yesterday. We’ve got foot scooters. They were brought in by the government trying to layer on anything that they can put in the system where they don’t have incentivized cars. Government policy not

Carlton Reid 8:59
not to incentivize, but then they will realise the roads which incentivize the cars

James Craig Wightman 9:04
when they bought in footswitches. Rocha was one of the groups that said you need to do these docked, not adopted it, looked around, see them scattered all over the place. And the reason doctors wouldn’t work for the government was they’d have to take away parking space from cars. So you know how that goes. And here it’s the trolley, you can try and move one parking space. It’s

Carlton Reid 9:29
such a nice, we’ve hardly because there is only a finite amount of space in the city and it’s quite a lot of tight.

James Craig Wightman 9:38
It’s actually made snacking a lot more difficult. Because as we’ve increased parking, we’ve increased the number one way street.

Carlton Reid 9:45
It’s chronic one way streets here are chronic,

James Craig Wightman 9:47
and there’s no conscious load. Or I’m going to show you one contract robots the only one I know on

Carlton Reid 9:52
the controller as anaemia where cyclists can go up the other way. Technically, that’s

James Craig Wightman 9:57
not allowed. No contract loads move by direction on sheets. So you can’t wiggle your way through towns or cities. You can’t look up on Google Maps. So you’re either going to look at a car group, which is going to take up the main road, which is illegal for scooters anyway. Or you’re going to take the pedestrian route which is going to take you up and down one way streets normally anyway. Your skirt you know, it’s really it’s a bit of a mess. Should we?

Carlton Reid 10:22
Yeah, are we going across town bumping up we’re going up to town we’re getting out of town. Because you brought me to the best straightaway come in. This is when our next habitation here so people could use this, but I’m presuming it doesn’t go very far.

James Craig Wightman 10:40
But it’s quite nice. If not unless you’re soaking trainer at the Marine Park, but not over the top. It’s probably not picking up my TV. Anything.

Carlton Reid 10:54
Right? No, don’t tell. Tell me a bit about yourself. Why are you here? How long have you been here? Two years. Wow. That’s a long time.

James Craig Wightman 11:06
It is different issues like that.

Carlton Reid 11:08
So where were you originally? Where are you from?

James Craig Wightman 11:10
Born in Scotland. Right? bonnybridge I networking for British Aerospace. Right. as well. moved around quite a bit in London. And then eventually found myself here.

Carlton Reid 11:24
Okay, you’re definitely showing me the best of the best here. Yeah. That’s nice. We’ll come straight out of the hotel there and haven’t really. I mean, there’s been a couple of motorists popping along, but nothing nothing serious. Yeah. And we’ll get to the serious bit soon, I guess. Yeah. So 30 years ago, you were still working for British Aerospace or car back now. We’re going turning right. So we’re gonna hear okay. Aviation though still? Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. You’re still working in the aviation industry then. Okay. Yeah. luchar airport, or?

James Craig Wightman 12:06
I was starting to pick up on the other side. Uh huh. The most invading army supply in Libya? For the oil industry. Yes, yes. But we started buying for the good guys and stuff. Correct. Okay. fun places like South Sudan are ordered nicely. But we recently started my season four on transport. So we were flying in areas to the mainland in Spain, and then flying at the moment with Amelia, which is a marketing slave.

Carlton Reid 12:58
And then your colleagues think you’re a bit of a weirdo turning up on a bike because they’re going to be absolutely besotted with their cars

James Craig Wightman 13:05
probably parched. There’s two of us

Carlton Reid 13:15
but then we can hear motorbikes revving and that genuinely sounds like a genuine race track of the top there. And you call that the coast road.

James Craig Wightman 13:23
Gotcha. We’re gonna go and see.

Carlton Reid 13:25
So describe the roads policy here because because I’ve been being ferried around the bus because I’m here with the British gonna travel rides on their AGM. And we’re just, you know, five, six miles away from but that’s the way we’ve got to be a lot of the time. And so we do pass these major major highway six lane highways in the centre of town and we’re still getting stuck in traffic. That hasn’t alleviated anything, but the motorways that are not motorways, but in northern name. Oh, hey, guys. So Tarik gutting upgrading your road network infrastructure, Malta. So infrastructure Malta is the department agency that that could make your life easier. Okay, so we’re not concentrating because we are now on a pretty busy road. Not that many cars coming and stopping for us. And we’re now off again. But basically we’re we’re parallel to the coast road here on a residential road

so these motorcycles here, they look recreational to me. Yeah, they don’t know not going to work then going up and down. Round around. I mean, if you did do a round if you went the coast road the whole way. Yeah, that’s like 50 miles.

James Craig Wightman 14:53
No, no, no.

Carlton Reid 14:58
Oh, so they’re going nowhere. Yeah, they’re genuinely going nowhere. Okay?

James Craig Wightman 15:03
You’ll see as we go along, but there are photographers strategically placed, taking snapshots, people riding their bikes, I thought we

were gonna hit it too.

Carlton Reid 15:22
Are we genuinely gonna get take our lives in our hands. At least at this point, I’m going to do something quite weird. But bear with me and we’re going to cut for an ad break. We’re going to go across to my mate David in America.

David Bernstein 15:36
Hello everyone. This is David from the Fredcast and of course the spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for Tern is to make sure that your ride is safe and worryfree. And that’s why turn works with industry leading third party testing labs like E FB E, and builds it bikes around Bosch ebike systems which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded and perhaps with a loved one behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame and the rigours of the road. For more information visit wwwternbicycles.com to learn more. And now back to the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 16:46
Thanks David and unless straight back into into Lolita we are just on the edge of Pembroke here with James and now we’re going to take our lives into our hands James and we are going to go on the coast road but it’s a Sunday so we’re not taking the lives into our hands as much as we would on a weekday Are you really offended

James Craig Wightman 17:09
pointing in the right direction and we didn’t want knowing that we didn’t want him that he wants to do it

Carlton Reid 17:31
James I want to start not hearing you here probably

looking around here because we okay yeah

James Craig Wightman 17:50
we’re gonna go to the hole

Carlton Reid 17:52
oh that’s a Ferrari just going past using it as a racetrack

we on this is now a psychopath. Okay, so we are now on. There’s a solid white line to my right. And fatness 123456 Roadies. And they’re using the painted bike path on the other side of the road. Recreational routes are here Yeah. Hey. Nice to go that fast because there’s so many cars here. So we’ve got a solid white line on the right hand side there. And we’ve got title bikes and both of those views are nice down to the the Knights of Malta towers. In fact, I’ve got a whole bunch of more roadies here now it’s a more roadies thing though that that point 7% is we’ve met every cyclist on the island yeah

Unknown Speaker 19:07
yeah

Carlton Reid 19:11
yes

mean that’s basically the rumble strip to tell motorists Don’t go in there painted bike lanes

I feel protected James you know that’s that’s round the roundabout at least. You know, normally that that would actually be it would stop at the roundabout that expect you to go across without paint. Ah, so at least we were protected with paint there around the roundabout. So that’s that’s tick. Right. So going downhill here the road has now gone to dead Two lanes before it was one lane and cars are going in and out of each other not overtaking sense of me going fast along the road here recreationally rather than going anywhere I don’t think using a bit of a promenade because saying the right okay oh okay that’s confusing okay but let’s do on a bike path so it’s all

it’s difficult to talk to James because it’s not nice I’m used to this it’s okay I’m not worried but it’s not pleasant let’s let’s put it that way it really isn’t that you wouldn’t put tourists on here for instance you know tourists would know like to do this but there’s almost a third lane for the for the bike path. Oh, I’m now on the rumble strip. Oh, that wasn’t nice. And you having to look to the right to see what’s coming nothing

you kind of just gone straight ahead there cyclists Yeah.

We have another group of roadies, I guess Sunday I guess.

Doctor just had a Ferrari going past and its exhaust was literally spewing flames things and this road doesn’t go and motorcyclists are just go very, very fast on it for the hell of it.

Mary’s race try. And James are telling me before that was going to be photographers. And there they are. A big corner here and another group of Roadies. 12345 1010 roadies, including somebody on a iron carbide gain. I thought times all right. Bunch of roadies, why would they be on here and why would they want to go on here and that’s where the photographers are hanging on the corner and watching and they’ve got a big lenses on taking photographs of the motorcyclists going around. Stay. There’s a whole bunch of motorcyclists that all guys mainly that’s the same roadies that were going that way. Yeah, those roads are going on this road that the motorcyclists are going on and going round around why

I, I am genuinely

each other and the cyclists are with a going round in the same row, the same racetrack. So this is going nowhere to nowhere. Yeah. Is it just going up and down? It goes up to support. But will the cyclists go up on this route and then come back? Yeah. Okay.

You’ll be getting a bit of a flavour here.

Unknown Speaker 24:16
Listening to this. And

Carlton Reid 24:17
believe me, unless you turn this up full volume and put in spatial stereo headphones. You won’t be getting what I’m getting, which is just a cacophony of noise. It’s the same Roadies. There we go. Same but

same muscle cars now coming past but let me just describe this on a normal day. So on a on a standard day, middle of the day, you wouldn’t find the motorcyclists coming around as

James Craig Wightman 24:56
well because they will probably be stuck.

Unknown Speaker 24:59
They’ll be lots of work. He places Okay, time to get stuck so it wouldn’t move as fast.

James Craig Wightman 25:04
Okay, we’ll go this way the country get away from this noise. Yeah and then we’re back on horrifying

Carlton Reid 25:14
Do you know I on Twitter you describe how murderous yeah Malta is and how awful it is. And I just think oh yeah, of course he’s just just exaggerating. And this I’ve never seen this before in my life. Yeah. I’ve never seen anything like that before. Nice. Yes, no, no, no, I now totally trust you. So we’ve lost the paint protection, and we’re now having passed by 1-234-567-8910 roadies, the same guy on the TT bike. So that is the same I mean, I recognise the bikes now. Same guys. And they’re in the middle of the road, they’re doing the doing primary position. They’re indicating where they’re going versus lying down. But again, I’m assuming they’re gonna go to this roundabout up ahead and they’re going to turn back again and do the same route which I’ve seen them on now. At least twice

so the roadie regardless Yes. Now they’re coming back on the same road doing through and off the time trial is now coming through he was the head before now he’s in the middle and they’re doing through an ops speedy speedy on the tarmac coast road beautiful surface road I’m not complaining here coming off the road James has taken us off and we’re looking where we’re going and we’re now parallel to that road ah, James so much more pleasant and we’re just metres away from that road but now I’m looking at potentially meet motorists on here but I’m breathing easier already. Yes, that’s nice. That’s nice.

James Craig Wightman 27:14
It makes it easy to drive the number of people selling a car something like something like 96%

Carlton Reid 27:30
Yeah, I’ve obviously noticed that yes, yes.

James Craig Wightman 27:35
Of course we’re not the kind of country where you’ve got space where you can have my feeling offended

Carlton Reid 27:42
me as you’re saying it makes sense to be like Sicily and to have a scooter to do those journeys it just makes no sense to have a little run around car to do those journeys so just just let’s let’s describe Malta to people who don’t know Malta so north or south, east or west. How many roads are there what how far can you go?

James Craig Wightman 28:02
This tree is apparently this 3000 kilometres

Carlton Reid 28:06
right wiggly wiggly wiggly country lanes which are metal yeah yeah.

James Craig Wightman 28:19
When we got people using Waze here it got worse they started using the back roads

Carlton Reid 28:25
Yeah, now sometimes it’s easier so north or south how what’s the distance I’m sorry

Okay, so we’re now we’re going to country lanes and we’re going quite fast so that race car culture

Unknown Speaker 28:50
it used to be a beautiful

James Craig Wightman 28:55
day was told that you come down previous tree now it’s it’s the country Yeah.

Carlton Reid 29:06
Yeah, I can hear and see them it’s not cheap. Now to put these roads in so where’s the money coming from? Yeah, I was guessing that but you know without there’s no me provisos when you when you get cash like that to say okay, we’ll give you the millions but you’ve got to put in you know, decent bike infrastructure

Well, yes, there’s there was a murdered journalist down in Valetta. knocked off the car bomb. Really where? Gosh, so glossier was was basically blown up I won’t say who won’t, but there was some semi jailed for it. won’t say

Unknown Speaker 30:03
so yep.

Carlton Reid 30:08
And we’ll start up there that’s Rabatt yeah

James Craig Wightman 30:18
the big time and in fact, I’m here is

Carlton Reid 30:24
I’m gonna rebound is a beautiful mediaeval town

James there was no rhyme or reason to that a certain time that was just totally random as far as I could tell. So basically we started ahead one or two bangs nobody batted an eyelid. I was like, start what was that? And then a few seconds later, and amazing Barrows break off from the faster and more coming down to round two okay. I mean, if you’ve got PST PTSD from like, a war zone, this is gonna be pretty triggering.

James Craig Wightman 31:14
Have a hangover

Carlton Reid 31:17
so this is basically normal profess. This is just lots of noise to tell people that the fest is on Yeah. So the fester let’s put that on tape on the festival professors. It’s a religious festival. Yeah, there are 360 churches throughout Malta, each one will probably have its own patron saint. Everyone’s hoping. Yeah, those are the saints a certain day they’ll probably have a procession. And so today and Rabatt it’s its turn. And this is an annual thing. Yes. So this is the only time we’re about we’ll have this this is this is today

my ears have been bombarded today James basically, a from the the cars and the motorbikes coming pass extremely fast. And I thought, you know, we’d get some bit of a respite from that. By coming into a mediaeval town, and whatnot, we’re getting even louder. So these are loud plays Moltres whereabouts are we right now? Sorry, is behind us? Yes.

James Craig Wightman 32:27
So we’re heading we’re heading in. We’re on the outskirts of the Taj, which is part of the three villages. There’s a Tod, called San media. But we’re heading into a car.

Carlton Reid 32:40
And this room was this road built.

James Craig Wightman 32:42
This is built that last two years. Okay, and

Carlton Reid 32:45
where did the money come from?

James Craig Wightman 32:47
Okay, so it’s 85% in us, DOD. And the rest of the 15%. Government. So

Carlton Reid 32:55
European Regional Development. And let’s describe what this is. So we’ve got two and a half metre direction or bike path parallel to the road with green and green green tarmac, so in many, many respects, it’s it’s up to EU standards. Yeah, this is good. And you’re complaining about this at

James Craig Wightman 33:19
all? No, no, no, that’s fine. Although there are the bits of it, which need tweaking?

Carlton Reid 33:24
So basically, they put some good stuff in. Yes. But they need to complete it.

James Craig Wightman 33:30
Yeah, they didn’t connect it up. And they haven’t really signed it. So you’re very lucky to find your way around it. If you can find it.

Carlton Reid 33:39
Do tweak it. Yeah. Initially will be to assign it to people. We’re not telling you where to go. Like you wouldn’t do that. But road.

Unknown Speaker 33:48
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 33:52
Because this is this is much wider than what we’ve heard before. Yes, yes,

James Craig Wightman 33:55
yes. Although what we had before was a two lane road with a pretty wide carriageway. And you could, you could freeway it all the way from Indiana virtually all the way down to here. And this will actually take you almost really almost up to Moscow. On the back end, Alia as well, if there have been kerastraight is a major place you’d want to get to

Carlton Reid 34:19
as a family as a tourist or whatever. Yeah. And then the central road.

James Craig Wightman 34:26
It also links up to places like Dingli. So you’ve got an alternative route to the back of theory as well. So it’s quite an important route. Really. But then you get to the end of this bridge across

Carlton Reid 34:43
your carriageway Park. That route has taken us away. And then we’re done. We’re done with

Unknown Speaker 34:48
what we’ve just done. Yeah. Yeah, you know what to

Carlton Reid 34:51
do. That’s it, your local unit materials and I haven’t got Google Maps because they don’t work. And I’m like, Where do I go?

James Craig Wightman 35:01
I think it’s a good place for me to start selling maps in my retirement.

Carlton Reid 35:06
I’m going to be staying with you because Yeah.

James Craig Wightman 35:10
Okay, so avoiding all the cars. We’re going to take a short ride down here in a right turn. do minor potholes. So little double double turn back there on initial residential road which I’m sure you would never know is here. Hiding behind the heck we have. We have a footbridge. You It’s a lovely 90, a lovely 1970s footbridge. But you’d never get a cargo bike around. There’s probably a limited use.

Carlton Reid 35:48
So on the plans for this that just was on the plan. Nowhere and presumably people said Where would people go? Yeah, why don’t you do

James Craig Wightman 35:59
apparently apparently there’s going to be a crossing that or there was going to be a crossing there but it’s never materialised. And we had rather than rotor who’ve done some really sterling work in trying to raise awareness of things like this, have had regular meetings with with, you know, the authorities, particularly infrastructure in Malta, and pointed out these failings and nothing got done.

Carlton Reid 36:25
That’s money from the EU. Does the EU not come along and say I’m doing this way? Why aren’t you going to do this bit?

James Craig Wightman 36:33
Nope. We’ve tried that. But it didn’t seem to wake anybody up. Wiggling through we’re gonna wiggle through this quaint little footbridge. Big missing? Yes. Yeah. Good. Good. Well, honey, really, it’s such a small investment to begin with a couple of signs. Oh, yes, yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes, yes, it’s this bit here. We’re gonna go to the end of it, it goes through through the end of the talk. And, in theory, it’s supposed to carry on to the next bit of Roku and I’ve done but we’ve not seen any an indication of that happening.

Carlton Reid 37:41
That night again, my mouth is open here in in Malta, so I’m sure people can hear the thundering traffic. We are at masa junction and it’s like a very modern version of Spaghetti Junction. We have got roads going over roads going over roads, flyover overfly, but we’re actually on a bike path underneath which incredibly wide so so credit there to infrastructure, Malta, underneath the flyovers we’ve had some nice planting. But then just why on earth? Have we got roads like this? And what might the problem be? With roads like this?

James Craig Wightman 38:22
We’ve actually got seven flyovers here. Master junction was always a problem, because there was a lot of traffic getting stuck here by one set of traffic lights. So which allow traffic to dissipate downstream by the way. But it was basically a vote winning ploy to free up traffic to Moscow. And yes, now you can drive much, much faster to Moscow, but it means you get to where you’re going much quicker at the same time as everybody else. And the problem with that is that little villages who want one way streets and tiny, so no restriction can’t cope with all the traffic now arriving at them. So while people say their trip is quicker on master junction, it then takes them more time when they get stuck at the villages.

Carlton Reid 39:08
So you said vote winning there. So just explain the kind of political system you have here that Matt makes the position of the 2021 junction when it was when it was open. So what what is the political system here that is allowing and I’m going to call this lunacy.

James Craig Wightman 39:25
Okay? It’s a partisan system. There’s two main parties, and thereafter every vote that they can get. So elections tend to be a giving election rather than a strict austerity one. And basically, everybody is scared to touch cars. The government has stated publicly that he’s not going to descend devise or do anything to hurt cars, or to stop people buying or owning

Carlton Reid 39:54
one second because just the city site, seeing bus that you would see everywhere else we go someone scenic, and they’re going around the city on the mass. I wonder if the guides are saying, you know, this is our wonderful miles or junction here cost this much. Isn’t it wonderful? And people on the blog, we want to fly it. I mean, why are you telling me this? Anyway? Sorry, Sorry, I interrupted that just are seeing that coming across same tourist saying there’s normally you would take tourists away from this kind of stuff. Yeah, you wouldn’t show them this stuff. Sorry, sorry,

James Craig Wightman 40:25
national pride, in fact that the end of this cycling is transmitted for offices. And there are no actual signs telling people how to get on to the cycling. So quite often, you find some poor lost cyclists on what is eventually the dual carriageway, which everybody hates, obviously, but you know, you can’t really blame them, because there’s nothing telling them how to get here. So it’s really just finishing off. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of things that could be done. There. Little tiny things, little tweaks, that could make it really good. But then again, as you say, he’s skiing against the backdrop of seven flowers, you know, perhaps we really need, which is actually encouraged more and more people to drive drive,

Carlton Reid 41:08
because even if you put the best bike infrastructure in the world here, and this right now is phenomenal bike infrastructure, the signage, okay, I’ll grant you that. But from the width we have, well, let me talking how far away we are going, I’m going to count this out, that’s about a metre to three, that’s five metres. So we have a five metre by directional bypass green, fantastic world class brilliant, but you have seven flyovers, you have seven roads crossing over it. So you’re gonna get a you know,

James Craig Wightman 41:41
you know, where the the emphasis was on building this junction where they’re emphasising car use. But at the moment, in Malta, we’ve got something like 96% of all car trips, a single person, one person on their own, just driving. So it’s a huge, huge number of cars, particularly during the week when people are going to and from work, just monetizing the car.

Carlton Reid 42:05
So again, is this EU money? This was this is majority funded by the EU. Yeah. And they’ve taken that 85% out of their 15% and created this. And I said before, when we’ll get when we’re cycling through it, it’s like, it’s quite dystopian, yeah, this is this is Taiwan, on steroids. You know, this is this is this is it. We’re a small country here, Malta is tiny. And we’ve got infrastructure that you’d expect in Los Angeles, that is, lunacy. But nobody sees that as lunacy here.

James Craig Wightman 42:41
There are a few people but few and far between unfortunately, and they’re not listening to this. There’s some really good experts on on sustainability like Dr. Murray retired from the University of Malta, Geography Department of Sustainability. So I’m really trying for years to try and get people to understand that we need to cut down on cars, we need to free up space in our towns and cities. There isn’t one parking metre on the island. You can park anywhere or you can park anywhere. So you know, there’s nothing there at all does this identifies people from driving? So obviously they do.

Carlton Reid 43:20
Yes, yes. Well, well, welcome to Malta if you’re an absolute moto freak, because you’ve got everything you could wish for. You’ve got every flyover that will speed you to the next traffic jam. Thanks to James Craig Whiteman. There and thanks to you for listening to Episode 323 of their spokesman podcast, show notes, and more can be found at the Piper spokesman.com And also like to thank visit Malta for hosting the AGM of the British guild of travel writers. Away from its dystopian road system. Malta has some real treasures. Most people fly to the island, but I got to Malta by train and ferry using the Omio travel booking app, hopping between stations and riding up Mount Edma. Even on a folding bike, of course, the next episode of The spokesman podcast brought to you in association with 10 bicycles should be a chat with BBC journalists, Anna Harlequin and Kate Vandy. I say should because they’re still awaiting delivery of a rather special outside broadcast unit. A tricked out cargo bike. This will be the bike Bureau, a mobile news gathering studio like no other. I’m hoping that chat can happen later this month.

In the show you’ve just listened to I shortened the audio I captured of the Daytime fireworks at Rabat’s festa and if you’re up for some bonus bangs listen on?

Unknown Speaker 47:10
Additional

Carlton Reid 47:25
so NFM normal for Malta

Unknown Speaker 47:27
that was just

Carlton Reid 47:35
with the like the bangs are you don’t like

5th February 2023

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 321: Sustainability in action: In conversation with Vaude CEO Antje von Dewitz.

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Antje von Dewitz, Managing Director, Vaude, Germany

TOPICS: Vaude was on the road to being green long before Antje von Dewitz took over the running of the company but she significantly ramped up its corporate sustainability.

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 321 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday, fifth to February 2023.

David Bernstein 0:27
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:13
I’m Carlton Reid and welcome to the 300 and 21st episode of The spokesmen podcast in which I chat with Antje von Dewitz, Managing Director of German hiking and biking company Vaude or as you will soon find out how it should be pronounced, “Faudi.”Anyway, in this 40 minute conversation, we talk about Vaude’s stellar green credentials and how sustainability is now baked into the Vaude way of doing things. Can you please tell me that the correct German pronunciation of your company name because I’m pretty sure that we get it wrong here. But just tell us how you pronounce it.

Antje von Dewitz 1:51
Okay, the correct pronouncing is “Faudi” and Vaude is the pronunciation of the two first letters of my last name von Dewitz V and D and in German, you would say Vaude? Yeah, and I’m not necessarily we don’t know how to pronounce it, because that’s a very current problem. People say also Vode and Vouder and Fouder, but the correct pronunciation is “Faudi”.

Carlton Reid 2:18
yes, thank you for that. Now now. We definitely pronounced I’m saying we hear the North American market, certainly the UK market will be pronouncing that with a with a hard v. So it’s not that so we can now pronounce your company name correctly.

Antje von Dewitz 2:37
I’m glad to hear that.

Carlton Reid 2:38
You make a tonne of stuff. So you make outdoor kit, basically. But bikes. So tell me about your bike kit and how long you’ve been making bike kit, whether it’s been you know, from from when the company was founded?

Antje von Dewitz 2:54
No, it was not when the company was founded. The company was founded in 1974. And we started out with backpacks. That was the first product backpack and climbing gear. And about 10 years later, we started with bike first product was bike pioneers, because coming from the main competence in back making backpacks, the switch to bike pioneers what’s not so far we require the same sort of competence. And we started with, with waterproof, backpacks, waterproof, on machines, so we have live production here also, in Germany, where our headquarter is for making bike pioneers, how big

Carlton Reid 3:40
is bike in the company, how bigger share is bike in amongst all of your, your outdoor range.

Antje von Dewitz 3:49
So we have a turnover at totally 150 million euro from this year from last year on and bike is is about 45% of that. So it grew really heavily in the last years. Especially so because we started out as being an outdoor company so 10 years later, we started with bike products and and especially during the last three years, the bike segment was was growing very strongly because of a new mobility, the urge of people going out outdoors also with a bike during Corona so so we are almost up to 50/50 outdoor and bike

Carlton Reid 4:30
and is that is that where it’s going? It’s that’s the growth part of your business.

Antje von Dewitz 4:35
When I said the last three years, I was not really correct because the last year especially was not so good of a bike here because I was probably in the UK also like this. There were a lot of bikes in the market and and at the same time the bikes couldn’t be sent out so there’s a lot of liquidity problem in the with the bike dealers. So and as as having bike apparel and bike pioneers and bike backpacks, this is the last, the last product and a big change. So if the bikes are not being sold, the other products are also not being sold. But I think last year was a very special year. In general, I think outdoor and bike will now grow at the same pace. Because we are in times of, of, of almost crisis every year. And in times of crisis, people go outdoors, and people tend to look for their little escapes. This is why I think bike and other people look for that at the same time plus bike is also what people are looking for in terms of a new new mobility, a new greener and more sustainable mobility. So I think both both segments will know this at the same pace.

Carlton Reid 5:57
Hmm. I have looked at your your company’s CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility report where you do say you’ve got a mobility plan. So I’ll get onto that shortly. But first of all, I’d like I mean, I have been very close to wear your bass because Jo Beckendorf, the journalist when I used to get left with him on going to and from bike, the bike shows in Friedrichshafen, he would often point out where your bass so I know you’re very rural. So you’re you’re basically you’re not far from Friedrichschafen, you’re you’re you’re near Lake Constance or Bodensee. But you’re in a very, very small village. So just describe where you are.

Antje von Dewitz 6:43
We’re close to the Lake Constance, which is this Swiss Austrian German border. So we’re in the very deep south of Germany. And when I look out of my window, which I do right now, I see the little church of our little village, where we are, we’re in in the middle of the, on the countryside, close to the Lake Constance, which is a good side, which is a bad side for a company who needs insert infrastructure. But which is a good site for a company with employees that are outdoor and bike freaks, because that’s a really beautiful part of Germany, where you have great outdoor experiences by bike where you can greatly go biking in the mountains or at the lake.

Carlton Reid 7:23
So it was founded by your father it basically in a hops barn on a farm. And then you grew from that.

Antje von Dewitz 7:32
That’s, that’s true. So we are now at Oba Eisenbahn. And 50 years ago, he founded the company, one smaller village, little close to here, Otter eyes and bath. And indeed, in a farmhouse, in summertime, when the hop came in, we had to take all the all the work yet the warehouse had to be cleared for the hub possible to be to be stored there. And two months later, all the products could return to the warehouse within this farm farmhouse, so that was a very special founding story that God has there.

Carlton Reid 8:12
So you’ve grown up with this company? Quite, quite literally, you’ve grown up with this company.

Antje von Dewitz 8:17
That’s true as I was two years old when the company started.

Carlton Reid 8:21
Yes, now, so let’s talk about you. So you’ve managed the company, since 2009. But describe your career before that, because you have a doctorate. And then you have a member of all of these incredible German sustainable business associations are all that the sustainability stuff that we’re going to be talking about, is very much embedded in your corporate DNA for you personally. So tell us a little bit about you and where you’ve come from, from that two year old girl who saw the company founded and how you’ve, you’ve grown into the company.

Antje von Dewitz 8:58
Yeah, I think part of the story and part of understanding my my way of life is growing up here at the village site. We were kind of an outsider, or I felt like it’s growing up, because it’s very rural countryside. And the farmers here don’t at that time, they looked quite critical at entrepreneurs. So growing up to be not a farmer’s daughter but a daughter of an entrepreneur. Was was strange, the people to me and in the class were saying, oh, probably he exploits people, he exploited probably children to grow his business. And I grew up to know that confidence. That trust is something you have to earn trust you can earn by transparency, and to lead a company you have to earn trust in order to feel good. And in order to earn trust, everything has to be alright. Word wild. And this is something that that never left my mind. And when I grew up and I didn’t want to overtake the company I firstly, I wanted to work in NGOs like Greenpeace or WWF. To take, take responsibility in keeping this planet a livable planet. And so it was a surprise for me when my last traineeship that I did, after a lot of traineeships within NGOs and media and in all sorts of organisations, and my last traineeship, during my studies was at Foudy and it hit me like a surprise that if I wanted to overtake responsibility for a livable planet, then I I’m here at the right spot, with a broad set of responsibilities not only in making the products but also in caring for the working conditions about worldwide and caring for the working conditions here at the headquarter in overtaking responsibility in the whole supply chain and in also politically as an enterprise. So, so that’s, that’s why that’s why I ended up in the country in the company of my father, which also benefited me very, very well because I’m a very enthusiastic outdoor lover.

Carlton Reid 11:26
What kind of stuff What what are you what are you doing outdoors?

Antje von Dewitz 11:30
I, I bike, and I hike, I love long distance. So for example, last last year, when I turned 50, my birthday present to myself was a three year three month a three month hike through the Alps, with with my backpack and going from heart to heart every day, 1000 metres height and 15 kilometres distance for so total, I was I walked 4100 kilometre and 60,000 metres in height. So that’s, that’s something I love.

Carlton Reid 12:13
And use it obviously all of your own products.

Antje von Dewitz 12:17
Yes, I use not all of them, but I really love to use them. I love to have them in. In practice, yes.

Carlton Reid 12:25
Okay, now, so 2009 When you came in and started managing the company, and then did you start straight away at making the company climate neutral. So it took until 2012. When when you got there, and then you’ve been a Climate Neutral worldwide since 2022. Last year. But describe how what you had to do when you joined the company to make that switch.

Antje von Dewitz 12:54
When I joined the company that was directly after my studies in 1998, I first worked in marketing and I firstly i i was the product manager for for new bags for modern bags and packs. So that’s the part where I started it. And when I overtook the company, that was in 2009, as you just mentioned, so that was much later. And I already knew a lot about Saudi and the way of our day. And so I was not the one that introduced sustainability to God, we had a long history already. And we had the history that we had and great, great singular proud projects. For example, we had a whole collection made out of mono material, and a whole network of industry partners that could first of all, take the returned one goods of this mono material collection, and then turn it into new products. So we had a closed loop recycling. But when when we looked at it when I overtook the company, and my my biggest goal was to turn this company totally into a green direction. We said okay, this way was not successful. The singular products had a lot of effort for us produce a lot of effort for us producers, a lot of work a lot of cost, but we didn’t get back so many use products. So the closed loop never really closed. And for me, I was very convinced that if we want to go a greenway if we want to overtake responsibility holistically, it would not be the answer to do this in one project and another project but we would have to do this totally entirely. So we started out with analysing Where is where we have responsibility and where should we where should we act? And we found out that we have two different ways. Two different points where we should overtake responsibility One is here at the headquarter at Foday, here at the South in Germany, and the other one is in the entire product cycle. So when we started out here at the headquarter so where we were our business unity is where meanwhile 650 employees work. And that was at a time in 2009 when the consciousness for sustainability was not very high, very high neither at our with our dealers or clients, or customers nor here at the headquarter with our employees, they were very sceptical because they saw the more work bureaucracy that would that was growing with sustainable work and, and they were not sure if this was more than a marketing idea. So there was a lot of scepticism. So we started out by a few things in the beginning, turning the coffee to fair trade coffee, or finally get a grip on on the real, the garbled, how to collect the garbage here, and stuff like that. And at the same time, we started out with emails, emails as the European management team, how to how to collect and measure all the emissions that you have all the emissions and consumptions that you use at the headquarter, so all electricity, oil, stuff like that, and, and we measure this day by day by day for the entire year. And then we were able to find out, okay, where do we have the greatest emissions at the headquarter and then we began programmes to cut them down. So we changed our energy to, to renewable energy we had, we have the whole roof of full with photos with solar panels. We cut down on our catalogue with the paper catalogue at that time was the most important marketing tool that we had. And but we saw that this is also the second biggest source of emissions. So we cut we cut that turned only to digital versions. And every use of paper was from then on in 100% recycled paper. And we found out that mobility is the third biggest cause here of emissions. So we created a whole mobility programme, where the best parking lots are not for the people of the management. But for the people that share their car, for example, we got ourselves a pattern, a whole bunch of E bikes to lend out to our employees so that they could use the bike to come to work and created showers so that they get a shower and they come with a bike and stuff like that, to get people to make people consider a choice not to come with a single car but to come by bike to come by bus to share cars. And so we cut down dramatically on these emissions from from ability to and in 2012. When we cut down I think by 70% of all emissions at the whole headquarter. We decided okay, from that point on, we will still work on emissions but at the same time, we will also compensate so that that means that since 2012, we are Climate Neutral at our headquarter.

Carlton Reid 18:19
You pay for offsetting?

Antje von Dewitz 18:22
Yeah, that’s right. We pay for offsetting we, we have a partner my climate and that means that all the emissions that at the headquarter we cannot, we cannot prevent. They are. They are turned into into monies. And we spent money on projects or climate friendly projects. But this is only the headquarter and then the biggest part was in the product cycle.

Carlton Reid 18:49
That’s good. Because the product cycle isn’t, you know, you make some stuff in southern Germany, but the bulk of your stuff is made in mostly in Vietnam. So, right, how tough is it to green, the supply side of your business? So?

Antje von Dewitz 19:07
Yeah, it’s, it’s a huge task. It was it was an even huger task in 2009. That was why it was so important also, to have the whole team behind this idea. It was very important for us to show it at our headquarter that we really mean it seriously and that it’s good that it feels like live quality to support sustainability. So stuff like the green mobility concept at our headquarter was strategically important to get our team on track and to fight for this idea of sustainability worldwide. Because this was a real big transformation process that we had to start on. We even though at that time in 2009, we were a rather small company with 50 million euro turnover. We still had a huge complexity. We had about 65 production sites we work with, we had about 150 materials suppliers we work with, and our task force, our self chosen task was to transform all of them, we created an own label, green shape. And that is until today, like metal label, that means only in terms of materials, only certified materials and the highest standards can approve to be green shape. And in order to get to the certifications, like blue sign, for example, we had to ask our all of our suppliers to please audit in terms of blue sign, which is quite expensive when audit costs 20,000 euros per year, and then you have to act on all the findings. And we were a rather small, small brand, that means they didn’t make the big business with us. So in the beginning, it seemed like to be a really, really big task. And many of the production side sets etc. once said to us, that they wouldn’t do this for us this was too much work, or they said okay, we do this for you, you pay the money. So we and so it was a difficult task on that one cent and one hand to turn them to to convince them and the outside and it was a difficult task on the inside. Because for our product manager, the task of Product Management totally changed. Before that time, they could just choose any material and they can just choose any design. Now, in order to follow green shape, they have to start the design by showing that the design they have chosen is recyclable is is able to be repaired, then they have to choose the material. And in the beginning, they said okay, but we only have three materials that are anthracite fabric, do you want to make us You want us to make products from just three different fabrics? That’s not impossible, it’s impossible. And they said, it’s the sales team says very clearly to us, it cannot cost more because the consumer is not willing to pay more for sustainable, but it costs so much more. How can we ever solve this. So it was very, very difficult to get a grip on how to deal with these existential conflicting targets. But we made it step by step.

Carlton Reid 22:22
No change in that consumers, it’s now a selling point. So this this green shape, your label is now something you can use to actually earn more money because you can sell more products because you are a greener company. Is that something that you now see consumers coming to you

Antje von Dewitz 22:40
for? Yes, I see two points I’ll come to the consumer in a second. First is that that the start was very difficult and it’s still difficult, but in the beginning it felt like okay, we will never be innovative because we have such a huge mountain of work to go step by step and this has changed completely our our very strong focus on sustainability has become an innovation pusher. We now make pipe pioneers from from a plastic garbage we make functional apparel, from recycled tires and so on and so on. We really this this has has been an enormous pusher on innovation innovation for us. And for the consumer. In the beginning, we always heard the consumer doesn’t ask for that. And it was slowly slowly changing step by step it was changing. And now especially in the especially when the Friday’s for future where we coming something of a thing, the conscious the global, the European consciousness was rising very highly in the end the the will to overtake responsibility as a consumer was was you can you could feel it that there was no more interest. And and now in terms of Corona again. So and and the more the global crisis, different global crisis are being evident for consumers out there, the more the the willingness to, to first of all overtake responsibility for themselves in their consumption. And secondly, also to pay a little bit more for that is rising, you can really feel it. So it helps us a lot to be recognised as a very sustainable brand and to picture have a have a credibility as a sustainability, T brand. That helps us a lot to to to always grow stronger than the rest of the market.

Carlton Reid 24:43
I’m gonna interrupt Antje there and go across to my colleague David for a quick commercial break.

David Bernstein 24:48
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast, and of course, the spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles, the good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for Tern is to make sure that your ride is safe, and worryfree. And that’s why Tern works with industry leading third party testing labs like EFBE, and builds it bikes around Bosch ebike systems which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So, before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded and perhaps with the loved ones behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame and the rigours of the road. For more information, visit www.ternbicycles.com to learn more. And now back to the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 25:58
Thanks, David. And let’s get back to Antje of Vaude. So green shape is your own certification label that you use. But then yes. If then you go green button, which is a that’s a national scheme. Yes, fabrics, the National diamond scheme for fabrics then you’ve got when you’ve mentioned my climate before, which is a Swiss certification scheme. And then you’re also a member or you get certification from fair wear. So that’s like, you know, fair trade almost making sure that the your your supply chain is the practices are, are good practices. So just describe how those certification schemes fit into your business.

Antje von Dewitz 26:51
Okay, as you just mentioned, green shape is our own, it’s like a metal label, which is, which is, I think the highest standard that is any certification out there any standard out there, because it’s very broad and very, very deep. What in order to become a green shape product, and almost 90% of our whole product is in green shape, in has green shape label. And when three years ago, the German government said they want to also make a metal label the green button, we got green shape recognised as, as, as being. So every product that we have that has the green shape label automatically gets the green button label of the German government because our it’s stricter than, than the green button. So that does that. And you mentioned fair aware, fair wear is also included in green shave. So all of our products are farewell products, that means all of our productions 100% Our audit are being audited by by in terms of green affair where so that’s that’s that’s the very strictest labour or standard for working conditions worldwide in the textile industry. So if you look for fair products, you have to look for fair wear

Carlton Reid 28:28
textile production, no, no sweatshops, that kind of thing.

Antje von Dewitz 28:31
No sweatshops? No, no, don’t children, no work of children. They are in fair where you have to fight for existential wages, that means wages that that, that you can not only minimum wages, but living wages, wages that help people to really survive with the family and not to send the children to work but send the children to school, that that make it possible to have a lot of real life with a family. So that’s much higher than just minimum wages. And that’s something that every every brand that is part of fair wear has to work for to really reach this. So it’s a very strict and and good standard, because it’s a continuous work in progress that you have to prove year by year through the out audits and other also through the audit for your own company. So we are audited every year. You have to prove that you really give the best and you really put a lot of effort and in supporting all the companies the production sites to make to create good working conditions to you can

Carlton Reid 29:47
be more profitable if you didn’t aspire to the standards if you didn’t have the fair wear. If you didn’t have to meet those, those those criteria. You could in more money.

Antje von Dewitz 30:02
Yes, that’s that’s rather strange, isn’t it, it’s much more difficult and much more expensive to overtake responsibility than not to do it. That’s a strange road we’re in. But it’s true. But from an economical point of view, it’s still it’s still worth to, to follow this sustainable path. Because it helps your brand image, it helps to really focus on a good way. It convinces your own team that they’re working for purpose. So it helps you to get to get good team members of your own team, it helps you to sell your products more and more. So it helped, it helped us to grow stronger to be a really strong brand and a strong company. And but at the same time, we needed this growth in order to finance the transformation, which costs so much. So.

Carlton Reid 31:06
So going back to your your, your very, very beautiful rural location, on your online on your website, on four, you’ve got a specialist website, just on your CSR, your corporate social responsibility. It says I’m quoting here, due to our rural location, most employees have to commute longer distances to work. Now, we can’t force anyone to give up their car. But we can provide incentives. So what are those incentives?

Antje von Dewitz 31:40
The incentives is I mentioned that before a little bit. The incentives are not fun of a financial thought. But they are the best parking spots for people who share their cars, for example. So we, in eight years ago, we just sort of made 60 parking spots disappear. And made in the inner circle of our of our campus here, where we have our company, there is now a green area with a climbing wall and No, no 60 parking spots. So we have not so many parking spots here. So park a parking spot something really valuable, you have to walk a long distance from from another place to here, if you come late in the in the day, so a close close to the company parking spot is something very valuable, the best parking spots are for the people that share their car. So that is an incentive. And an incentive not to take your own car is when you come by you can you can without cost you can lend the bike here from us with with E motor so you can get over the hills, it’s very hilly region and get here then you can shower here, you can you have a parking spot, close to the company under the roof to park your own bike. And we have also you can also acquire a bike very, very cheaply. Because we have connections and you can use the connections together to to own a bike by yourself. So we help people to get good bikes, and to ride the bike. And it’s become some sort of a social incentive to because here are a lot of bikers. And it’s sort of the status of your bike here. And not so much the office status if you have a big car. And we also have some sort of mobility lotto, so every week with the help of a coincidence generator, somebody is chosen. And he is he or she is asked Oh, so how did you come to work today. And then if if it’s in a sustainable way by bike or by bus or whatsoever, he gets a nice price and a nice award. And is and it’s shown in our intranet with a nice picture in a winning pose. So it helps to keep the the topic of green mobility in everybody’s mind. And it helps to get get out little incentives to to make people think about or change their way of coming to work.

Carlton Reid 34:26
Because that’s slightly easier. If you were in an urban location you you’d have lots of bike paths, you’d have lots of buses and trams and all sorts of you know what Europeans come to expect, but you’re not in an urban location. You’re out in the farmland. So that must be tougher for you than it would be for if you were in in a large city.

Antje von Dewitz 34:47
You know, that is true because in the beginning, we didn’t even have a bus stop here. So no buses were were coming to our countryside. So we also had to lobby and to cooperate with The local bus provider and the city and the country to to make it possible that we have a bus that is coming here to the company. So I guess you have other tasks or tasks in first of infrastructural nature, if you’re a company that is sustainable in the countryside, because there is not often not a lot of infrastructure here, we have to provide

Carlton Reid 35:22
infrastructure, you had to have bike paths close to your place.

Antje von Dewitz 35:25
And now since I think five years, we have bypassed Yes.

Carlton Reid 35:31
And was that because where you’re situated, so the municipality or the locality put these bike paths in? Because you were lobbying for this? Or they’re just putting these in? In general? No,

Antje von Dewitz 35:44
that was part of a bigger plan. So we were just very happy that we finally got them.

Carlton Reid 35:51
Right. Okay. Now, so that’s, that’s, that’s the travel that you can, you can sort of almost control but business travel is much more difficult to control because obviously, if you’ve got to, you know, plants, you’re having to fly to Vietnam, etc. But talk about your, your policy, because on the CSA report, it talks about how, you know, car travel, you know, cannot be made by car, if it’s over 400 kilometres, and then if it’s, you know, 600 kilometres, and, you know, you’re not going to fly, you’re gonna go by train, especially within Germany, Switzerland, or Austria. So how do you police that

Antje von Dewitz 36:36
it’s, it’s a, it has become a rule that we won’t take a plane within Germany, or the German speaking countries, we all take the train, and how, how did we manage everybody to go on this check, by taking this route very seriously, for the whole management team, so I don’t take the plane, I take the I take the train to Berlin, and that’s, that’s the travel of about eight hours from here. And we just got very used to use this time very efficiently, we work in the in the train, we have very normal business meetings in the train, and it has become, it has become sort of a normal situation for for all of us, you have to understand that for us. Since since last year, we are climate neutral in the, for the whole for everything worldwide that we do, that doesn’t mean that we have with that we managed to get all emissions down to zero, but we are working on this very, very heavily according to the science based targets, and the rest that we cannot prevent, we compensate. But that means that every emission counts for us and and we take this so seriously, because we understand we understand the serious situation of the climate change. And we we the whole team is very often talking about it, we talk about the crisis that is out there, of the of the very serious situation, we are really dedicated to keep this planet alive for our children and in the coming generations. So every time we can overtake responsibility, it is clear that we do this, it’s it’s just become normal. And it’s sort of observed that we would take a plane if we can take a train. So so with the same with the same with the same responsible approach, it is very clear that that we have a canteen here that serves vegetarian food, okay, we have one day left where we where we eat meat, but the rest of the days are a vegetarian, because this is something where we can act where we can to overtake responsibility to not to cut down on emissions. And I think it’s still it’s still I make it probably sound too easy because this has been a transformation process for us to in mobility and in eating. But it’s for our day and for the whole team of our day. Everybody understands it that it’s clear a clear step of our day because it makes so much sense because we’re dedicated to sustainability but dedicated to keeping this workplace this world a wonderful place. So everybody is like okay, we understand it’s still not easy. We still sometimes hate it, but we understand. So that makes transformation process within the company easier.

Carlton Reid 39:39
Because you’re you have very strict policies that appears on on a business travel trip. You should only get a taxi for instance, if there’s a few of you and there’s only a certain distance you can go in and a taxi and then you’re meant to be using Bike Share, Scooter share whatever in cities, so that’s embedded in your mobility policy, the fact that when you go somewhere on business travel, you’ve still got to travel in a sustainable fashion.

Antje von Dewitz 40:12
Yes, that’s true. Yeah. And I never take a taxi, I always take the subway or walk. When I when I get into town, that is the end that also has become normal. Because it’s a normal for you.

Carlton Reid 40:30
But what about people coming into the company that where they get, you know, expense accounts where they will track fly everywhere, they’ll get taxes everywhere? Is that strange for other people? Are you changing people? How do people who are coming into your company, look at your policies,

Antje von Dewitz 40:50
and it was more difficult for the people who who already have been at the company because for them, it has been a trend transformation process they had to do. There was a lot of discussion why they should now not take plane anymore, or why they shouldn’t take a taxi or whatever. For people that come into Fody that come newly into voting for them. It’s they have chosen Foudy as their favourite employer because we follow values that they support. So it’s much easier with new employees that have chosen us very consciously than it was in the beginning to change policy for the people that already worked here.

Carlton Reid 41:28
Thanks to Anjou von Dewitz of Vaude there and thanks to you for listening to episode 321 of the Spokesmen podcast, brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be a chat with another inspirational business woman but meanwhile get out there and ride.

8th January 2023

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 319: German word for beer diluted with lemonade is “cyclist” — oh, and Jim was probed by robots

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Jim Moss and Donna Tocci

TOPICS: Kidneys and beer. For an hour. Really.

LINKS:

Does cycling have a drinking problem? Bicycling.com

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:14
Welcome to Episode 319 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Sunday eighth of January 2023.

David Bernstein 0:27
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:02
happy new Yeah, it is when Yeah. And it’s really it’s a real big struggle to say there’s 20 It’s 23 Isn’t it done. And it’s it’s happy new year, and it’s 2023. We’ve been doing this since 2006 or later, the podcast has been going since 2006. And you guys were on from relatively early. So we’ve been doing this an awfully long time. So just happy new year for this incredibly strange year that we now have in the future. In effect, we are 2023. So we have with us, Jim, and Donna. So Jim and Donna, welcome to the show, Donna,

we have been discussing what we’re gonna be talking about on the show today. And we have realised that me and Donna don’t really have any major bodily traumatic episode to recount. Whereas, whereas

a certain attorney might have something including, you know, being probed by robots.

You’ve been probed by robots. Jim, tell us about your robot probing.

Jim Moss 2:14
And just to clarify things quite quickly, it was not a sexual activity.

Carlton Reid 2:21
Never said it was Jim, you went there.

Jim Moss 2:22
I know. But I know that several other probing does not mean. Yeah. And we’re and we’re off and running for the new year. That’s right.

They found that I had two large growths in one of my kidneys, and large meaning baseball size and golf ball size. I tried to send new records, you know, me always wanted to be number one. And, but I didn’t quite make it I found out.

And so I went to I think it’s called a nephrologist, who looked at the scans looked at me and said, We’re removing your kidney. And 15 days later, I was in the hospital for 26 hours where they took out my right kidney by a robot DaVinci Robot, phenomenal surgeon. I mean, just a really nice guy I got enjoyed him. Even when I came off the drugs. sort of interesting, I have six holes in me three for the robot, one for an assistant, one for a camera, one where they actually remove the kidney. It’s almost like a tic tac toe board

Carlton Reid 3:50
video to get a video of it after it’s been, you know, die scanned with it. You know, with cameras, there must be an episode you can put on YouTube.

Jim Moss 3:57
I actually asked him. And he said, we don’t save them unless you request them. And I said, I mean, I really I would have watched it now. I wouldn’t have watched the first couple weeks. But now you know that you pretty much healed up pretty much. I think I would have watched it. It’s quite interesting just to hear him talk about and I’ve He keeps looking. He says you have all sorts of questions about how we did it. You don’t really have that many questions about what’s going to happen to you. I know what’s going to happen to me. I’m going to heal up and fall down again. And his response was, you should fall less.

Carlton Reid 4:34
Have that. Did he have that same advice for another one of our beloved members?

Jim Moss 4:38
Yeah, yeah. I think Tim needs to learn how to fall maybe that’s it. I fall. I’ve had a doctor tell me that I bounced better than anybody else he’s ever seen. I put it on my resume. Yeah, we were mountain biking, knock myself cold. And he’s a neurologist. He said you bounce better than me. No. So

Donna Tocci 5:02
we digress. How are you feeling now? I’m okay.

Jim Moss 5:06
I’m great. I really am great. I it’s, you know, there’s a lot of muscle there layers there, even though in my case they weren’t that prominent. And so those lower layers are still healing, but the scars are great. In another couple of days, I get back to full activity, although I’m full is gonna be a different definition for a while.

Carlton Reid 5:28
But I’m happy can when can you get back on a bike?

Jim Moss 5:31
Well, I was told I could get back on a trainer Thursday. And so yesterday, Friday, I went down to the basement where I had my trainer, and I set everything up. And then 20 minutes later, I still hadn’t been able to get my leg over the back. Or to get on.

Carlton Reid 5:53
Like a road bike hooked up. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could just I mean, I’m not saying go and get one. But you if you had a like, a one that’s not quite so strictly road shaped. You could perhaps get on one of them. I mean, a lot of recuperation. You know, even when cyclists they recuperate on exercise bikes.

Jim Moss 6:12
Yeah, I even put a stepladder next to it. I’m still figuring out how to pull it off. Because once you get out of balance, there’s just anyway, so that should have been videotaped. But so I’m going to try again. Maybe this afternoon, I have another idea. involves two milk crates, one on either side, and a pulley system. So

Donna Tocci 6:37
I think you need maybe big cushions on either side. Oh, yeah.

Carlton Reid 6:43
And then you get the advice from from from the table. Yeah. So Donna, you were you were mentioning you’ve brought Tim’s crashes up? Because if we go back in the archives of this show, we could probably have quite a few hours of discussions with with Tim about his crashes. So so tell us what what do you know about his latest escapade?

Donna Tocci 7:08
Oh, only unfortunately, I haven’t talked with Tim but only what I know from his

from his Instagram feed, which anyone can can check out it’s Timothy V. Jackson. But he had another crash where he needed a new hip. And he had a fracture near his knee. So he had to have some pretty big surgeries was in the hospital for quite a while. And but his home and is okay, let’s let’s go with that. He’s home and, okay, now.

Carlton Reid 7:50
Well, our best wishes to Tim because his his his Instagram, um, be quite gruesome at time, when he does show us his injuries. So sometimes he shows his shots of him with his hand in the air riding his bike and they look great. They’re not going to offend anybody who might be squeamish, but then he will show his his injuries and he has had a lot of injuries that are best wishes, temporary recovery. And also he gets on his bike. Really, really soon. Now. What have we been doing over the last time was we talked over the Christmas and the New Year so So Donna, first what I’ve actually been doing, you’ve been out on your bike March what we’ve been up to.

Donna Tocci 8:35
Now we’ve discussed this, I’m a fair weather person, and it is cold here. So no, but my better half has been on his trainer and out on the new year’s ride and all of that. So I support that. And but, but no, I am very much a fair weather outside person. So we will will reiterate that but but good holidays. I actually not for this podcast, but I have been diving into my ancestry on ancestry.com. So that’s that’s a good insight activity for me for the winter. But But yeah, oh good. And hope everyone out there is having a good new year so far and a healthy one. And looking forward to doing more of these podcasts in the new year.

Carlton Reid 9:25
While I’m while I’ve got you both on and we started talking about medical stuff there, and this will interest people I guess, everywhere. But certainly where we are in the UK we have a socialised medical system where you don’t have to worry about crashing your bike or having nephrologists poking around you with a with a machine because it’s you know, it’s paid for by the state but well by people we pay for it via you know, very, very standard National Insurance. Now, what about in the US it is a worry that you mustn’t crash your bike because you’re going to have loads of injuries. So somebody like Tim, you know, he’s crashed lots and lots is that he’s just uninsurable? I mean, how do you guys cope with your medical system for, for what he’ll be quite routine? So Jim first, I guess?

Jim Moss 10:18
Well, the The fortunate thing in my case right now is, is that I’m over the age of 65. So the government, the medical programme, Medicare picked up 90% of it, and then I have a supplemental policy that picked up the rest. But for somebody like Tim, it would be purely private health care. And that would be something that he would pay a monthly premium for, that could be anywhere from, you know, $300, and he writes a big check to get out of the hospital, or, you know, $5,000 a month, and he writes a smaller check to the hospital. And, and, and for years, you know, because of my activities, I couldn’t afford to write the check to buy the, the insurance,

Carlton Reid 11:12
for skiing. So things are dangerous, you just can’t insure yourself. Yeah.

Jim Moss 11:17
In there, in the past, you filled out these forms, once they found that you took risks. And I was a pilot. And I’d been above 20,000 foot climbing, and I had skied out of bounds. And I was a rock climber. And, you know, I was quoted $15,000 a year with a $15,000 deductible one time.

Carlton Reid 11:42
So the crazy thing is, if you’re doing those kinds of activities, that means you’re going to be fitter than the average person less likely to keel over and die of a heart attack, I’m guessing than the average person because you’re getting out there, and you’re doing very active stuff. So if anything, the insurance companies should be like, supporting that, but they don’t operate out that they just operate on pure figures that they get, I guess,

Jim Moss 12:05
yes. And even more importantly, the law got passed, federal law got passed 2000 2002, something like that, that allows the health insurance company to exclude high risk activities. And so things like skiing, I mean, going up to your local ski hill, and skiing, those injuries can be excluded in your policy, if they notify you in advance, indoor rock climbing or going to a gym, all those can be excluded. So it’s something that you need to pay attention to, or you may have, you may think you’re covered, and you may have an injury and find out that you’re writing while you do the writing checks, or you’re dodging, you know, bill collectors. So if you say, and I’m not so sure cycling is covered in those things that is included, but mountain biking, I know can be so

Carlton Reid 13:06
yeah, I just know from like, when we’re getting travel insurance. Yeah, myself, for my son it yeah, these things are very often is great. And certainly racing of any sort, you’re always gonna be excluded from insurance, from those sort of things. But can I ask Donna, um, Jim’s gonna come in on this as well, but they’re just Do you think any of this that kind of, you know, thought in the back of your mind, well, I can’t afford to crash my bike, I’ll just drive to the shops, you know, I can’t afford to, you know, to go along the dirt road or on the road and have any sort of injury? I’m going to protect it in the car. So is that potentially just the the insurance the medical system you have in the US? Could that potentially be putting people off? Doing things that are not protected by steel exoskeleton?

Donna Tocci 13:56
Just speaking in a very general way, not for everybody? I don’t think so. Because I truly don’t think unless I’m so sorry, Tim, unless you’re someone like Tim, you don’t ever think you’re going to crash or you don’t ever think that you’re going to get hit by a car. You may say I’ve got my helmet on, maybe even, you know, jacket or something like that, or any other kind of protective items. But until it happens, most of us I it’s it’s human nature, right? That’s not going to happen to me. You know, and you’re not thinking about insurance. So Could someone think about it? Sure. But in general, I don’t think so. That’s just my opinion. I don’t know Jim, you could have another one.

Carlton Reid 14:45
So not knowing any names here. We’re not saying this is Tim. But if there was somebody liked him in another sport, maybe somebody maybe somebody who just scared for instance, or one of the adventurous board? Would they be thinking? I can’t do this? Because I’ve had 10, catastrophic excursions to the to the local hospital, and I can’t be insured anymore. And I can’t do this. So, so yes, for general people, they might it might not be but what if you’re like a super athletes? Would it stop them? In the gym? Or?

Donna Tocci 15:23
Sorry? If you’re a professional athlete that No, probably not, because you may have sponsors, you may have whatever, but you may be part of a team that has a team, you know, has, has a team policy, but I think if you were a general, you know, like me, who, goodness, you don’t ever want to see me out in the snow but and has had several, several accidents, you would probably have bills. And you know, just as Jim said, you know, you may be paying off monthly and think, you know, I’ve already had two spills and had to go to the hospital, and I’m still paying for them. So I think I’m gonna sit this season out.

Jim Moss 16:08
Yeah, once, once you’ve had one, you’re constantly thinking about the cost. On the second one. And let me even give you a better example, when I was working in the ski industry, we looked at pre employment, physical tests, not physician tests, but a physical trainer who athletic trainer type of person, who would see if the employees who are getting hired had ACLs or not. In the ski counties, there are hundreds, hundreds of people who have torn their ACLs can get around fine and can afford to get them fixed. Because it’s just too expensive. And they don’t have any health insurance. And so we were testing because what would happen is they come on board, they get a ski job. And three weeks into the season, they would have a fall and workers comp, you know, the health insurance, if you’re employed would pay for your ACL surgery. And so that was a I mean, it was you call it a scam. But it’s the simple fact that, you know, people if they don’t have the insurance, even if they do have the insurance, they don’t have enough money to pay the deductibles their share of insurance. So that

Carlton Reid 17:39
yes, you’re sort of saying that if you if you get enough of these, say crashes or injuries, then in effect, you you’ll be uninsured. For the insurance. All right. So you’re uninsured, you’re going out on the hill, you’re doing whatever thing you’re doing in the full knowledge that if you crash the next time you’re bankrupt,

Jim Moss 17:57
yep. The number one reason why people individuals file bankruptcy in the United States is medical records. Number one reason you know, they get injured somehow tax. Excuse me. You said

Donna Tocci 18:12
you’re full of fun facts. That’s the number one.

Jim Moss 18:18
When am I not full of fun facts?

Donna Tocci 18:21
That’s the sad one, though, you know, like, that’s just sad.

Carlton Reid 18:27
So we are having this to live there is no club asking that is because it is a live discussion in the UK at the moment because our health service for political reasons is being is falling down. And an awful lot of the podium call it conspiracy theories. I think just the very big worries that were one of the reasons is because an awful lot of politically well connected people want to actually have an American medical system. And it’s just it always has surprised me that that’s where you’d want to go because what Jim was saying there about the bankruptcies, you know, these things are often brought up as scare stories, but they’re not scare stories. They’re kind of they’re out there. They’re real. And you guys are crazy.

Jim Moss 19:12
You know, I

Donna Tocci 19:15
for a lot of reason.

Carlton Reid 19:17
Yeah, they are scare stories. And I think the people who are pushing to have our medical system are those that are not looking at the financial, personal financial costs, either because they have not understood them, or they have enough money, it doesn’t matter to them.

Donna Tocci 19:39
Or they have they are invested in an insurance type company, they’re going to start you know,

Carlton Reid 19:49
it’s also a libertarian type of thing like the, you know, the government, the government or whatever you want to say it as they shouldn’t have a say A in such a thing that I don’t understand that but that seems to be a thing?

Jim Moss 20:07
Well, it’s, I think that you could probably find somebody that would call themselves every type of political name, who is for and or against every health insurance opportunity the United States is currently looking at or has looked at. In the United States nowadays, I think that the political designation we attach to somebody’s not based on how they really think, but how they want to be perceived. So, you know, it’s okay. Yeah, it’s it. I mean, yes, Libertarian, the government should stay out of my life, until they look at the cost of triple bypass, you know, liberal, we should take care of everybody, until they realise how many people really, really are sick, conservative, and that no more of my money should go to take care of anybody else. But me. You know, whatever, whatever your opinion is, you’re welcome to it. I took an oath to defend it. But it’s scary. I mean, I have the most phenomenal policy supplemental policy. And it was based here again, on a fluke, I have taught part time in the State College, school education system for years, and I qualify because of that, for what’s called pierra, public employee retirement account health insurance. And it’s unbelievable. So 18 years teaching one course a year qualified me for that. And I have this supplemental policy. That’s just, I mean, it’s everyone who I know is just amazed at it. It’s it’s fantastic. You know, and here, again, a fluke, a fluke found this issue and a fluke paid for it.

Carlton Reid 22:09
So we were straying. I guess for some people, we’re straying way too far into politics, recycling. Yeah. But before we go any further, I would like to invest pass on I know, Jamie already responded to it. But we have had a message from Tim. And he said he couldn’t couldn’t make it on the recording today. Unfortunately, he’s had an utterly sleepless night due to, as you can imagine, from what we were discussing before injury issues, and he says he’s feeling really way, way, way sub PA. So hopefully, we’ll get him back on a future show. And he can talk about his latest injury so we can add it to him to the archive. Or, you know, by all means, Google on the hyphen spokesman.com. For Tim Jackson’s many, many escapades where he talked about his crashes, his his falls, and his track injuries, and all sorts of stuff like that.

Donna Tocci 23:05
And I do have to say, he’s a good healer, and we’re thankful for that. Yes.

Carlton Reid 23:10
He’s always back on his bikes. He’s like he has these major crashes. But there he goes. He’s back on his bike within a couple of weeks. And normally he does Jim doesn’t the use case images of him on the trainer first. So good thing to have.

Jim Moss 23:23
Yeah, he posts them from the hospital. That’s what blows me away. I couldn’t, I didn’t even know how to get my thumbs to work, let alone a phone and yet he’s posting pictures laying in bed all drugged up. So he is at a person.

Carlton Reid 23:41
And before we do go on to talk about some topics, I would like to bring David in here just to segue into a very brief commercial break.

David Bernstein 23:52
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast, and of course, the spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles, the good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for Tern is to make sure that your ride is safe, and worryfree. And that’s why Tern works with industry leading third party testing labs like EFBE, and builds it bikes around Bosch ebike systems which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So, before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded and perhaps with the loved ones behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame and the rigours of the road. For more information, visit www.ternbicycles.com to learn more. And now back to the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 25:01
We are back with the first show of 2023. And we are with Donna. And we are with Jim. And we had a message even from our buddy who falls off his bike blogs can. Now now, in the show notes when we discussed what we’re going to talk about on the show, we put names on and and we say you should go read this. And one of the pieces that Jim flagged up, and it was also I’d seen on social media a lot. And it was a good time for this particular piece to go online. So it’s by Gloria Liu. And it’s in it’s in bicycling.com. I’m assuming it was in the magazine as well, it might not have been made to go online. But anyway, it’s in the health and nutrition section section and it just says, Does cycling have a drinking problem? And now I haven’t done a word count, but it’s a massive, massive article. It’s not just like a quick slug bear at all. It’s huge. And Tim was actually was on social media was saying he actually had we don’t think he’s in the piece, but he think we think he might have contributed. Cuz he’s teetotal isn’t me, Donna isn’t that he’s like eight years he’s been? That’s what he says on social media. Yeah,

Donna Tocci 26:22
yes, he has. He says here on his LinkedIn posts, if anyone wants to read it.

Carlton Reid 26:27
LinkedIn, I was wondering, okay,

Donna Tocci 26:29
is that he spoke with Gloria Liu for this piece. Since I’ve been sober for more than eight years now and have first hand experience with both sides of the good slash bad alcohol coin. Kudos to Bicycling magazine for allowing Gloria the column space for this article. Yeah.

Jim Moss 26:46
It’s it’s a massive article she just dwells, dives into every aspect of it. And right,

Carlton Reid 26:54
Jan? And Jan first. I mean, when when was actually published, I mean, I’m assuming that was kind of like timed for a time where you might have more alcohol, and then even more alcohol than you would have, normally. But whenever an article has a name for this phenomenon, but whenever a magazine or newspaper has any headline, with a question mark, you can invariably just say, No, you know, that’s the answer to that generally. And but in this particular case, do we think Cycling has a drinking problem, Donna?

Donna Tocci 27:32
For a lot of group rides, and things like that they do end with a couple of beers. Is that a problem? Maybe. I know, when I was going to Interbike in Vegas, I was I was tend to hang out with a lot of folks, including a lot of bike messengers, and there was a lot of drinking, but that was kind of the culture. And again, culture equal problem question. So, you know, it could be the same with runners as well, which is an industry that I am very well in ingrained in, you go out for a group run, you come back, you have a couple beers. You do pub crawl runs. So it is definitely there and

Carlton Reid 28:20
had done a how different is that? You said mentioned running? How different is that to? Just at the end of a workday? You do exactly the same with it. Your your your fellow workers. So I was wondering how different might that be from just basical social stuff. So this is just a this is an issue? It’s an issue for every single sector of society, not just a small subset of cyclist?

Donna Tocci 28:50
Yeah, and the article is talking about that there. You know, to quote this, it’s in the bike shops where customers steal tip mechanics and six packs. It’s an industry trade shows where people are drinking in their booths at cyclocross races, gravel races, where aid stations offer whiskey shots. Okay, that’s me, but but, so maybe, you know, she’s talking about much more part of not just what I was talking about that social piece after we’ll go have a beer after a run or a ride that is usually in her in currency and in marketing and all of that, and that would make it very different than, hey, let’s go grab a beer after work. That’s, you know, to equate it to, you know, a, you know, a job in an office or something like that, where, hey, you wrote a great byline, here’s a beer, we’re not going to pay you for it. That doesn’t make any sense. So yeah, I think it’s it’s ingrained Is it a problem? Again, question mark. Jim, you’re saying something probably sure

Jim Moss 30:05
you want a good ski tune, you bring a six pack with you. You want a good bike tune, you take a six pack with you? Well, in my case, since I’ve already worked on the bike, it usually takes a case. But it’s just part of the outdoor industry. I knew one ski tuner who I mean, and this guy was one of the best in the world, who didn’t shrink the beer that one gave him and would just stack it up. And then at the end of the ski season, he and his friends would go camping for a week. And they would have a pallet full of beer to drink. Oh, I mean, literally, that’s how much beer he was tipped. But he was smart enough that he, you know, shared it. So is it any more any less, I do drink more when I’m with friends, I don’t drink that much at home by myself. But I don’t drink that much anyway, two to four drinks a month. You know, and that can be who knows why shifted to that. But But I don’t think Cycling has any more of a problem other than one small aspect. And that sponsorship, everybody goes someplace after an activity. And bars are the number one place because we can talk, you know, we, we could go to a library, but then we’d have to sit, sit and look at each other. You know, we could go to a park. But nobody’s going to bring us food. So yeah, bars are the place we go because they offer everything we want to do at the end of activities. But we have sponsorships in cycling. If you look at the back of a jersey that says you know or order the front, nine times out of 10. And I count both of these. There’s a brewery and there’s a law firm. The brewery wants you to stop by after a ride and the law firm wants you to call him if you get hit by a car. Cracks me up. And I’m putting on cycling events now. And the first thing we get a list of is what brewery or what you know, liquor distributor, whoever can we get to give us money? Because they want cyclists they they want softball players though? They want runners, they want all those people because probably because of the activity, they can drink more with less issues? I don’t know, maybe? Or maybe they just do drink more. Is it a process?

Carlton Reid 32:45
I mean, most most of the article seems to I mean, it does mention other forms of alcohol. But it is basically about beer, which almost has its self limiting aspect to it, you get lots of shots, you know, you don’t you’re not going to pay for for much after that. But you have quite a few beers, and you’re going to be up putting that out. And that’s going to take your time away from that alcohol. So it’s just a beer is that less of a problem than say, spirits,

Jim Moss 33:15
beer, that several studies and at least one book have proved, is the reason why we exist. You know, since water was going to kill us in the Middle Ages, and before that beer allowed us to survive. So I mean, yeah, just beer does it, you know, contain the plague or whatever.

Carlton Reid 33:39
But I mean, second thing, cyclists tend to be certainly a certain level of cyclists, they tend to be pretty much fitness. certainly aware, and they will know the damage that alcohol can do. So we’ll self limit and you know, they’re not going to be the 10 I’m assuming here. And I’m asking the questions, not assuming I’m asking questions. Would that not just be you’re not gonna have such a natural problem because Cypress or fitness freaks and they’ll just limit

Jim Moss 34:05
but they also limit carbs. And they limit you know, protein and they limit sugars, they limit everything. You know, it’s you know, and if they if they have more beer than whatever, they’re going to limit something else. If they have a doughnut in the morning, they may have less beer in the evening. So so it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what the name of the carrier is. What matters is what is inside, you know that you put in your mouth. Right sugar is 25 times more addicting than cocaine. Okay, I can have a doughnut or I can do a snort. What

Carlton Reid 34:48
does cycling have a cake problem? Right? You know when we can’t get enough of that cake? Right?

Donna Tocci 34:56
I have a cake problem.

I would say Yeah, right. But, you know, so I’m looking through this article and they’re talking about, you know, the bike scene and, and bike mechanics, being women and feeling pressure to be one of the guys and go out and drink and get drunk. And and I could see that. But to your point, would that be in any other industry as well, I don’t know. And but there is a, there is a person here talks about a cycling team out in Kansas City that they don’t go for drinks after ride, like because of the health reasons, just as you’re talking about people gain weight, cognitive, you know, all of that hurts their health. So the article really does go back and forth a little bit on you know, that, yes. And, you know, cardiovascular disease and heart failure and stroke, and you know, nobody, nobody needs that. So, so it’s interesting, but I also wonder, you know, is it is it the younger group, as well, you know, when you’re trying to make a name for yourself, so you’re going out and you’re doing all of these things? I don’t know. But I do think that if you are prone to have a problem that just as you said, Carlton, it, you could find it anywhere. You can find it in running, I know at the end of races, there’s beer gardens, there’s, you know, we just we don’t go to a pub, you go to a quote unquote, beer garden, because it’s right there at the finish line. You don’t even have to go anywhere for it. So I think if you’re, if you’re prone to have a problem, or be on the verge of having a problem, yes, there but you could find that anywhere.

Jim Moss 36:49
Yeah, post ride post run. spaghetti dinners are more dangerous for me. I mean, first of all, it’s bad piece.

Carlton Reid 36:59
The piece mentions, you know, checked historian so she didn’t come to me. And, and that’s my views on this as a cycling historian. I would have told her one thing, and that is in Germany. There’s a drink called shandy is no, like a mix between lemonade and beer. What would you call that?

Donna Tocci 37:21
Euugh!

Jim Moss 37:22
Yuk!

Carlton Reid 37:23
That’s really well, that’s a standard drink across in here in Europe. But it’s called Shandy. So if you’d ask for it in a public basically limits your your amount of alcohol, so you might have a full pint. But half it’s party more. It’s gonna be lemonade, and it’s quite sweet drink. Well in Germany, that’s called Radler. In there are any German speakers in the audience, they will know that Radler actually means cyclist. So the German word for diluted beer is cyclist and where that came from was there was a there’s many places where it’s attributed to but it’s basically 1870s 1880s When Radler as a drink as a kind of drink first appeared in Germany with that name. And it was meant to be I think it’s Bavaria, where bar which was attracting lots and lots of cyclists in the 1870s. You know, everybody’s on their bikes going out to places and drinking. And the Publican had ran out or was running very low, low on beer. And so we knew those 1000s and 1000s of cyclists were going to be appearing that day. So he told his staff, well dilute it with lemonade. And they did this. And the cyclists loved it because it wasn’t a full beer. It was just half a beer, which meant they could drink a bit more and be hydrated. And so the German word for this particular drink, which is a phenomenally popular drink, everywhere in Europe, you know, Snady stroke Radler is bicyclist cyclist. So there you go. There’s a historian that could have actually contributed to this this this particular article.

Jim Moss 39:08
Well, here in the United States, we would call it a softball. It’s when the United States you know, something was developed because groups of people came in we call it a softball.

Carlton Reid 39:22
I mean, I’m spell that incident ball as the ball.

Jim Moss 39:29
Softball is, you know what we all play. You wait until at least the beginning of the first inning to have a beer. You don’t wait till you get done at the end of the game to go to a pub, you start drinking when the game starts. On some cases, there are lots of serious softball players don’t want to get you know cards and letters. But there’s all sorts of sports that drink and this one just got named after cycling because the that’s just coming into town. If it were trapped leads coming through, they’d probably have that, you know, word for an awful concoction of lemonade and beer.

Carlton Reid 40:11
It’s nice, you should try it.

Donna Tocci 40:14
Well, in the article, she says that a 2017 report by sponsorship monitor Ieg estimated that US alcohol companies spent 74% of their sponsorship dollars on sports and not only mainstream spectator sports like football, but also participant participatory events, like five K’s triathlons and cycling races. So, so, Jim, you know, you’re right. The, the example of the the jersey? No, no, that is that that’s true. So yeah, I interesting. It’s a great article. And I think that people should, should read it and see, you know, what, what their thoughts are about this? And but it’s you pay your Do you pay your bike mechanic in in cases of beer, or 12 packs or six pack?

Carlton Reid 41:08
And maybe bike mechanics should be asked? Would you rather have the cash?

Jim Moss 41:10
Yeah. Yeah. And maybe you should ask, How much do you drink? You know, do you think you have a drinking problem? Should I be contributing to this drinking problem? You know, when when you get invited to have a beer at the end of the day, and you watch the other mechanics work on bikes with a beer next to him? Are they having one before they go home? Are they having six before they go home? When you see that

Carlton Reid 41:42
post that post activity, right? Yeah, in skiing gym, which is your skier, it’s a relatively strong culture to have alcohol in the middle of the day, perhaps when you’re still on the slope, you know, gluwein and all this kind of stuff. Now, I’ve also found that crazy, you know, skiing is hard enough, and I’m going to equate cycling, isn’t it? These are hard enough activities to do sober. Nevermind, a little bit drunk. So skiing while inebriated seems to me to be absolutely crazy. Yet, it does seem to be a cultural thing where you will have alcohol on the slope. Oh, it’s

Jim Moss 42:18
it is in skiing, it’s even worse. And I can give you a couple quick examples. One in Colorado, it’s against the law to ride a ski lift, intoxicated, and yet, we sell beer and wine and drinks at mid mountain and top of the mountain restaurants at every resort in Colorado. So you can’t get on the lift drunk, but you can use the lift to get up and get drunk. Right and it is a an absolute defence. If you are loaded to any ski injury lawsuit you may have, you don’t you won’t get a dime. And in the 70s and 80s, you knew that this guy was a great skier because he carried his own Bota bag, you know, the little fake Italian bags, leather outside that carried wine. And you would ski down the hill. And you know how good of a skier you were was based on how far away you could shoot the wine from your boater bag into your mouth and share with your friends. And, you know, somehow it got refilled at the bottom of the hill and you went back up again.

Carlton Reid 43:29
So this is where I’m kind of go with it is that I don’t think this is a cycling problem. The headline is de cycling have the problem. No, it’s society has the problem. And you can link you can go to lots of activities where people are probably being tipped with with six packs. And people are drinking during the the downtime during lunch before they carry on doing that activity skiing being I would say as a prime example because it is so embedded the alcohol in it really, really embedded in that particular activity. So I’m just saying yeah, cycling isn’t special here. Right? Society is doing and more importantly, cycling.

Jim Moss 44:10
Yeah, whatever the sport is not the sport. It’s the individual. Okay, if you is a cyclist or softball player or a skier or a professional tiddlywinks player, need to figure out what your relationship with alcohol is and whether or not that’s good or bad.

Carlton Reid 44:29
I’ll come in today in pairs. So why would you do a incredibly dangerous activity like skiing or cycling in any way impaired? Why would you do that? Because you

Jim Moss 44:41
don’t have enough guts to do it sober.

Donna Tocci 44:43
Well, you’re saying for you, you truly have the disease. You have a problem? Yeah. And so maybe what we can all do as part of the site. The sports industry, if you will, is give people the choice right if you want to tip your bike mechanic, give him you know, 10 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever or her or them and let them decide how they want to spend it. If they want to go and buy, you know, a six year for the rest of the mechanics, then they can do that. And

Carlton Reid 45:16
yeah, talking about tipping again, this is out of my comfort zone.

Donna Tocci 45:18
Okay, so sorry. But, but also, you know, and same thing with events, you know, so if you’re gonna have a quote unquote beer garden at the end of an event, and you’re giving away Hey, you get, you know, a nice event pint glass with your beer, we’ll give the pint glass if somebody orders a seltzer water to write, you know, so make it more inclusive. And give people that choice. And if somebody really is struggling, because they have that that disease or they’re on the borderline, make it easier for them to say no.

Carlton Reid 45:57
But might not also be easy to say no, if there is no availability. So what Jim was saying there was if you’ve got mid station and at the top if you’ve got copious amounts of alcohol, isn’t that a bit crazy? Should we not be limiting it a bit more always that nanny state and you shouldn’t be limiting it. It should be up to individuals.

Jim Moss 46:18
Now we’re back to a political discussion. I’m not going to touch that one.

Carlton Reid 46:26
Nope. Okay.

Donna Tocci 46:28
And I think we need Tim I think we need him for a further discussion on this. And maybe we have this conversation again, or a similar conversation when we can have Tim for a little different perspective.

Carlton Reid 46:42
I’ve not done this event, but there is an event. I mean, it’s talked about, you know, hand hand ups, you know, in cycle races and stuff. And we have something similar. There’s an event or there used to be an event, I don’t think it’s run now, there used to be an event called the Real Ale Wobble. And that was a mountain bike event, from way back in the 80s. It’s a very old event. And I’ve never actually done it, but I’ve been to the place where it’s done it and it’s very small place in mid Wales. And it’s basically a pub in a pub a publican started this off. And it’s basically you, you start this race, and every checkpoint, there is a real ale, to to imbibe. And then clearly by the end of this, you’re probably not able to balance on your bike much anymore. So clearly, that was a that was an event that was specifically tying cycling, and the the physical action of drinking while you were cycling, that may be similar to the handout. In cyclocross,

Jim Moss 47:45
we have dozens of those around here. There’s one where and motorcyclists are big on this one, but I’ve seen it in cycling now, where you go to each bar, hand you a card from a deck, and you have a beer, and then you hop on your motorcycle, you hop on your bike, you go to the next

Carlton Reid 48:00
motorcycle, your motorcycle, you mean motorcycle, that’s a that’s a, that’s a vehicle that goes on public highways, right? Can you possibly have that, oh, it’s

Jim Moss 48:10
every day. And at the end of the run, you may have gone to 10 bars, and you take your 10 Playing cards and come up with the best poker hand that you can figure out after X number of beers on a bicycle or on a whatever, and I’ve done it on bikes, it’s a phenomenal game. Especially if you can win a couple 100 bucks with your poker hand

Carlton Reid 48:35
to discuss that this is potentially a social, you know, across many different sectors. But what’s what’s taken, you know, the driving under the influence has been made socially unacceptable, whereas in the 70s, you know, it was acceptable to drink and then get into it, okay, we’ve made it socially unacceptable. So is this something that has to happen in drinking, while taking part in sporting events should also become that’s just socially unacceptable, that’s just, we don’t have to be woke or anti woke about this. This is just society will eventually say that that’s not a sensible thing to be doing. And we won’t do that anymore. In the same way that you know, driving under the influence is also seen in that kind of, you know, you can crazy to do this category,

Jim Moss 49:22
but it won’t because it became socially unacceptable here in the United States, because of the damage to other people. In in, in cycling, you know, I mean, you could crash into another cyclists. But if you crash into a car or a tree, you’re the one that’s going to get injured so nobody cares. It won’t create any society woes or backlash.

Carlton Reid 49:51
Donna?

Donna Tocci 49:54
I don’t know that nobody cares.

Jim Moss 49:58
The people that Who check you into the hospital care?

Donna Tocci 50:02
Yeah, but think about it too. So if you’re, you know, in Carlton’s example of going from, you know, L to L, and, and the name is, you know, expects you to be wobbly at the end, right the room. In some cases, those people are going to pack their bike into a car and then drive. Right. And so, you know, if you go to this real ale wobble or any other, you know, let’s ride from bar to bar to bar and have drinks, or drink after a mountain bike ride on a Sunday, most of those people are going to get in cars. And not great

Jim Moss 50:46
that transition from a bicycle to a car is where it goes from fun activity. normal activity, socially acceptable activity to a non socially criminal activity. I guess you can get a you can lose your driver’s licence here in Colorado for riding a bicycle drunk. Yeah, is your driver’s licence? Yes. And we have bicycle

drunk. And you can lose your driver’s licence for riding a horse drunk. And we

Carlton Reid 51:25
had I think many jurisdictions around the world will will have pretty similar if you have a driving licence, you can have it taken away if you’re caught drunk, or another form of transport

Jim Moss 51:35
on a horse. I, that one’s the one that stretched me. So anyway, and we have a case, we have a case where a guy was convicted, and the appellate court upheld it. And both riding a horse drunk and riding a bicycle drunk. So

Carlton Reid 51:48
there is of course, these jokes. Like cartoons in there often that these are like 1890s and early cartoons, but they’re basically often brought out when driverless cars I talked about because we’ve had driverless cars in effect for a long time, because farmers when they’d get drunk on the with their horses, they would just get in the back of their cart, and the horse would know exactly where it had to go. So you had a driverless car back in the 1890s. Just because the your horse knew exactly where home was. And you could just get in drunk and off, it would go.

Donna Tocci 52:24
Okay, I just looked it up. Because Google knows everything. In my state, it is not illegal and does not have Oui conviction consequences to drunk or drug impaired biking. Really, it is a terribly reckless thing to do is what? Yeah, so

Jim Moss 52:45
if you want to ride your horse, yeah, go to Connecticut. Massachusetts, Massachusetts. scuze. me the best.

Carlton Reid 52:51
So definitely. Yeah, yeah, one of the old ways of finding it if somebody is drunk, so a police officer, before that you have breathalysers that we’ll be just asking them to ride on site. So walking in a straight line. Whereas on a bike, if you’re drunk, if you’re really drunk, surely you’re gonna fall off. If you are able to actually balance a bike and go in a reasonably straight line, you can’t be that drunk. Whereas this is all similar advocate stuff here. I’m not advocating any of this. But if you get into a car, it’s somehow different in that your cocoon, possibly very, very warm. You have music, you have all these distractions. So you shouldn’t be driving while drunk. But cycling while drunk is somehow kind of okay, because the very fact you are staying upright means you’re not actually that drunk. What do we think about that?

Jim Moss 53:44
I agree with you, but boy, are we gonna get cards and letters? And I’m sure I mean, we have all met in our life. Somebody who is constantly loaded. You know, who I was sitting in the courtroom one time talking to the sheriff who’s there, you know, as the guard who said, Yeah, we had to call flight for life because a guy blew a point five, three, on a breathalyser when he got brought in.

Carlton Reid 54:17
point that’s high, I’m assuming

Jim Moss 54:19
Oh, that’s five times higher than Well, point. Oh, eight is against the law to drive this guy blue. 8.53. That’s That’s mean. That means he is drunk his entire existence. You can blow that much unless you’re you’re walking around and a point two, which is, which most people be unconscious of point two.

Donna Tocci 54:44
Yeah, I was gonna say how was he even alive? Right.

Jim Moss 54:47
And that’s why they call flight for life. You know, they didn’t take UAV you know, he was going to live. And so but there’s those people out there. They just wake up, loaded and maintain that. So they could probably ride a bike for a while. But they’re the exception to the rule. And for a cyclists yeah for cyclists is seriously a cyclist he can’t ride a bike loaded. But he does provide entertainment and YouTube videos or he Tiktok videos.

Carlton Reid 55:18
Mm hmm. See, when you get that wobble or go back to the word wobble, you’ve, it’s kind of a death spiral, you’re gonna fall off your bike, where do you see drunk people, but they’re actually keeping a straight line when they are reasonably straight line when they’re riding because as soon as you start that wobble, that wobble doesn’t end anything else apart from nine times out of 10 a crash, although the drunk cyclist basically cures themselves because they crash whereas a drunk motorist, you know, can actually keep going.

Jim Moss 55:49
Although there is a new bike that I just saw press release about that won’t crash the three wheel? No, no, a three wheeler, two wheel electric bike that has, you know, a pewter that keeps it upright. So now you can be totally Blotto. And, yeah, so

Carlton Reid 56:05
it’ll get you back.

Donna Tocci 56:07
I mean, the flip side of that is that’s more enabling.

Jim Moss 56:12
Sure. So isn’t that

Donna Tocci 56:15
or maybe makes the case for the cycling have a drinking problem if somebody is creating a bike to stay upright? If you can’t, yourself? But But

Carlton Reid 56:24
wouldn’t that just be for people with balances us in general, rather than drunk people with balances?

Jim Moss 56:29
Sure, we always create. So So beer was created, and ended up being a lifesaver, because you could drink beer and not die of some disease. That’s how to

Carlton Reid 56:42
boil water. Why

Jim Moss 56:45
didn’t you know? But they didn’t know about, we’d

Carlton Reid 56:48
have to put hops in it. And you’d have to put barley in it, you could just boil the water, but they

Jim Moss 56:53
didn’t know that in the 1500s of 1300s. That, you know,

Carlton Reid 56:57
it’s accidental just that the beer being healthy is just Well, yeah. Boiling is doing it. Right.

Jim Moss 57:03
It just happened. They didn’t know that there were germs. They just knew that people who drank beer seem to live. And so everything in life can also be turned into an addiction a problem. You know, rock climbing evolved into bungee jumping, involved into static jumping. And I had a friend die because you know, static jumping, meaning your rope does not stretch. And you take this great big swinging jump, and you know it’s harnessed. Right?

Carlton Reid 57:41
Hey, yay.

Jim Moss 57:43
It’s sort of you find videos on it happens a lot in Utah, where you have great big cliffs and arches and you can take this giant swing underneath an arch.

Carlton Reid 57:55
Does that do amazing things to your whole body when you hit that?

Jim Moss 58:00
Well, you try and do it in such a way that you curve into that, you know, point of, you know, no more stretch. And I’ve not seen a video of anyone over the age of 35 doing it

Carlton Reid 58:17
for obvious reasons. Yeah.

Jim Moss 58:18
I mean, it’s such a big thing in the state of Utah that the attorney for the Utah State Lands attorney and I became friends because it became an issue then he finally got to the point to say look if they want to died, let them die. So anything can become a problem. You know, what was used to get out of to cross the canyon to get to better lands to grow food evolved into rock climbing.

Carlton Reid 58:53
Jim, have you still on the hell site that is Twitter? Are you are you migrating to Mastodon what you

Jim Moss 58:59
I’m on Mastodon and I’m on Twitter and I’m on stimuli. I’m not even sure what mass I mean, Mastodon I’m learning stimuli. I’m not even sure what I’m doing there. But I thought I would try them all because I wanted to grab recreation law. Yeah. To hold on mice. Yeah, yeah. And so I’m posting to it. The best way to find me is recreation-law,

Carlton Reid 59:24
and Donna. So I still see you on Twitter and I have got a mastodon but I really don’t think I’ve done one one posting. I’m pretty poor. That’s why I’m sticking with the health side. Are you sticking with the hellsite? What are you what are your thoughts on that?

Donna Tocci 59:39
For now? Yes. So you can find me on Twitter at DonnaTocci and also on Instagram.

Carlton Reid 59:47
So thank you ever so much for being on today’s show. And Jim, and as I said, this has been show 319 And the next episode because this was this is like Can I show that almost shouldn’t be here because I did say in the last episode that the next show will be with somebody who’s talking to Critical Mass person who uses the world of song to actually get across his message about getting more people on bikes so that will be the next episode rather than this. This this interim episode talking about kidneys and literally were the only subject to talk about was my kidneys and so it’s been excellent for the our first show of the year. So next episode will be critical mass, but meanwhile, get out there and ride

22nd December 2022

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 317: Masterplanning Milan: Real Estate Developer Reshaping the City With Active Travel

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Stefano Corbella, Sustainability Officer, COIMA, Milan

TOPICS: Parking Minimums, Forests In the Sky and Dutch-style cyclist roundabouts in Milan

LINKS:

COIMA REAL ESTATE, MILAN: https://www.coima.com/en/homepage

BOSCO VERTICALE: https://www.coima.com/en/media/press-releases/bosco-verticale-named-one-of-the-worlds-50-most-iconic-skyscrapers-of-the

DUTCH-STYLE ROUNDABOUT: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/a-modern-amsterdam-roundabout/

CYCLOPS JUNCTION: https://cities-today.com/uks-first-cyclops-junction-opens-in-manchester-to-boost-bike-safety/

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 317 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. The show was engineered on Thursday 22nd of December 2022.

David Bernstein 0:27
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1.01
In the previous episode, I had a coffee and a cycle-related chat in the new Eroica cafe in downtown Milam. I’m Carlton Reid, and apologies for my croaky voice—I was at a Newcastle United match last night and may have shouted a wee bit. Anyway, the visit to Milan was a research trip to visit Porto Nueva, a formerly neglected part of the city, but which has been transformed by urban developers such as COIMA. The most famous part of this regeneration project is COIMA-commissioned Bosco Verticalle, or vertical forest, two high rise apartment buildings covered in trees and plants. I was part of a study group given a quick and inspirational tour of the tallest of these towers, and from near the top, I could see some of Milan’s new protected cycleways. I also spotted a Dutch-style roundabout and a Cyclops-style staggered road junction on a busy arterial. Later, I interviewed COIMA-sustainability officer Stefano Corbella at this junction, and then we walked through an urban park built over another arterial and chatted about the changing face of Milan and how private developers work with cities on increasing the number of active travel journeys.

Carlton Reid 2:16
Stefano, where are we are we are we in Milan right now overlooking this road? What is this road?

Stefano Corbella 2:43
This is Via Melchiorre Gioia, one of the main streets that connects the outskirts of Northern Milan, to the to the city centre going towards the Brera neighbourhood, one of the most historic and nice

neighbourhoods in Milan.

Carlton Reid 3:04
So, we’re on a pedestrian bridge over the road, yeah, flanked by each side by bike paths, how new are those bike paths here?

Stefano Corbella 3:13
Yeah, those bike lanes we developed as part of the Porta Nuova development.

There was nothing at all before we started working on the project. And we added approximately four kilometres of cycling path integrated with later other development that the city of Milan is done.

Carlton Reid 3:38
So this road was wider here. So there was more lanes for cars. And you’ve taken one lane away.

Given to the cyclists and the pedestrians?

Stefano Corbella 3:48
Exactly, exactly. And this was part of the bigger master plan that connected the four neighbourhoods and around because the Porta Nuova project stands for about one kilometres in length. And for a total of 190,000 square metre of total masterplan, which include the park and so on. So the it was important for us to create

a connection for pedestrian cycling, separated by, by design with from the vehicle or vehicle or roads.

Carlton Reid 4:25
So we’re not just walking past where you work. For COIMA. You’re the sustainability officer. Founded in 1974,

which is the developer of a number of plots, projects in Milan, but we are now walking through

into the park. So what’s this park?

Stefano Corbella 4:46
This is BAM, Biblioteca degli Alberi di Milano, is a park that we developed on behalf of the city of Milan and then now we manage to an agreement with the city and we take care about

Security, maintenance, but also and most important cultural activity and culture activation in in our neighbourhood.

Carlton Reid 5:10
And we are higher than road level here.

Stefano Corbella 5:14
Exactly.

Carlton Reid 5:14
So this is on stilts this is your this has been built up above the arterial road or the rest of the road.

Stefano Corbella 5:21
Yeah, on top of the road. Yeah, exactly one of the key issues of this master plan. And the challenges that we face when we started the design was the fact that the Melchiorre Gioia, and Via Della Liberazione were cutting in four corner it was to street just cut the, the entire site in the middle. So in order to make the public spaces more appealing, more quality to give quality spaces, we lift everything up about six metre. And we work with the landscaper to gently make the landscaper not even perceiving these six metre differences between ease or a neighbourhood that is down there with the Bosco Verticale. And the Piazza Gae Aulenti, that is here where we are walking at the moment.

Carlton Reid 6:16
So describe because this is the famous one that many people will have seen photographs of I’m sure what we can see now the as you said at the Bosco Verticale, so what is what is this?

Stefano Corbella 6:25
it’s

Bosco Verticale is a residential development, there are two towers, which we design with the I think the smart idea and interesting idea to implement trees, but I mean real trees, we have trees, about four metre high, five metre high in the balcony of the, of the,

design because it was nothing new in some ways because there are plenty of green spaces on balcony but this scale that we put into this project and the size of the trees that was the you know the the things that was pretty new.

Carlton Reid 7:28
Was it 2015 when it was finished?

Stefano Corbella 7:30
Yes, pretty much.

Carlton Reid 7:32
And then no well now what so we won’t be hearing the the car noise any more because it’s it’s as you say six metres below us. Yeah. So come into a very modern Deluxe office complexes are parked over that way but this is still a very vibrant space Yes 6pm at night.

But tell me what this was before before that obviously the road is here. But now what is this whole area what was it?

Stefano Corbella 8:02
It was a former railway yard. It was used in the beginning of the 19th century, then the train line was pushed back a little better. And but the area was left there for decades now with the abandoned railway with the you know nothing. They’re only you know, ground polluted by you know, the things that happen in in a railway and in the municipality of Milan and other developers try to develop the area for decades until a back in 2004, 2005 COIMA with the joint venture of investor started the development of Porta Nuova and with the with the entire site in one go, no and that was pretty amazing because finally, the project succeeded. We have been lucky that different mayor of Milan that pass through the time that we build everything

promoted the site promoted the development so we have been able to complete the project in fairly good time and at the end that we completed.

Carlton Reid 9:21
So your colleague Kelly in one of her talks of the day was talking about how when Isola when that was like reconnected yeah so you could you could then walk across from Yeah, in fact the park to go across you no longer had to go across the railway line or the busy road. That was a very joyous.

Stefano Corbella 9:39
Absolutely. Isola in the Italian word and in English is highlands and highlands because was surrounded by the former railway yard. And in order to get there from the city centre was a kind of a journey because you have to go through the railway. You have to

a tunnel within the train. So it was not an easy travel despite the distance from each other and Brera it few 100 metres but was completely blocked by the former railway yard. So when we open up the Piazza Gae Aulenti, and we have been able to connect it through that passage was was a kind of

joy moment for the residents of Isola.

Carlton Reid 10:32
And the bike infrastructure, the bike paths that are there now, were they planned originally or was this a later addition?

Stefano Corbella 10:39
No, no, it was all planned was all planned all the pathway. The design of the landscape was planned since the beginning. We build up in in phases, but there was a part of the plan that works, actually, after the project in the city of Milan also increased the connection further, because they

they find out that that was a good connection through Isola and the city centre.

Carlton Reid 11:11
So do you monitor as a developer do you monitor how many people are arriving by car, how many people arriving by metra, because we are surrounded by public transport here.

Stefano Corbella 11:22
Yeah, yeah.

Carlton Reid 11:23
And how people many by bicycle? Foot?

Stefano Corbella 11:25
Yeah, we we have a close monitoring of the pedestrian footfall, which has now reached more than 10 million people here in the Piazza Gae Aulenti. We are working to increase that footfall to 15 millions in the next few years by

addressing the cultural events here, the leisure

people enjoy to live in Porta Nuova and better it is because make the site more attractive and more livable and so on.

Carlton Reid 12:09
Now, COIMA is also involved in a Porto Ramona.

Ramona?

Stefano Corbella 12:17
Porta Romana.

Porta Romana

Carlton Reid 12:20
At least one of those is correct.

Which is going to be the site of in 2026, the Winter Olympic Village.

Stefano Corbella 12:30
Yeah.

Carlton Reid 12:31
That has obviously the the student accommodation on top. Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s that’s kind of your part of the development. But underneath, there’s an awful lot of car parking space, which in today’s presentation was was very much you know, this is a very boring bit, we’re not going to talk about this very much we’re going to what the surface stuff, but then there’s an awful lot of space underneath — is it half? — is car parking.

Stefano Corbella 13:02
Exacty.

Carlton Reid 13:03
So, is that

And I kinda know the answer to this is that the municipality having a parking code. So, if you have a development you need x number of car parking spaces?

Stefano Corbella 13:16
Yeah, there is a national law which obliges new developments with certain end with a certain typology of building use to provide for parking space and that is a mandatory requirement.

Carlton Reid 13:31
So, there is no way you can avoid that?

Stefano Corbella 13:35
There are only few places where you can not apply that law and is in within historic centre like Rome, because obviously, there is no physical space to create or you know, technical difficulties to create any basement in such a historic centres. But for other for other parts of typically, all the development has to provide that amount of capacity even though in some cases, we as a developer, we know that we will probably not need such amount of parking.

Carlton Reid 14:12
This is student housing …

Stefano Corbella 14:13
Exactly

Carlton Reid 14:14
… you’re building and students famously probably do not have their own cars so you will not need all that space.

Stefano Corbella 14:20
What we have done, what we are doing, is that the first level of parking, we design and we will build with a slightly higher floor to ceiling height.

with in order to build up some flexibility to repurpose that area in the future if we will be able to change the use of that.

Carlton Reid 14:42
Do you think it will be used as parking during the Olympics for the month but you haven’t yet but then maybe afterwards is you so no, no, I’m gonna say look forward and do so far with this law?

Stefano Corbella 14:53
That is going to be a kappa there’s no way we can change. One day if this law

will be no, no longer applicable. And because the car parking we expect that will be used less and less, especially in well connected cities, we will have a lot of space that is unfit. No? And so the idea is let’s build a floor that would be able to accommodate other function. So to use the space, otherwise, we will have an empty space for nothing.

Carlton Reid 15:25
Yes. So many cities or many countries around the world are removing those or trying to remove those parking minimums, because this …

Stefano Corbella 15:34
France, London

if you’re closer to public transportation, you have a derogation on that.

Carlton Reid 15:41
So, do politicians in Italy recognise that other countries are removing the parking minimums be no matter what other countries are doing we should remove parking minimums because from a sustainability point of view, parking minimums now kind of crazy.

Stefano Corbella 15:57
Yeah, I don’t know.

I certainly hopw that with this will be taken into consideration by future legislation, because I think in some places make totally sense not to push for that amount of parking, because sometimes we believe is not needed. So it’s a waste of money. It’s

an impact on on the environment, because you build more space for for things, but we will see. Hopefully, they will at some point will be taken into consideration.

Carlton Reid 16:35
And going back to this development here. Again, something that I think it was Kelly, who mentioned this was that in the in the original master plan, the there was much more of the roads that are around here. were much, much worse, supposed to be much narrower. Yeah. cobbles, maybe. And it was the municipality who said no, leave it as a highway now. So do developers, such as yourselves? Try and do things and municipalities, for whatever reasons, push back? Are developers actually, further ahead of what we need in this world?

Stefano Corbella 17:21
Sometimes, yes. But it is as as you know, it’s it’s a negotiation, you know, we may not see something that the municipality see or they have in the plan, what we can do is to try to demonstrate our, you know, thesis with calculation, we are the, and we always have

all the all the things works, and we don’t want to necessarily narrow streets, because they look pretty, we want the street that works for the purpose of the function that have to do. So we have transport consultant. And if we believe that

street could be smaller is because there’s there’s a calculation that demonstrate a simulation that demonstrate that, but you know, is a negotiation with the municipality, and sometimes we win the discussion. Sometimes we lose the discussion. At the end of the day, I think the project is, is is is beautiful is a nice place. People love it.

Carlton Reid 18:37
So are he roads that are out, basically are outside of your development. So the exterior one, obviously the one that’s coming through here, you’re above it, you’re not you’re not interacting with it below, but the ones outside. So that’s the municipality who have put

the bike paths in? Or is there?

Stefano Corbella 18:58
No, no. As part of the in for this project, because it was so big. And in general for big, huge urban regeneration project.

There’s uban agreement between the developer and the public authority, and typically happens that the developer has to pay taxes for the building that they built, and for the urbanisation, and that is two way, you can pay by cash to the municipality or you can give back in equal value infrastructure works. So we take we we’ve been taking care about the design of everything, including the public spaces, all the infrastructure, and we built on behalf of the city. And then once we completed the ownership

was given back to the city so we did everything and we gave back to the city

Carlton Reid 20:00
Because outside when we’re when we’re very high up, and we’re looking down at everything you had some from from I’m a I’m a bike geek. Yeah. I kind of know the infrastructure that’s been built here. But there’s like a roundabout. Yeah. With it’s like Dutch style roundabout. Yeah, the priority to the cyclists go round it outside. And then at the junction where we started the UK, that’s that’s called a cyclops junction, where the red is for the pedestrians and the cyclists, it gets, you know, cyclists and pedestrians across these major, major junctions. So were they, you might have built them, did the municipality provide the designs for them?

Stefano Corbella 20:44
No, we did the also the design and we had to, you know, get their approval from the municipality. You know, everything has been designed and built by us. There are certain rules that we have to follow those design guidelines, specifically provided by the municipality, so we had to follow those guidelines. Once we completed the design, we gave back to the municipality for approval, we had to provide the bill of quantity than the cost because obviously, you have to match the equivalent of the taxes that you have to pay so and that has to be checked by a third party. And in order to match the equivalent amount of money that you have to give back through taxes. But the design is, is all by as, approved by the municipality.

Carlton Reid 21:36
At this point, let’s take a quick commercial interlude with my colleague, David.

David Bernstein 21:40
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast, and of course, the spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles, the good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for Tern is to make sure that your ride is safe, and worryfree. And that’s why Tern works with industry leading third party testing labs like EFBE, and builds it bikes around Bosch ebike systems which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So, before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded and perhaps with the loved ones behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame and the rigours of the road. For more information, visit www.ternbicycles.com to learn more. And now back to the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 22:50
Thanks, David. And we’re back with COIMA’s Stefan Corbella as we continue our amble through BAM.

Rather than looking at this this particular project where we are now going just in general across maybe any number of projects that COIMA is involved now are going to be involved with

do you see the pedestrianisation that you have here and the bike paths? Do you see that as something that that’s only going to get bigger and bigger and bigger in the future?

Stefano Corbella 23:23
I totally agree. In fact in Porta Romana, we are actually doing the same exactly the same things. Porta Romana has two lines of train cutting in the middle of the master plan. We are rising the landscape to get across with the park get across the railway. And we are building up like a bridge the

the forester spacer the suspended forest in this case, that cover with a pedestrian path, all the two train lines. So in the landscape will be way better. The train will pass without any any interruption. And most important pedestrian and cycling paths will pass without any trouble and problem without crossing any cars.

Carlton Reid 24:19
And so in the London Olympics, and I’m many of the Olympics, I guess there were the roads because London’s a very congested city they had VIP Olympic lanes. So only a Olympic officials, athletes could drive in these lanes. Is that something that?

Stefano Corbella 24:39
Yeah,

Well, the, the I’m not sure. What I know is that within the Olympic village or the there are there will be a protection around it. And certain parts of the street will be restricted for security purposes. But I’m not I’m not

aware about the street that is being given the VIP path? That I don’t know.

Carlton Reid 25:06
Okay. And do you envisage athletes and people who are connected to the Olympics to use bikes to get around?

Stefano Corbella 25:15
I don’t know.

I don’t know. I don’t know.

Carlton Reid 25:19
Because that isn’t part of the sustainability plan. No, we need X amount of people to be not in cars?

Stefano Corbella 25:26
No, there is no requirement. Although all the Olympic village and the building that we are built, building, there is quite a huge cycling storage for the future student because we will build the Olympic village but then the buildings will be converted straight afterwards into the student housing. And the idea is to make it very design and the properly the building in order to make these changes very quickly. Because the academic year starts in September. So we want to be sure that we have the students that can use the buildings straight after the Olympic

Olympic season.

Carlton Reid 26:14
And every chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Stefano Corbella 26:19
Yeah.

Carlton Reid 26:19
So as a developer, you may provide very, very good bike paths through Olympic village and through through here, etc. But then when people get outside of the perimeter there, then just the municipality, yeah, is what they provide. Now, do you lobby Do you ask the municipality look, if we’re going to build all these fantastic bike lanes here, can you please make sure that this extends to the Duomo, extends to here, extends to the station?

Stefano Corbella 26:52
Yeah, it’s, yeah, when we when, as I mentioned, we have traffic consultants in our projects. And obviously, we we check the continuity of the bike lane, and you know, not to build a bike lane that is 100 metre long and then start and stop in the middle of nothing. No, because that will be

will be okay, but a waste of money.

Carlton Reid 27:22
So I know this is Isola as an island. But yeah, so you’re not looking at a development as an island and you provide great stuff. You know that for the plan for it to work it has to be an area.

Stefano Corbella 27:35
Yeah, yeah. And to be honest, at the beginning, I remember that the beginning of the project.

to tell you on other things is the city of Milan has changed the the mindset, in bike lane, in green areas, and so on. I remember 15 years ago, 20 years ago, the municipality or in general the city was sceptic about planting trees. Now the city of Milan has a plan to plant 3 million trees, now is completely change their mindset fortunately.

Carlton Reid 28:35
I was in a brand new cafe that opened this afternoon on Via Tunisia. Eroica.

So that’s a famous race in Italy. And this is the third cafe. And the manager who I was speaking to there, had had just been speaking to in fact, they left as as I came in, with the mayor

with about five or six people from the, from the municipality, yeah, talking to the manager and looking at this new cafe. Now, the managers said, and I know politicians will say anything, but the mayor said that they are very serious, very serious about getting rid of cars.

Stefano Corbella 29:21
Yeah, I know.

Carlton Reid 29:22
And is this something you’ve heard before?

No, no, no.

Stefano Corbella 29:40
it’s a much more pleasant city with less cars, way more pleasant. And

Carlton Reid 29:48
But is it feasible though?

Stefano Corbella 29:52
Yeah, yeah. I think I believe in certain in certain areas, with well connected public transportation

it should it could be feasible.

But, you know, we will see how we develop certainly is an improvement of quality of the city. That’s for sure.

Carlton Reid 30:11
I should do my research here. But how long is the mayor being the mayor for? How long has he got left? And if if a city mayor went to the city’s resident and said, I’m going to be taking lots of cars

out of the city, would that mayor be voted in again?

Stefano Corbella 30:31
He just started his second mandate? So he has other almost four full years. He’s just started the second mandate. So has a long way.

Carlton Reid 30:44
Would he be voted in again? And this is a hard question, but would he be voted in again if he had a plan to remove many cars? Is that something that you think Milan people would be?

Stefano Corbella 30:53
Well, that would be I think, Milan has several things. That will be one of the many. I’m not sure they will, these aspects will be key to

Carlton Reid 31:09
being voted in again?

Stefano Corbella 31:11
I think there are many other reasons. I think he’s done a very good job. And, you know, there’s four years to, in front of us.

Carlton Reid 31:21
So it’s a good sign that he’s he’s going into a bike cafe.

Stefano Corbella 31:24
Exactly. That’s definitely a good sign.

Thanks to Stefano Corbella and thanks to you for listening to Episode 317 of the Spokesmen podcast. Links to COIMA’ developments, including Bosco Verticale, can be found on the show notes at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be on the role of data in getting more people on bikes, but meanwhile have a Merry Christmas and here’s to a green and happy New Year and, as always, get out there and ride …

8th December 2022

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 315: World Champion Transportation Cyclist Beryl Burton — Book Chat With Author Jeremy Wilson

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Jeremy Wilson

TOPICS: The amazing Beryl Burton, with author Jeremy Wilson

LINKS: Beryl (Jeremy’s book)

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 315 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Thursday, eighth December 2022.

David Bernstein 0:23
The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more

Carlton Reid 1:02
Liquorice All-sorts. Rhubarb. And a multi-award-winning biography of the hard-as-nails transportation cyclist Beryl Burton who also won a few things, like world championships but not, as author Jeremy Wilson here explains, Olympic medals. I’m Carlton Reid and this episode of the Spokesmen podcast runs long, very long, but listen in and you’ll be as transfixed as I was by Jeremy’s stellar research. His biography of Beryl Burton says it’s in search of Britain’s greatest athlete but, as we discuss, Beryl is probably the world’s greatest athlete, capable in her day of coasting past the best men of her era and, famously, giving them encouragement, brickbats or jersey-pocket-stashed sweets. We talked for two hours and it could have been much more. Are you sitting comfortably, Jeremy?

Jeremy Wilson 2:11
I am, yeah, I’m all good. Thanks.

Carlton Reid 2:13
OK. So let’s leap into it what I loved your book, obviously as as everybody else of course. So congratulations on William Hill sports book of the year. Financial Times best sports book of 2022 Waterstones — you’ve won everything is there anything you haven’t won this year, Jeremy?

Jeremy Wilson 2:32
I don’t know. It’s a bit of a it’s a bit of a surprise and pleasant surprise to to have people say nice things about it. Because obviously, you don’t really know and you’re you’re in a bit of a tunnel when you do these things, you don’t quite know what people are gonna think. And it was really important to me as well. But the family they didn’t they place no sort of requirements or they didn’t ask me to change anything or leave something out or not speak to a certain person. And the big thing for me really was that they thought thought it was a fair portrayal and that they, they learned new things as well, which was nice here because I don’t think barrel was a big talker. You know, it wasn’t that that mentality wasn’t to talk, you know, share your feelings and talk about things that she was always on to the next thing so I think Denise found it interesting to hear what other people thought about her mum and certain stories that she didn’t know as well. So yeah, it’s been lovely to get such a nice reaction to it.

Carlton Reid 3:29
And there’s also Yvonne Reynders also she you kind of like gave her stuff that she didn’t know like you know, the fact she was like you know feeling bad that back that day? Yeah,

Jeremy Wilson 3:41
yes. Yeah, she didn’t it was quite interesting because you could there was such a deep emotional connection between Yvonne Reynders and obviously barrel that you could still see really exists and you can imagine that that would be so because they obviously spent about a decade as main rivals and they would see each other mostly just at the World Championships but maybe at the odd invitation or event you know, even renders could come over to her and heal and barrel might go and do something in Belgium but generally they had this distance and even render speaks no English as I discovered and speaks quite a strong dialect. Flemish dialect which even the people I was with, were struggling with a little bit at time so and obviously Barrow was pure Yorkshire so they didn’t communicate but there was this it was quite touching really because when I got out Barrows autobiography personal best, which I took with me even renders had never seen it and she she thumbed straight away to the photograph section. And of course, she was in some of the pictures. There was a few podiums, and a few pictures of them racing as well. One of them on the Isle of Man and she was quite tearful when she saw them, and she didn’t really know that wider story of what happened to bear or after she finished competing at the world stage, and was quite emotional, really about that and hearing what had happened to bear or very clearly remember Charlie, Beryl’s husband and Denise, Beryl’sdaughter, from seeing them at these competitions. But it got me that I mean, there were so many tangents and that was fascinating about the story. But that one about the sort of the relationship between rivals in sport I found quite interesting to think about, because you can imagine there is a really there, at the time, there’s such ferocious competitors, they probably wish the other one wasn’t there, because they were, you know, they would have had double the World Championships almost without the other one. But I think, over time, they come to almost appreciate the fact that they were racing against someone so good, because it brought them to a higher level, you know, a bit like the tennis now with the Federer-Djokovic era, and you sort of see it in other other sports as well.

Carlton Reid 6:00
So Armstrong and Ullrich.

Jeremy Wilson 6:02
Yeah, that kind of stuff.

Carlton Reid 6:04
I’m sure we’ll get on to Yvonne again, but just kind of like mentioned there that like the shouldn’t know, Yvonne didn’t know her post racing career. And of course, Beryl died young. But what what relatively young, but what you say in the book is you because you’ve gone to interview all of these these people who are racing against Beryl, who are a goodly age and you say in the book, you say, you know, cycling has probably extended these people’s lives, whereas Of course, in Beryl’s case it didn’t. But do you think that you know that the standard thing where you know, cycling is meant to give you an extra 10 years of your life? Did you actually think Beryl’s life was actually cut short by the fact she was so Yorkshire grit and always pushing through? I know you’re not medical so you can’t say that but did you have a feeling there?

Jeremy Wilson 6:58
Yes, I think so. And I think it’s that’s pretty clear because she was she had this illness as a child where she had this attack of the nervous system, and had rheumatic fever, some illness called St. Vitus dance and was in hospital and then convalescing for two years, at the age of 11, to 13. And she was told when she went back home, not to extend herself physically, and she did a medical when she first began work at the age of 15, as well in the tailors called Montague Burton, where she met Charlie Burton. And they again, they found this irregular rhythm in her heart. So she was pushing through that throughout her career, and she did have particularly in her last 10, 15 years, repeatedly looking at the the newspaper and magazine cuttings. She was reporting that doctors were telling her that she must stop she shouldn’t keep pushing herself. Denise, her daughter told me that she and her her dad, Charlie, Beryl’s husband were telling her to stop. I don’t think they wanted her to stop cycling, but they wanted her to stop wanting to go as fast as she possibly could. Because obviously, like, as you said, something that was really nice to see about the book was that so many of her contemporaries, she barely would be 85. Now, if she lived, was still really thriving, you know, her great recollections of what they did a lot of them were still riding their bikes, you know, to their 80s, even 90s in some cases. And so it was a good advert for cycling overall. But clearly Beryl had this competitiveness in her this sort of need to strive to do her very best. And she, she came into the sport with these heart issues that were caused by her childhood illness, and she just ignored it. She just wouldn’t have it. You know, she just wouldn’t stop and that was obviously the spirit that drove her to train so hard and and produce these just extraordinary feats, but it was entwined with her early death, almost certainly, as you say, obviously, medically, I’m not qualified to say for sure that there was a direct correlation. But certainly that’s I think that’s fair to say. That’s how her family feel that’s very likely and she was being told not to push herself and she was still going for it. There was the national 10-mile championships following weekend she was entered. And she wasn’t people assume that because she was in her late 50s. And still riding that she was still sort of turning up in it in a slightly more sociable way. But she was still out there to win in her mind. That was all her friends and people who were cycling at the time said not not not in a sort of nasty way in any way. She was still chat chatty after the races but she couldn’t approach it any other way. She wanted to be the absolute best and fastest she could. And she was still doing huge numbers of miles. There was an interview with her with a BBC that I came across that was from about 94, 95. I think she said, ‘I need 30,000 miles before I’m ready to race,’ you know, because for each season, I think that was the right number. That might be completely ridiculous. I need to do my math. I’m pretty sure that it’s in the book, but I’m pretty sure that was what she said. And that was, you know, when she was in her late 50s. So yeah, and so I found that fascinating that drive that she had, which I think you find in quite a few great sports people. And but it obviously was almost certainly linked to her tragically cut short life really? Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard to separate the two because it honestly part of what made her or very much what made her so extraordinary.

Carlton Reid 11:00
So I would like to delve into that that psychology because you certainly delve into it. I also in this episode, I want to absolutely talk about how you took her bike and you put it on in the wind tunnel. That’s that’s also fascinating about you know what she’d do today? If if you can, you can, you could compare those two things. I’d very much like to start where you both started and ended your book with this story. And it is it is the story that I guess everybody in cycling knows in it, there’s a there’s a podcast BBC podcast called You’re Dead To Me. And that has a segment called ‘So what do you know?’ and that is the segment where the presenter says, you know, this is the bit that people will probably know about this particular historical figure, and then they massively expand on it. So that the thing that I think most people certainly in cycling, will know is the Licorice All-sorts. So even even I, you know, know that story. And I’m not I’m not the greatest of a cycle racing fan. I’m like more of a like a Tour de France kind of person instead of following every single race throughout the year. But even I know that, that story. So just for anybody who maybe doesn’t know that story. And I’m I’m kind of like maybe being very abusive to listeners here by saying you know, you do or you don’t know the story. But just tell us about the story, because it’s a very famous story. And that the protagonist, who obviously is involved in this story as well, Mac? Yes?

Jeremy Wilson 12:31
Yeah, a guy called Mike McNamara and he was the top men’s time trialist of the time in Great Britain. So time trialling was the main way that people raced in that period in the really, up until quite recently, where now I think the sort of sportives road racing and track racing is become bigger in this country because of the facilities and because of the just the slight change in culture with with how British cycle cycle racing has evolved. But in that time, it was time trialling was very much the way people people raced. And that’s when you’re set off at one minute intervals. And then you essentially ride alone and have a time at the end over a distance or a particular amount of time. So Beryl was going for this 12 hour ride, which is where you do as many miles as you can in 12 hours, but a big competition at the time in in Great Britain. She started behind the men. So then there was 99 men in this race going off at one minute intervals. They then had a two minute gap to the women, I think there was three or four women Beryl was among them. And she was the first of the women to go off. So she was basically set off two minutes behind the field of 99 men who had all started in the in the two hours before Beryl in the morning, and they would all then go ride around Yorkshire finishing on a finishing circuit for 12 hours and accumulate as many miles as they could. It really suited Beryl, this type of race because she had a great phenomenal endurance, but also really good concentration as well. She could she could ride alone for a long time, high level. And she basically just rode through this entire field of men so she had passed 98 of the men. One person that was left was Mike McNamara at the top men’s time trialist of the time he had started last of the men so he had started two minutes in front of Beryl on the road. And he was on course to break the men’s record for the distance that they cycled in 12 hours. But Beryl had done this sort of incredible ride and was basically catching him and actually caught him with about about an hour of the of the 12 hours to go. So she didn’t when she saw him up in front, she didn’t quite believe that it was him she had caught as I say they both caught the other 98 men, which is astonishing when you think about it. But there he was the last of the men she hadn’t caught. And he was on course for a British men’s record, or a world record as well. I mean, no, no, no one in other countries have gotten faster. And she was obviously annihilating the women’s record but was also beating him. And she put in she eventually passed them on this, this lane, which is just south of Boroughbridge in Yorkshire, and as she went past she would always say something to people when she caught them because obviously she caught people all the time and caught men very regularly in these time trials and she’d say thing and there were so many stories of things she would say like, ‘Hey, lad, you you’re not trying’ or ‘stick in there, Chuck’, or sometimes be quite nice, but sometimes in a sort of dry sense of humour, she’d sort of say something quite cutting to these people. And to Mike McNamara, she reached into her back pocket where she’s carrying her food and she passed him a liquorice allsort so she went past and he said ‘ta, love’ and, and ate the licorice allsort. He confirmed it to me while I was researching the book, but it wasn’t just the kind of fairy tale myth type story that had gone down in legend it really was how it went she didn’t really mean it I don’t think as a sort of put me down she just didn’t know what else to do. She went past them and

and the poor guy would then get handed massive Liquorice Allsorts at events.

Yeah, it became all you ever got asked about. Yeah, there was a an event where Beryl presented him with I think he took it in good spirits. He actually died last year. And but luckily, from my point of view, he was still alive during the early part of the research for the books, I was able to communicate with him before he before he died. And he was obviously a really great figure in on the scene, a really popular popular guy, but he you could tell it did slightly. There was a slight sense from the family that, you know, it was frustrating that his he was sort of remembered principally for this but I sort of said to them, what an amazing thing to be part of you know, it’s a real moment in sporting history where a woman broke not just a women’s best but a men’s as well. And as I say lots of things with Beryl Burton, this was obviously one of them, where she’d done something that just nobody in any other sport you could find a comparison for. So she won something 25 she was the best British or around the 25 times in a row, rode with their daughter in the world championships. They were both in the qualified for the road race. And this that I mean, they were three things straight away that you just could were completely without comparison in sport. So yeah, that that was probably the story that she’s best known for just being the fact that she broke a men’s record, but also just the style with which she did it. And as I say the drama of passing him and giving him a licorice allsort.

Carlton Reid 18:17
As a road historian and I’m also I love the fact that you’ve pretty much pinpointed the exact spot on the road, where there really ought to be a plaque that or some sort of, yeah, hanging there.

Jeremy Wilson 18:29
Somebody said that to me. A guy called John Churchman who was a marshal on the Otley 12 hour, because they were the club that organised it. And it took quite a lot of work to figure it all out. And we really worked hard to make sure we got it right. Someone called Phil Hurt from the Yorkshire Road Club found me the course. Then John Churchman and a guy called George Baxter, who was also a marshall. So they were at different points in the route so they could help me with with knowing exactly where it was that Beryl passed. And also you could there was a lot in the results sheets, and just the media reports at the time and what Beryl and Mike McNamara had said we got it to pretty much the precise stretch of road it was a long stretch of road where you could definitely see somebody in the distance and as I say that was borne out in Beryl’s recollections of it where she could see his jersey in the distance and wasn’t initially certain that it was him. So yeah, for the final chapter, the epilogue of the book, we I cycled the finishing circuit with Denise, Beryl’s daughter, and we sort of pulled over at that point into the had a look up and down the road and just tried to think what you know, her mum might think of what we were doing, actually and Denise sort of surprised me because she took off her she was wearing she had another jersey on top and she took off her and put her Morley she had her Morley club jersey on which is the jersey that her mother always always the club but her mother always raced for and she sort of said I thought I’d put it on for her. And she she didn’t know where it was on the course herself, even though she actually lives quite close, probably only about 10 or 15 miles away. She didn’t she didn’t know where it was, it was another thing because it just her mother was a very sort of Yorkshire person, you know, not much emotion, not much, certainly no showing off or dwelling on anything or no trophies up in the in the house, or she was always on to the next thing. And so she wouldn’t. They weren’t the sort of people that would have really kind of made a fuss about where it was and how it happened. Obviously I did. But, you know, she just didn’t she didn’t know she was that? Oh, I didn’t know this was where the 12 hour happened. I was there. You know, she was there in the car. That day is about an eight year old fortnight. Right? Yeah. 11 year old she would have been but she wasn’t actually she didn’t know which bit of road it was that it happened.

Carlton Reid 21:00
Yeah, that’s fascinating. There definitely should be a plaque. Let’s actually dig into your background. Because we haven’t mentioned that yet. So you’ve obviously been somewhere warm recently, if you want to talk about that. And yeah, and if you could tell us what your kind of your day job is. And then tell us your background in cycling.

Jeremy Wilson 21:20
Yeah, so my day job is, I’m a sports journalist at the Telegraph, but principally doing a lot of football. So I’ve just been to the World Cup in Doha and back after the last 16 phase. So and I’ve been doing that, really, for 20 years, I was at a local newspaper in Hampshire and then worked for The Guardian and The Telegraph for the last 15 years. So look, lots of football but some other sport as well. But I’ve done a few Olympics, and I love doing other sports. But obviously football is so dominant in the kind of sports news cycle, I do end up doing a huge amount of football. And the book really came about because somebody was interested in me doing a book about football and kind of the geo politics of football with the ownership now of teams, obviously from you know, by virtual nation states or some of the richest people in the world that we know about clubs like Manchester City and Paris St Germain and obviously Chelsea before with Roman Abramovich

Carlton Reid 22:26
And Newcastle where I live.

Jeremy Wilson 22:28
And Newcastle now, yeah, that was the premise of this meeting about sort of, and I kind of, I obviously do a lot of stuff around that day to day and I wasn’t that sort of keen to do that for whatever reason and sort of what have you got any book ideas and I was a club cyclist as a as a, as a kid. My family was sort of club cyclists. So I kind of knew the name Beryl Burton, because I was a bit of a sort of stats nerd and I’d look at, you know, records and times and who who’d won the most FA cups and even won, you know, in any sport who’d won an Olympic medals. And, and I remember we had, we used to get this handbook through the post every year, which was the it was called the RTTC Handbook of events for Britain cycling events in Britain, and it had the list of all the champions and records. And I distinctly remember this thumbing through it and, and reading and saying, he’s this, because Beryl Burton won 122 national titles. So the back of this book, it was just B and B. And I remember, I can vividly remember this. I’m not just sort of, it’s not sort of recollection that’s kind of embellished in any way. I remember seeing that 12 hour record that we just talked about, where she bettered the men’s record. And I remember looking at it and seeing it in this book and saying, Oh, this must be wrong. Oh, this is a misprint. And so I think somewhere in my subconsciousness Beryl Burton’s name was, was lodged. And then when, obviously, I didn’t do anything about it for a few decades, and but post 2012 when there was all this publicity, rightly so for all the cyclists that had done so well in the Olympics, and that generation of British cyclists and sort of Bradley Wiggins, Victoria Pendleton, Chris Hoy. I was kind of at that time, there were all these lists of the greatest British sports person are the greatest cyclists and I was looking at them as thinking, what about that Beryl Burton, you know, and I just, I knew she had won loads and loads and loads and obviously she wasn’t being given anything like, due billing in these in these sort of lists of sports people even though she would have surpassed any of them if she would have had a Olympics available to her or had a Tour de France available to her. So it got me it got me back interested and I looked at her her book, which was published in the mid 1980s, Personal Best, and sort of research the story a bit more, and just discovered all these wonderful tangents and sort of subplots because I mentioned her childhood illness, just her relationships with her husband who sort of gave everything up to support her, her daughter, who she ended up competing with just how she went on and on and kind of the circumstances of her early death. You know, when I, when I came back to it and look to hadn’t even realised I wasn’t sure whether she was alive or dead, I just knew that she was this phenomenal athlete. And so I suppose when the more I looked into it from a sort of journalistic point of view, I thought, wow, there’s some fascinating subplots here that you could really get into, you know, the competition with the Soviet Union riders was another one. You mentioned the wind tunnel and you know, how trying to work out how far she is. So there was all this extra stuff from a journalist point of view that I thought, wow, that’s amazing. I think if she just won loads and loads and loads, and there wasn’t a sort of fascinating human interest story, I would have sort of thought, well, you know, is there a book in all of that, but there was just so much else and my eyes were kind of widening, and my jaw was falling closer to the ground, when I sort of the more I learned about her really just thought, this is just an incredible story. And then fortunately, because it wouldn’t have been any fun. And it wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have done it, if the family were sort of very resistant to the idea. And it’d be wrong to say that they were sort of out there, encouraging it, or say, you know, looking for people to sort of amplify her achievements. They’re very sort of humble, not on social media, and not sort of shouting about barrel, but quietly, very proud. And it was a relationship where you sort of build trust over months and years really with them, because it was a four year process, from starting the book to being published, and more than a for just over four years. So they weren’t, as I say, they weren’t looking for it. But equally, I think they liked that they liked the fact that someone seemed to really appreciate what she had done, and really just thought she was as incredible as obviously, privately, they, you know, in a very, as I say, in a very sort of understated way they, they basically agreed that, you know, that she was she was just this incredible athlete that hadn’t got the recognition that she deserved. And they’re just sort of lovely, as I say lovely, kind of humble people that didn’t, they weren’t sort of bragging about barrel, but really proud of her. And also kind of got got this was really important, they understood that you kind of needed to tell the whole story. And we needed to deal with the more difficult parts of her character, like anybody would have, you know, in the difficult parts of the family relationships like anybody would have, but they didn’t, they didn’t shy away from that or say, you know, and, and not want you to speak to someone who might be critical of her, they kind of got that you had to tell it as it was, in fact, I almost got the sense from Denise that she probably got a bit weary sometimes just reading very sort of short superficial things saying you know, that Jan barrel burned, she was amazing, wasn’t she wonderful, full stop sort of thing. She, she, you know, there was a lot more to her story than, than that and a lot more to her personality than that. And fortunately for me, they were they were happy with me sort of delving into that as well as all the fabulous achievements because it’s all interlinked, obviously, and it wouldn’t make sense to do it in any other way. But you never really know how a family member is going to react and to you sort of asking things that you know, quite might feel quite personal but they kind of have that Yorkshire honesty about them, you know, and we’re quite happy to deal with it in the round but obviously they want it they felt it should overwhelmingly be a celebration of her life which hope hopefully it is but it still in that context of of dealing with it as a whole and trying to tell the whole story. So that was that was so important to the project that they were as they were and it made it such a pleasure as well and I’ve said this a few times and I’m on it I truly mean it you know it’s lovely to get on people saying nice things about the book but to have a sort of friendship now with with them and you know, get nice messages from them and Denise is you know, always happy to come to things where we talk about it and the book as well and that’s like the nice been the nicest part really of getting to getting to know them and that that part of Yorkshire so I’m really lucky on that sense that they were as they were about the book.

Carlton Reid 30:01
In those four years of writing, you must have been thinking, from a commercial point of view, perhaps even from a professional point of view, you really ought to be doing a football book, that book you talked about. And this is like, you might be thinking, you know, this is so nice, okay, you might win, you know, cycling of the book year award. But, you know, this is just not mainstream enough. But you’ve made it mainstream. So did you have that inkling of this is so niche, why am I doing this? Or was it always I want to get this story out there. This is really mainstream, and I can make it mainstream. What were your feelings?

Jeremy Wilson 30:34
I did. I mean, that did it did occasionally crossed my mind that you because obviously, it’s quite a lot of, you know, without sort of tunnel way all about the process of it. There’s so many little obstacles or tricky bits or hard moments or parts where other things are going on in your life, when you think, Oh, am I sort of, you know, being a bit hard on my family? And I’ve got two young children and you sort of doing job as well? Are you sort of, you know, is it a bit of a sort of it should I be doing, you know, keep ploughing on with this. But that genuinely just that I didn’t think that much about how it would be received, or whether it’d be mainstream or niche, whether I kind of just stuck with the fact that I thought it was an amazing story. So I kind of hoped that other people would agree. And also, I just felt genuinely such a passion for it myself. And so interested in it myself, I just wanted to do it, I wanted to find out more, I wanted to write about it. So it wasn’t a hardship really to, to do that, rather than something that might be more obvious commercially, because I just thought, wow, this is such an amazing sports story. You know, I’ve been doing lucky enough to do sports journalism for 20 years. And to me, it’s like the most amazing story that I’ve ever come across. So why wouldn’t I want to keep going with it. So that was what keeps you going. It’s just like, wow, this is amazing. And I don’t think you can worry too much about it. I didn’t quite know how it would turn out. But I didn’t sort of think that much about it. Because I was so sustained by my own passion for it really, and just No, of quite, it sounds a bit funny, but it’s quite sort of, you know, you think about it all the time. And you think and I feel quite emotional at times just thinking about the 12 hour record of certain rides, or certain the way she carried on and stuff like that. So it just completely got me, you know, at so many levels that it just wasn’t there, I wasn’t going to stop and I wasn’t going to not do it. Because I was just so into it. Funnily enough, Denise said something to me the first time I met her in it. And I thought about it often. Because I think she sort of met me and thought, Well, we’ll see whether he completes or not really, you know, which is fair enough. I think the same if some stranger come and met me and said, I would like to do this. And she said something about her mother. And she said, and then she says related it to me. She said, Well, if someone really wants to do something they’ll do it. Sounds quite simple, really. And she said that about her mother as well at different times that you can’t really someone really wants to do something, they will find a way to do it. And, and so it wasn’t in a way it wasn’t that hard to get it done. Because I just love the story and so much I really wanted to do it. So yeah, it obviously does take over your mind at different sections. And it was important to balance my day to day work with it. But yeah, just such a fascinating story that I think that was what sustained me, you know, it wasn’t anything to do with whether it did well or not really, it was just it was just I wanted to tell that story. And I think if you have that sort of passion for it, you’re probably on the right tracks because nine times out of 10 other people will find it interesting as well. And there’s so many people that had stories about Beryl as well that you know, even today, even though this last week, I get messages literally every week from people who haven’t read the book sort of have it prompts them a memory or prompt something because she was so out there she was so as Maxine Peake would put it, ordinary extraordinary so so there was all these everyday encounters that people had with her. And I just loved I loved hearing them I still do you know sometimes sometimes wish I wish I knew that before I wrote the book, but mostly

Carlton Reid 34:31
I’ll just jump in there because Maxine Peake of course is the person who wrote the play about Beryl which would brought her back much more into into public consciousness, you know, those those few years ago? So had you seen the play before?

Jeremy Wilson 34:46
No. Do you know what I didn’t know what people thought it might have been prompted by the play. It absolutely wasn’t. But I was delighted when I the first thing I did was listen to the radio play on Radio Four and then I went to see it And I’ve seen it to twice now I went once with Beryl’s, brother, Jeffrey, it was on in Beverly. And we went along and watched it. And then I watched it when it was on in London as well. But I was delighted when I discovered that there was a play because it was kind of like another thing that I thought, well, that’s interesting that people have sort of outside of cycling, have connected with it on that level. And it’d be good to speak to Maxine Peake and understand why she was so interested in the story. So I discovered the play, obviously, fairly early on in the research. And it was just an as I say, another thing that I thought, Well, that’s good, you know, that shows that it’s got a sort of a pool outside of cycling. But it wasn’t it as I said, it wasn’t it wasn’t a trigger to do it. But it was, it was something you couldn’t obviously you couldn’t help but stumble across it fairly quickly when she’s once I started researching. And it was just a really nice extra thing, because it was just fascinating to talk to people who weren’t into cycling the actors, and Maxine Peake herself about what it was about Beryl that had sort of touched them and connected with them. And it definitely has brought it to a wider audience because quite a few of the people I’ve spoken to someone like Dame Catherine Granger, who was a Olympic medalist, as most of your listeners will know, in five Olympics in rowing, she found she discovered Beryl Burton via the play, and sort of was really moved by the these folks, singers O’Hooley & Tidow And did they have to get that right? They wrote a song about they’re all on the back of seeing the play. So it definitely was something that connected with quite a lot of people outside of cycling.

Carlton Reid 36:49
And coming back to you again. Are you a transportation cyclist as well as having that club background?

Jeremy Wilson 36:56
Yeah, to some extent, probably is not as much as I should be. But I do. Yeah, I’ve got a couple of bikes. And I do kind of got ones that I will get out on the road a bit further on in a sort of mountain bike to get around on but I love I love cycling as well. I do love cycling, but not not fast and not competitively, but do a few sport teams. And my my kids are in a cycling club in Hampshire as well. So I go along and and sort of watch them do cyclocross and stuff like that. So, yeah, I love I love cycling. And it’s, as I say, it’s something that my dad was a sort of touring cyclist. So I suppose that’s how we that’s how we came to it. But yeah, I think it’s a it’s a, it’s a brilliant sport. And obviously a real great, healthy, pursuit. When you look at as a discovered from big, big difference from footballers, you can’t you don’t meet many footballers, sadly, that farewell in you know, really late older age above the age of 80. But cyclists there, there are numerous those that are

Carlton Reid 38:04
quite going on, vary, but it’s true. So the transportation cycling in the book is fascinating, you know, that those, you know, long distance ride, she would do the opposite the ride when she died was was a transportation cycling, and then, you know, taking Denise as a baby and then in a trailer, and then on the back all quite modern things to do. Now, you know, this is a middle class, you know, thing to the, you know, like a Copenhagen style, Dutch style thing to do. But, you know, she was doing that, you know, in effect ahead of the curve. So her transportation cycling was just amazing. feats of cycling, amazing, of course, but just she went everywhere by bike and the family and there’s beautiful pictures in the book of you know, Denise, and Charlie, and Beryl, you know, riding together so she, she really lived cycling, did everything on the bike, didn’t she, I mean, she, if she got on the bike, those three hours of ironing she had to do every day, I’m sure she’d love to, to go on a bike.

Jeremy Wilson 39:08
It’s a brilliant thing. Not that many people pick up on that. But it’s such a great point because I think there’s probably a link to why she was so good as well, because she was doing lots of sort of easy miles on the bike, as well as the kind of what she would consider serious training. But she rode her bike everywhere. And she would, she would sort of say I don’t I have a break from cycling in the winter. And she’d really start again in January after the season when sort of end around September. But of course she didn’t stop at all really it was just in her mind. She stopped because she she very much differentiated between those kind of casual cycling and when she was training, but she would at the end of September every year when the world championships were done, and she’d won the British best all rounder for the time trialling when all the races are done, they’d go off on holiday and and Denise would miss the first two, three weeks of the school school term. I didn’t really think much of worrying about that. And they’d go to the, especially when you think of the late 1960s, early 1970s go to Morocco, Sicily, around Italy, France, really quite Canary Islands really quite far out places for for that, you know, for that for that time, and just incredible stories of these touring holidays where they’ve just cycled sort of 30, 40 miles a day. And yet, Denise, that one one daughter, who was Beryl was 18, when she had Denise, she just became part of the cycling routine. So should there be start off on a on a sort of sidecar side carriage kind of thing. Then she was on the seat on the back, no helmet on No, not much strapping in that thing in those days. And then she was on something called a Rann trailer, which looks a bit like a tandem, but it’s slightly different than a tandem. And then when she was about eight or nine was plunked on her own bike and basically it was right there you go if you want to, if you want to go to anything, that’s how you get there you go on your bike and wet and quite often Beryl and would be away for the weekend cycling and Denise it from about the age of nine which simply cycle you know, 11 miles from Woodlesford where they lived to Morley just sort of south of Leeds, both of those two places on her own, you know, to our grandmothers for the weekend. And they went everywhere by bike so if Beryl raced in London she might 50 mile time trial on a Sunday morning, she very often cycle home at the A 170 miles, or she would if you went to a dinner dance. At the end of season all the clubs held their dinner sort of dances should should take a dress in the saddlebag cycle there, go to this event, you know, help wash the dishes afterwards and cycle home again at night. So just went everywhere by bike, she never learned how to drive. So all her shopping trips to work. She worked on a rhubarb farm and she had cycled to work. Everything she did, she’d go for a month, early, early season sort of February, March time to Spain every year. And she would just fly to it was near sort of Mallorca type. No. Gonna get this wrong. Sort of Benidorm, I’m sorry, that’s what’s in my brain, she would sometimes go to Mallorca, but Benidorm was her normal one, and she would just fly there, get off the plane, have a saddle bag full of stuff for the next month and cycle to, you know, very sort of basic apartment. And she would and just train there for a month every year. So she did everything by bike. And as I say, sports scientists were quite interested in that as well, in terms of the kind of easy miles you know, we know the stories of the great African runners and how they kind of walk everywhere and go to, from a young age go to sort of job to school. So it’s the kind of easy, easy activity miles that she was doing, were probably a great foundation for for why she was so good. I mean, she must have we I tried to wake it work it out at one point, how many miles she might have accumulated in her life. And it wasn’t much of a million when you added it all up, because she was riding three 400 miles a week. And as I say, even when she was out of training, she was cycling the whole time. But she had a very clear dividing line, she would sort of say, oh, no, I’m not training at the moment. But she’d still be out on our bike every day. Yeah, that was a real big part of what she did. And they would, that’s one of the things that the older cyclists would regularly point out to me how different it is now because when people race now they’re in the car, to the bike on the roof or bike on the back, get out there, get on the back of it get on some rollers, or a turbo trainer, which is a stationary thing to warm up. And then they will race that’s kind of how how nearly all people who raised do it now whereas Beryl’s generation, you’d, you’d have these hooks on the front of the of the handlebars, and they would put their race wheels on there. And so they’d have these wheels sort of dangling off the handlebars, and they would cycle out to the race, change their wheels race and cycle back. That, you know, that was just how how they did it in that time. But as I say, it’s interesting because I think from a sports science point of view, quite a lot of what she was doing was obviously helping her hugely without quite knowing it as an athlete as well as just the fact she obviously just loved riding her bike everywhere.

Carlton Reid 44:56
And of course, famously and from a narrative you know circularity point of view for somebody writing a book she died on a bike as well as she’s delivering birthday invitations in going through Harrogate. She basically keels over. I actually read from your book here now, rather than you know, flicking through and finding it so this is a bit where you describe how she dies on our bike basically. So “it is a unique and yet instantly recognisable sound, the wearing of a bicycle wheel freely rotating until it slowly stops not because a brake has been applied, but because the momentum from that last push up pedal has gradually ceased. It was the dading — this is beautiful this — it was the fading sound that accompanied the last breath of Beryll Burton, after she collapsed on the side of the road in May 1996, while riding her bicycle on the outskirts of Harrogate while delivering invites for her 59th birthday.” So that’s kind of evocative, but also so circular. It’s almost perfect, but I know nobody wants to die, of course, but as her has Denise pointed out in the book, I mean, if she wanted to die, or you know, she would definitely want to die on a bike and she wouldn’t want to get old and be infirm. She kind of … it’s almost too perfect. It’s weird but it’s perfect.

Jeremy Wilson 46:16
Yeah, no, and I was a bit there was a sort of hesitation in almost describing it in those terms, because obviously you’re describing such a tragic event. But they did that was very much how the family felt obviously they wished it would have been decades later. But they definitely that there was a comfort that she died doing what she loved. And you know, a moment where she would have probably been lost in her thoughts because she just loved she would say that she loves cycling for the mental side as well how it just freed her of the sort of stresses and worries of the world which I think a lot of people exercise and cycle for that reason. So you’d imagine she would have been in a in that that mode whilst whilst whilst that happened and there was a quote as well from her when Tom Simpson famously then sort of France cyclist died on his bike going up Mt Ventoux in the Tour de France has different circumstances because he was racing to the point of exhaustion, exhaustion at the time, but it was reported that his last words were put put me back on my bike. There’s no again, it’s a story that might not be 100% accurate, but Beryl, there was a quote from Beryl that I found where she said he could have no finer epitaph than than saying that so I think it gave you a clue as to how she might view the circumstances of her own death, but obviously, just decades, sooner than everybody would have wished. But that yeah, there there is a sort of Maxine Peake said there’s a poetry to how that happened. And and as I say, the family different I know, both her brother and daughter do take some comfort from the fact that that was that was how she how she died, the jockey AP McCoy that he was the 20 times champion jockey I spoke to him about Beryl because I was interested in how the longevity it was very similar to him to keep going that number of years. And he he was very taken with the circumstances of Beryl’s death, and he said, it’s perfect as well, you know, because, and he said that if he felt the same, because obviously he’s stared down the barrel in a different way, when he’s fallen off horses, and you know, it’s a sport where there are fatalities and he he was very quite moved by that and taken by that and said that as well. And it was that that stuck with me as well that sort of mindset of somebody who’s so passionate about their sport but as he and Denise said it was just sort of you just was wished it would have been when she was in her late — thirty years later — was but yeah, very, very sort of that that does really you know, get to me to think about that you know, is is very evocative as you say and moving.

Carlton Reid 49:18
It’s quite unusual and not not just in the you know, the fact you didn’t get to 80 years old, but when when cyclists die as we all know it tends to be you know, when when motorists knock into them and kill them so you know, Davide Rebellin, Italian cyclist is just died by getting hit by motorists. So that’s how cycling stars tend to die. Many cyclists tend to die is getting hit by by by motorists, but she’s just keeled over at the side of the road. There was no other involvement. Nobody, nobody saw it happen exactly. But there was no talk of it. You know, she was not knocked from her bike, her heart gave out.

Jeremy Wilson 49:54
Yes, yes. Yeah, absolutely. There wasn’t like an early media report that sort of assumed that that was the that there must have been some sort of road traffic incident. But no, that wasn’t that wasn’t the case. And no, she was that there was a sort of full post mortem. And now it was she had anaemia as well. And it was her cause of death was heart failure and anaemia. But I think from the, I mean, Denise was kind enough to let me see the medical report from the post mortem. And, you know, it was it obviously, her heart had, there was this defect in it from, as I say, from a from a child, and that was very evident in the, in the post mortem so that she had reason she had reason she was risking her life every time she went out on her bike that there was no she was she and she was told that repeatedly through her life. So it wasn’t, in a way, it wasn’t a surprise that she should have that problem. It was one of those situations, which was a horrible shock. But, you know, rationally wasn’t a surprise because she had she had been told this throughout her life that she was, she was taking

Carlton Reid 51:06
Say it was it was it was part and parcel of her life as a cyclist, because it’s it’s, you know, her formative life in the convent that that that illness you had as a child, which would use, you know, quite expertly pick out in the book about like how super athletes, super-elite athletes often have some form of trauma in their childhood, which, which then drives them on to be these amazingly single minded hyperfocused and never satisfied with just one when they’ve got to keep on winning. So that heart problem she had as a child, which obviously, sadly died from was also probably the reason she actually had that career in the first place as a side. Yeah. So in that, that illness, and that, you know, time in the convent drove her and changed her mental makeup.

Jeremy Wilson 51:58
Yeah, absolutely. I think it was absolutely key, I don’t think it was the only thing. I got to the point with it, because it really interesting that that there was some research done in British Olympic athletes. And they found that they grouped them as elite or super elites, and the super elites were the kind of repeat winners, the absolute relentless winners, which barrel would have been one of those. And they had found this sort of staggering proportion that had had some sort of childhood trauma, which could be quite different. It could be sort of parents separating some sort of, you know, violence in the family, or some very, very different types of trauma, potentially. And Beryl’s was that she had this awful illness as a child. But it was really common in these high achievers that seem to galvanise or give them a driving force or sort of need to win a need to succeed and need to do their very best. And she obviously had that I think she also, she, her brother talked a lot to me about her childhood and their family. And she obviously came into it with a great sort of, she already had a kind of perfectionist type personality and a stubborn stubbornness. He, he called it the Charnock way, which was her her maiden name and and said, It was evident in a lot of family members very sort of stubborn, determined people. And then I think the other I think the other factor was what Beryl then was fortunate to discover coming out of the illness because she met Charlie, her husband, who was a club cyclist. And she was fortunate that this group of cyclists in Morley in just outside Leeds, were just so welcoming, so supportive, so but very competitive, as well. So she, the people who are the experts on this childhood trauma, say that it’s kind of three factors, you’ve usually got some inherent characteristic, and you’ve also got a supportive structure around you at the end of it. So it’s kind of not something you recommend, you wouldn’t recommend trauma to people obviously. And it can, it can be very destructive, but but with with those things around it with those inherent characteristics, and also the right support around you afterwards, it seems like it can be this added catalysts that can drive someone to amazing things. And with barrel you can vary, and that was kind of a theoretical model. But with Beryl, you can very clearly identify those other components that they talked about. Because she she she found this brilliant environment to to cycle in that was very progressive, because a lot of cycling clubs wouldn’t allow women but she She, at that time, but she she happened upon one that was welcoming to her and then they obviously became to love the fact that they had this incredible person in their club, and they were really proud of her and really supportive of her. So I think that was important as well.

Carlton Reid 54:58
She was very clearly proud of them too. Because I mean there was a quote but that you mentioned the book where and this is this is her words she’s one of another one of her amazing victories and she said “I have knocked up another victory for Morley and Great Britain” so not you know victory and for Great Britain I’m so it’s like she mentioned have cycling club first, my Great Britain is almost as a as an afterthought.

Jeremy Wilson 55:21
Yeah, that oh, she was was she never she was offered many times to be professional. But there it wasn’t professional in the terms of we think of professional cycling team. Now there was no races or team that you could you didn’t it didn’t open the door to some continental scene of earning lots of money and riding in better races, being professional just meant that you became an advertising tool for a bike company. And there were certain records placed to place records that you could go for. But you wouldn’t you would then be not allowed to race in any of the time trial events, any of the World Championships that she went for, because it was very strict that the line between amateur and professional, so going professional would have been financially quite good because she would have advertised bikes but she would have made no she would have had no very quickly ended her competitive career. So she very firmly stuck with writing for Morley Cycling Club and never went to a kind of a bigger club or anything like that. And she was incredibly loyal and would always talk about them. And I loved meeting all the personalities from the Morley Cycling Club because a lot of them were still alive. And you know, they were Beryl’s, they were Beryl’s team, they were Beryl’s support structure at that time and just again, very, very down to earth. Club minded, brilliant Yorkshire people who are so so so proud of Beryl you know, some of them have got one of them still have one of her world championship, jerseys, rainbow jerseys and

Carlton Reid 56:56
hidden away that nobody knew.

Jeremy Wilson 56:58
He had it under his bed. He went and got it. It was like it was it was still pristine. And he said, I’ve never worn it because when Beryl gave it to me, she said, You can have this but mind you never wear it because you didn’t earn it. And that was the kind of she wanted him to have the jersey but she was like, it’s it’s you haven’t got the right to wear it. But he was so it was in a in a plastic bag. And they kept it look, it looks, although it looks of the age 1960s and was made of sort of cotton, sort of silk it was still it was still perfectly maintained. So they were so proud of her and she was very you’re proud of Yorkshire she would in one of the World Championships, it’s very noticeable. She’s got this too, too. Russians either side of her with the CCCP or Soviet Union jerseys and she’s got a jersey, she hasn’t got a British jersey on that podium. She’s just got the Yorkshire rose on it on it thing she’s wearing. So yeah, very, very proud of that. Of her of her club and, and background. And Morley was very supportive to her because the archives in Morley at the local library have kept one of the really interesting sort of discoveries that kept all this correspondence between Beryl and the Morley town council because they would organise these civic receptions for her when she came back, and they’d raise money, that it was a mill town so that all the workers in the mills and social clubs would club together and sort of raise 100 pounds or something for Beryl. So that to help with her being able to go and cycle abroad in these World Championships. So she had this great relationship with Morley, and they’re wonderful these letters, because they’re very formal to, you know, to and from the town council and Beryl, you know, inviting her to different receptions or, you know, helping with the kind of fun, you know, raffles and, you know, very basics of funding that you could tell that the town really got behind her in that way.

Carlton Reid 59:03
And some of that funding, which which she couldn’t spend any other way was was, didn’t she spend it on, in effect, a record player?

Jeremy Wilson 59:10
Yeah, yeah, for a long time it got to a point where, and Denise that was one of the things that Denise was sort of she was I wondered where that had come. She goes, Oh, that record player still, I think she went and got it for me. She that was in every one of her houses. But it there was a letter from about 19. There’s about 1964 There was some money left over from an event that they had funded Beryl to go and do in Italy. And they were sort of like, well, what, what should we do with it? And they and they weren’t allowed to give the money to Beryl there was this great exchange of letters and they’d written to the British Cycling Federation, and they were like, no, if you give her that 50 pounds or 40 pounds or whatever it was, that was leftover. It might have been a bit less than that. Yeah, that will break that will convene her amateur that will break her amateur status and she will never be allowed to So called for Britain again. So they had to find but they said it is okay to buy her something. And so she chose a record prayer. And there’s a letter she wrote back to them saying, you know, really polite to sort of graciously thanking them for this this gramophone record player that she wanted. And as I say, Denise, wondering how they afforded it.

Carlton Reid 1:00:29
you knew more about the family for certain things.

Jeremy Wilson 1:00:32
Yeah, yeah. Cos, as I say, Beryl wasn’t one for talking about things that much when she she had, she got cancer later in life and had to go for an operation and for mastectomy, and Denise said, Oh, she didn’t tell me till she was in hospital. And she was kind of like, Well, why didn’t you come and see me sooner? And she’s like, well, I didn’t. I didn’t know. So that was, that was just how, how, how it was, I think, that was the way they, you know, they were the way they were. So yeah, she did. She did learn a bit from from from the book as well, which was nice. Obviously, I learned much more from her, but did learn something from the book.

Carlton Reid 1:01:16
And it was amazing what she’s, she’s turning down to to keep that amateur status, you know, things like contracts with Raleigh. And they got to like, the Cycling Industries Federation, you know, gave them an early version of the Reliant Robin, which was, which was like a Raleigh-branded car originally. So they got that. So that that was that was one thing, which they were but they were basically she could have got massive, like Reg Harris style contracts, if she had have gone, you know, one way, but she was very adamant that she didn’t want to go that way.

Jeremy Wilson 1:01:51
Yeah. And Reg Harris was trying to get her to because I think he saw an opporunity, I sense the saw an opportunity to, to sort of represent her because he wrote this great article about, you know, she should turn professional and she could have a future on the on television and after dinner circuit and sort of earn money in that way. But that was when she was only about it was after she had won about her fourth world title. So she would have only been in her mid 20s at that point. I mean, she cycled for another, she was winning titles for another 20 years after that. And it’s so misunderstood what she stood for and what she loved doing this idea that she wanted to be a celebrity rather than a racing cyclist just couldn’t have been anything further from the truth. She never she never had a TV in the in her house because she thought that it might distract her from a cycling you know, never had a phone in the house. Because she thought she didn’t want to be distracted from what she needed to do for her cycling. So the idea that she wanted to be a sort of use it to be a kind of sporting celebrity was just so far from what she wanted to do. I imagine the money at some point must have been tempting they came there was it’s as I say it’s in she describes it in some Cycling Weekly articles of the time, you know, Raleigh would turn up they were living in a two bedroomed council house in Morley. You know, Charlie would do the bikes in the corridor of this council flat. It was a it was a I had a look at it, it was just blocks of house you know, house flat. And he would do the maintain all the bikes in the in the sort of freezing cold corridor in the winter of the of this of this place in Morley, where they lived up until she was a fight that a move when she was she had already won five world titles when they moved and Raleigh kept coming to this to this address with, you know, different contracts for her. But she always she always said no, but it must have been I imagine there must have been some temptation because they they were living very much week to week in terms of being able to afford to cycle, they both worked. And the working was just to facilitate being able to pursue her passion. So I guess there must have been a temptation, but she knew that it would have as I say, because of this strict enforcement between amateur and professional, she knew that it would have been the end of her ability to race basically, in all the things that were meaningful to her. So it was absolutely the right choice for her and just so again, kind of there’s something so noble about her career now where we see sort of modern sport, it would be so different now is something so pure and genuine and about it and actually, in fairness or you know, modern sports people, I think roots still have that basic passion for what they do. It’s probably not their fault, but there’s all the other stuff that’s attached to it now, but I think that can change how they view their sport with some I’m for sure but never Beryl never face that because she just, she just was completely amateur completely did it for the love of the love of it.

Carlton Reid 1:05:11
We do share a sponsor in that she got a bike from Ron Kitching. And I also was sponsored in the 1980s by Ron Kitching who gave me stuff but then Ron Kit gave you know lots of cyclists Yes. stuff in obviously a Yorkshire and Rudding Park in Harrogate, which was, which was very much wereRon Kitching was from so she got she got a Ron Kitching bike. So she she rode that, but really didn’t get a great deal, said she, she wasn’t she wasn’t like, you know, no, absolutely dripping with with she just couldn’t

Jeremy Wilson 1:05:47
know the only things that she could get she she got she got this Reliant Robin car in 1960. Or the family did three wheeler, which Charlie would use to it wasn’t a Reliant Robin, as you say it was a three wheeler it was an early version of a three wheeler the Reliant Robins came later. And they would use it and there’s photographs in the book of it, you know, parked by the side of the road in Belgium and and Denise and Charlie were sleeping in the back of it. While Beryl’s becoming world champion in the age extraordinary kind of stories and this car went in became a bit of a sort of renowned sort of thing around the country because it would it would easily tip apparently, so it will quite often, it will quite often capsize in sort of ditches when Charlie was driving around the the roads trying to keep up with where a Beryl was. And people would have to come and sort of push it back up, right and stuff like this. So I heard lots of funny stories about this car was very well known to everybody. So they got that car in 1960 as a sort of reward it was for becoming she was double world champion that year. And other than that, there was a shoemaker that would that would, I don’t know if they were made any cheaper she’d have these quite often read shoes by someone in Northampton can called Peter Salisbury who would make these custom beautiful leather red shoes for her I don’t know the exact arrangement, as I say in terms of paying but Ron Kithcing. Charlie worked when they moved to Harrogate in 1976, Charlie worked in his bike shops, and I think she more or less had the run of things there, it wouldn’t have been a formal relationship, because you can be sort of sponsored, as I say, because of these rules about amateur and professional. But from what Denise tells me, I think I think she pretty much you know, she could she could borrow whatever she wanted from the bike shop by then. And obviously, Ron Kitching was pretty happy because his, his, his bikes were always in the sort of cycling magazines, because he would nearly all her records were on the sort of Ron Kitching bikes. So yeah, I think she had some help later on in that regard. But other than that, nothing, you know, absolutely nothing, and it would in fact, be have contravened the rules if she had. So she would know that there was there was some receipts at the BBC archive of her sort of, you know, claiming very precise expenses when she went in did sort of record breakers or something like that. And she wouldn’t, you know, very fair with what she claimed she wasn’t, there was no sort of making any money out of out of cycling. And she did tonnes of things for nothing. That was sort of promoting cycling, in terms of sort of TV appearances, or even, you know, she did a load of promotional stuff for the AA bizarrely, and she currently got paid nothing for it. But at that time, it was kind of like the prestige of being invited to shows or being invited to things was she’s she would say, Well, I want you know, I’ve got to I’m representing cycling as a sport and cycling was quite a minority sport at that time. So she thought that it was important that cycling was represented and it was a sort of honour for cycling to, to go to these things. So it was very much that way around in career.

Carlton Reid 1:09:12
Don’t I very much like to talk about some sexism in cycling, and that’s absolutely stands out in the book how staggeringly high the challenges that all women were facing in that era, not just bearable all women. But for now I’d like to actually cut to a commercial break. So let’s take this way with David.

David Bernstein 1:09:33
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast, and of course, the spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles, the good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for Tern is to make sure that your ride is safe, and worryfree. And that’s why Tern works with industry leading third party testing labs like EFBE, and builds it bikes around Bosch ebike systems which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So, before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded and perhaps with the loved ones behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame and the rigours of the road. For more information, visit www.ternbicycles.com to learn more. And now back to the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:10:43
Thanks, David. And we are back with Jeremy Wilson. And Jeremy as as I’m sure you if you’ve been listening to the the rest of the show, you’ll know has wrote this incredibly fantastic multi award winning book on BB Beryl Burton and and before the break there I was I was kind of mentioning to to Jeremy if he could talk us through some of the amazing sexism you know, we think of today is it being fairly bad and it still is bad, you know, you know, the parity in prizes, all this kind of stuff. But back in the you know, the heyday when when Beryl was raising 50, 60s and early 70s it was off the scale, the sexism and the challenges that women riderss had to had to face back then. Even though they were clearly as as Jeremy talked about with the licorice allsorts story, she was as good as if not better than many of the top men of the of the day. So Jeremy, tell me about the kind of challenges she faced with officialdom so with the with the British Cycling Federation, with the UCI, famously, you know, what, what did she have to get above and beyond before she even had to, you know, athletically win?

Jeremy Wilson 1:11:57
Well, she was she was very unfortunate in one respect, because she was came along in a sport that where women weren’t allowed in the Olympics. So if she was an athlete, a runner, athletics, or swimmer, she would have they were into the Olympics 50 years before cyclists but for whatever reason, the UCI, which was the world governing body was very sort of male dominated body and wasn’t much interested in in promoting women’s cycling. And it was only it was actually a British woman called Eileen Gray, who was the great champion for getting women’s cycling recognised, and Beryl was, well, she was unlucky in that sense that she didn’t have those competitions available to her Commonwealth Games as well, it wasn’t it was the same position. Eileen Gray was successful in lobbying the UCI to have a women’s world championship events from 1958 onwards, and Beryl kind of first reach world class level in the late 1950s. So she was fortunate in that she at least coincided with World Championships, but only very basic amounts of World Championships. So it was a road race, a pursuit on the track, which is a timed three kilometre race and a sprint on the track. So there’s just three events open to women, which meant Beryl could go for two of those, which was the road race and the time trial. She wasn’t a fast sprinter. It’s a completely different discipline. They weren’t actually her best events, because now there’s a time trial had there been a time trial, she would have been invincible for 25 years, maybe 20 years, something like that. I mean, she was way better at time trialling than the shorter three kilometre pursuit or a road race, but she had those events available to her. And she was seven times world champion in those events. Still, no British cyclists has ever been a double world road race champion apart from Beryl, and no British and no cyclist in the world as one as many perceived medals as her so she’s still excelled. Even though these two events weren’t her absolute best events, but the sort of surrounding stories of the challenges women faced even in these events, even though they had them were vast because they would always sort of not be given the the tires or the kit that the men would they were always given less money for accommodation, less riders were allowed to go, who were women. And also the schedule, the UCI schedule would just shut the women’s races whenever there was a gap in the programme for the men, so they never knew when they were going to race. So when they were riding they would spend let arrive at the track sort of seven or eight in the morning and often be there till like midnight. And Beryl might not know when her sort of World Final would be exactly because it was always done at sort of discretion of the organisers and the organisers were this sort of male or in male committee And they kind of saw the women’s races as sort of an add on that weren’t really that important. So she had that throughout her world. World Championships career, I think where she was fortunate was the club scene in in in Britain as we touched upon the club that she joined Morley. It had women in it and it was very sort of family progressive club in in Yorkshire. Other cyclists at the time would tell me very, very different stories. A lady called Val Baxendine, who rode with Beryl in the World Championships in East Germany. She wrote a letter to try and join her local cycling club and was told well, you can you can you can come and make the tease for us at the event that you can’t join the Club. Eileen Cropper, another lady from Bradford, she knew Beryl very well, she said that she was allowed to join the club but she would they would put that because they didn’t like getting faster she said the lads would put bricks in my my saddlebag when we went out cycling to to slow me down and the prize is for women as well. You know, it’s almost quite comical now looking back, but there’d be things like hair curling tongs, a pouch of washing powder, and stuff like that would be what the women were given if they won if they won something, which and just the way that women cycling was reported as well was was you’d be I’d be sacked on the spot if if I sent in anything that was resembled what you would read in that sort of cycling magazines and national newspapers at the time. You know,

Carlton Reid 1:16:31
you’re the Yorkshire housewife and Yorkshire has that kind of thing?

Jeremy Wilson 1:16:36
Yeah, but also sort of, you know, slender legs that will be easy on the eye for any man or stuff like you know, vivacious bubbly, you know, good looking bubbly personality it was all very commenting on on, on the appearance of the cyclists as much as what they actually were doing. But that was obviously normal at that time because there it was in in sort of print and wasn’t really you know, it was sort of accepted of that’s how it was so very, very different times but obviously Beryl was vital because although she wasn’t a great one for sort of, she wasn’t out there campaigning all the time to for for inclusion in the way that Eileen Gray as I say she was her great champion was but what were Beryl was so crucial was just cuz she was so good, athletically so extraordinary, she completely changed perceptions of women, women’s athlete, women, athletes, and women’s sport and what they were capable of, because this was a time when women weren’t allowed to do marathons in in athletics. They didn’t think that it was almost safe for women to push themselves in long endurance sport. And then there was there was this woman that was actually beating the men in these events. So it completely changed how women’s endurance sport was viewed and respected as well, because you couldn’t obviously not respect somebody who was better than the better than the men at the time. So you had I suppose this kind of mixture of things I did, but I did in fairness sense that that British Time Trial scene was was in the context of a lot of sport was quite quite progressive in its sort of welcoming way. And now actually, the men who who rode with barrel that they love talking about her love her, you know, love, she’s sort of figure that, you know, on the sort of Facebook pages of this sort of oldest cycling in the 60s are these you know, they Beryl was a sort of absolute legend to these men that were sort of regularly kind of beaten by her. There was one guy that said that he was a good, very good cyclist in himself. And he was quoted as saying, if if Beryl Burton ever beats me, I’m gonna bury my bike, you can bury my bike in the garden, and his brother was a very good, good, very great rider Ray Booty who is the first rider to cycle under four hours for 100 miles. And he, there was a speech he gave, and he was telling the story of what his brother said about Beryl Burton, and he sort of just ended his speech with both events came to pass. I, he got beaten by Beryl and he had to bury his bike. I don’t know if the second is strictly true, but they had to get used to you know, they had to get used to the fact that there was this woman who was stronger than them and there was so many stories that I would hear. Along those lines, they’re kind of like folk hero type stories. There was a guy called Roy Caspell, who was the national 12 hour champion men’s champion, and he and Beryl did 100 mile time trial one morning and they were both they were first and second in the event, but Roy Caspell just beat Beryl they were both under four hours. For 100, which was very, very rare for a man or a woman at that time, and he narrowly beat Beryl but Beryl didn’t like the fact that she had she had lost and so she challenged him to to go for another ride through the Yorkshire Dales on the same day, and apparently he sort of they went and he sort of felt for his honour, he had to say yes. And he came back and one of his club mates said that when he came back, he was just begging for mercy. So it was an absolute, it’s actually said, He’s, she’s can’t remember the exact words, but it was, it was a

Carlton Reid 1:20:35
mess or something.

Jeremy Wilson 1:20:37
She’s not a wreck. Yeah, or something like that. And she was five foot six inch women, not, you know, eight and a half stone through this guy was six foot two at the absolute peak of his powers. So she’s just in terms of the respect that I think women’s sport gave, she was hugely important. And the other thing that she did do, she campaigned to have men’s and women’s races in the time trials together. So I mean, it was probably quite as from Beryl’s point of view, a selfish thing, because she wanted the competition, she wanted to ride in the men’s races as well. She was successful in that sort of campaign that she had, but that, mostly she was mostly she was important, I think, in that fight for equality, just because she was so extraordinarily good. As I say, someone could, Eileen Gray was this amazing campaigning figure in the committee rooms of the British Cycling Federation and the UCI, but there were lots of Beryl would have lots of problems throughout her career with the BCF the British Cycling Federation, they were, they were always quite awkward with what she wanted to do, and would try and get her to do different events and things like that. But quite interesting. And quite another thing, I think that’s a characteristic of someone who’s hugely successful, even when she was very young, she really stood up for herself, and she’d do what she wanted to do what she believed was right. And I think that’s it, you know, wasn’t worried about fitting in and doing, you know, not not ruffling feathers, she would, she would do exactly what she thought was right. And if they didn’t like it, you know, hard luck. And they would threaten a few times with her sort of the selection from World Championships because she would insist on doing lots of time trialling, and they wanted her to focus on other events, and they would back down in the end, because it would have looked ridiculous if they didn’t select her for these races. So she actually had sort of fractious relationship with the the governing bodies at different points in our career.

Carlton Reid 1:22:44
So in the book, you’re very, very, incredibly well demonstrated how amazing she is, as as a sports person, in general, compared to other sportsmen or how she ought to be up there with, you know, all the sporting greats. And then you mentioned in in the book about how, in 2016, the telegraph, your paper is one of the culprits of not because it’s they placed her at fifth in the list of Greatest British sports people, you know, behind Gavin Hastings, and Sandy Lyle. Now, do you think and this is a very, very difficult question for me to ask or for you to answer. But do you think with your book now, especially as we’re winning so many awards? Do you think she’ll be much, much further up that list? Now that you’ve been elevated?

Jeremy Wilson 1:23:33
I would hope so. I think obviously, you know, it’s going to have passed, it’s not going to have sort of it not everybody’s going to have noticed notice this and and other things that have been done to promote what she’s, you know, to amplify her achievements. But I think she would be now I do think I do think people and something that’s really interesting. I don’t know if people are just being polite. But when the title in search of Britain’s greatest athlete, I sort of thought I’d have a few people going sort of Yeah, right. Or no, no, that’s ridiculous for this reason, or, you know, whatever. But just isn’t. Nobody’s even tried to argue with the tough times and the Financial Times, reviews of both, both of them said, it’s not hyperbole that the title, and I haven’t come across anyone that sort of really sort of thought no, when you stop and think about it, sort of is a fair case to make there. So I think she would be a lot higher. There was a sort of poll of the sports journalists Association a couple of years ago for the greatest British women’s athlete, and she wasn’t even mentioned in this poll, and I was sort of do I sort of kick off social media about it? And I thought, I’ll wait till after my book, I don’t want it, you know, so it’s a bit early to sort of, and think Jessica Ennis Hill was sort of named as the sort of greatest ever British Britain’s greatest ever sports woman. And you know, as much as Jessica Ennis, who is is fantastic. And I’m not trying to knock what she’s done. If had Beryl had an Olympics open to her shoe in a time trial, she would have won the time trial, in my opinion every years from 1960 to 1980, which is six Olympics. At in adding the pursuit road race, you would have won a few of a few pursuits for sure, maybe one road race, something like that, you know, you’re looking at sort of Redgrave times Wiggins, and then a sort of Tour de France, if a women’s Tour de France was available to her, she would have annihilated the field in a in a, in an in an endurance event of that type day to day being having to ride along miles day after day. I mean, that would have suited her perfectly. So

Carlton Reid 1:25:51
on that on that subject, but let’s talk about you’re bringing her into the modern day, let me tell tell me about the the wind tunnel, and you put a you know, the rider on on the same bike, because you got you got the bike, and you’ve made conclusions from that. So just tell us about that bit.

Jeremy Wilson 1:26:07
Yeah, well, I wanted to try and find a way to sort of benchmark what she had done. And I knew that what she’d done was so phenomenal her times, because her times at the time, her records at the time were the 12 hours we touched on was was actually in excess of the men’s record of the day. But the 100, the 1500 miles, 50 miles, 25 miles and 10 miles, were all very close to the men’s record of the time, way closer than you would normally get not just in cycling, but in athletics swimming record. So she was obviously highly unusual in terms of how good she was. And her record lasted between 35 and 50 years, which again, is just completely unheard of, particularly in a sport where technology advances were so so big, you know, be completely unheard of in athletics, but you’re only really changing the shoe there or swimming where you’re just changing the trumnks, you know, it’s fairly marginal differences. Here we’re talking about a sport with the carbon fibre bikes, the aero bars, the helmets, the clothing, vast, vast improvements, and yet her records still lasted, you know, the 12 hour record lasted half a century. So I knew that I knew that she must be athletically completely out of the park. Unusual. So I was speaking to Chris Boardman about it. I interviewed him and we were talking about Beryl Burton, and he you know, he knew he got he got our autograph as a kid, he got approached to a race. And he said, Well, why? And I said, Is there a way of modelling it because he did a he did the our record on a super bike. And then he did he did the what they call the athlete’s Hour, which was on an old school bike with dropped handlebars, and there was about six or seven kilometre difference in an hour in the two records. And I sort of said how, you know, could you in any way there’s a wind tunnel at Silverstone which which the a lot of the professional teams in top amateur riders use to measure different bits of equipment because they can objectively just analyse the difference in times of various changes you can make to the bike or your position. So a guy called Xavier Disley does this for for some professional teams and as I say top athletes and top and he’s trying to invent things as well all the time to make the bikes faster. And he was like yeah, we could do that you know, it’s not not that difficult really. You just need to get somebody in the wind tunnel on barrels old bike or a bike similar to Beryl’s old bike similar build of person, old clothing, you know, he even said jokingly he said if you can get a wig that’ll be good and I was like okay, we’ll get it didn’t think I was but I did we I had to leave it down to get it to the right Beryl look, but I was pretty look at the photos they’re pretty close. And so we’ve got a cyclist called Jessica Rhodes Jones who’s a good time triallist now and she rode Beryl’s bike with the wig was kindly put the wig on and some of the old Morley cycling club let me the kit and and we did the same with her super bike now with all the carbon bike, Aero Club clothing and handlebars and everything. And he was you basically just measured the drag effect in the wind tunnel of the two and he from there he could then calculate what Beryl’s times would have been on the modern kit. And she came up faster still in the current record at 25 miles, 50 miles, 100 miles and 12 hours. So we were doing was literally changing the kit and nothing else. So you would have literally if you You could have picked up Beryl Burton from 1967 and plumped her in a time machine and plonked her on a super bike. And you know, she might have needed a day or so to get used to it. Although Jessica told me it is much easier to ride the new bikes than the old the one Beryl was riding, they’re much less comfortable. She would have still been beating the records that are out of date, despite changes in training, diet, Sports, Science, everything else, which is literally all we’re doing is picking Beryl up as an athlete and plunking her forward. So the 55 years, which I think is and he said to me, Dr. Disney, who did it, he said, I don’t think you could get an athlete in any sport where you could do that he just couldn’t believe that that was possible. Because even as I said it in athletics and swimming, the technological advances are much, much smaller. But the improvements in 50 years are still absolutely massive now, so it just kind of underlined again, I stayed out of the calculations, I wasn’t like I said to him, it just do it. I kind of expected it to show something amazing, but because because of the reasons I said at the start, but you obviously don’t know what he’s gonna come back with. So I was selfishly I suppose I was pleased that it showed how remarkable she was, but not not completely surprised. I would have been more surprised. If if it was I mean, you know, the 12 hour record was only first beaten five years ago. So I couldn’t see anywhere in the world that that that wouldn’t wouldn’t be much faster if she wasn’t on the if she was on the same kit that they use now. But yeah, as I say, I sort of stood back and let him Let him work it out. So great. And it’s actually that’s got quite a lot of interest as well, you know, that you could do something a bit different and something that’s sort of fairly objective, obviously, there’s going to be you can’t do something absolutely perfect to the second but it’s, it’s a fairly good, good, good guide, I think to how good she was.

Carlton Reid
You know, it’s a fascinating part of the book. There’s tonnes of fascinating parts of the book of course. So I’ve made 1000s of notes here and I could absolutely talk all day with you. And I am very very aware that we have actually been talking for an hour and a half Jeremy which is an awfully long time so thank you for that. Let’s let’s kind of end even though I could talk all day with you about belt but let’s just because she’s clearly hard as nails in in many different aspects of our life. But let’s just just this one I did talk I did say that we would bring Yvonne Reynders the great Flemish rider back in, and that’s just in one of the rides. And this is what Yvonne didn’t know. This particular bit. So just tell me about the ride. Where Charlie, excuse me, Beryl’s husband, she she’s basically had an injury. Yes. And she’s been in effect tied to a track bike. With with a leather toe strap. So tell me about that. Because that that that definitely tells you a lot about her as a person as a rider as an athlete.

Jeremy Wilson
Yeah, that was an amazing, amazing story. She said she was warming up for the World Championships. Off the top of my head. I remember it was Paris, I think it would have been 65 but but she was warming up with a lady called Val Rushworth who was a sprint one of the British sprinters so she was able to help me a bit with this story as well. But it’s in Beryl does tell this story in her book Personal Best as well. And so one of the male cyclists that they were warming up with actually just moved out across and wiped her out when they were do riding around the track to warm up, Beryl went down and great pain in a wrist and they didn’t know what it was is a good a good example of the sexism, Eileen Gray, the British team manager wanted to take her to the medical centre to get this looked at and they wouldn’t let her go in because she needed to be accompanied by a male doctor and need to be accompanied by a man. So the British women’s team manager was not good enough to accompany Beryl to get this checked out. So in the end, she found a medic from another team who sort of looked at it and they didn’t think she was gonna ride and it was obviously really painful. And in the end, it was what do we do, and they gave her an injection which numbs the pain, but she lost all feeling in a in a in her hand. So she couldn’t, she couldn’t clinch the handlebars with one of her hands. So she could with one. So she’s effectively riding one handed in a way. And they kind of thought, well, she won’t, she won’t be able to ride, you know, there’s no way she can ride. And she she, I think from memory, she did this in this it was before the semi final. She rode the semi final with it strapped and got and won. And then she was into the final against Yvonne Rynders. And that was one of the times where she didn’t win, she was silver medal that year. But obviously, she was at a huge disadvantage because of the fact that she had no feeling in one of her arms, but nobody could believe that she would actually ride, Val Rushworth couldn’t believe that she would she was going to ride but that was I think that was just that mentality of you sort of you get on with it, you get get on with it as kind of like what she would say about things. And you know, she had many crashes in life and was always she was always back on her bike as quickly as possible. But just amazing, really, because you would because it’s not just the the being one handed, it’s not just the steering, that would have been difficult. A lot of the power where you grip kind of comes from comes from your arms, it would have said would have must have been really difficult to not just control the bike, but go full out, and then just probably the whole shock of it. But that was what they

Carlton Reid
So when you say strapped, you know, people might think, oh, you know, people have put bandages around it. But this is actually literally strapped to the handlebars with a leather toe strap.

Jeremy Wilson
And yeah they just that was that was I guess that was that those sort of straps were what they used to kind of transport a lot of things at that time, like related things, you know, on the sort of roof racks and stuff like that. They were able to hold her that one thing I didn’t do was find a picture of this, which I would have loved to have found the finding the photography of the era was a whole nother kind of journey of discovery as well, which was which was great fun, but hard work. And I didn’t find I wanted to find a photo of that race, but I don’t know if there’s one out there. So I’m going by the kind of how it was told to me it but as I say Val Rushworth was there. And I met her and it’s recorded in Beryl’s book as well. So but she wasn’t one that would make a thing of it. She knows she didn’t Yvonne Rynders didn’t know, really what what was happening in another race where she had a knee injury when she she didn’t she was going for this record for 24 hours. She didn’t tell people that about the injury afterwards. It was almost deemed bad sportsmanship to kind of talk about talk about why you didn’t win in the immediate aftermath. So a lot of these stories would come out some time later. Because it was that was just the way you just sort of got on with it. And but Yeah, amazing story. There was another one where she did a two uptime trial where you ride with somebody else. And she had a guy called Malcolm Cowgill, who’s the guy that’s got her rainbow jersey preserved and she touched his back wheel and went down on a dual carriageway. And there’s blood sort of pouring down her face, legs and on a bike. And he went, went went stopped to check she was okay and kind of thought, you know, there’s no way we can fit, you know, said should we get an ambulance, what do you want to do? And she was like, No, we’re gonna finish and she got back on the bike and they said she was like cycling in front of me and shouting at me to go faster while bleeding away on the road. And they actually won this two up event where you did you do a time trial with somebody else. So that was her. That was her mentality. You know, there was an anecdote when her daughter Denise was they were warming up together for the world championship road race, and daughter crashed across quite a busy road and knocked herself out on the side of the road. And I said to her What did you know what did your mum say? Say she said all night she completed a warm up, which was a bit like, crikey. That’s pretty, pretty hard. It’s really tough mentality. But I think that was that was kind of the approach to sort of injuries and crashes. And that if you can, if you can physically find a way of carrying on you just get on with it basically. And

Carlton Reid
There’s so much we could talk about because because clearly there was there was much more we ended with rivalry with with Denise later in our life and you know, events and you showed the photographs in a book where she’s not even looking at her daughter says there’s tonnes of stuff, where we could we could carry on going, but I’m gonna recommend people just gonna have to go, we can’t just carry on talking all day. But I recommend people to go and get your book and read it cover to cover and just be amazed by the the life of Beryl. But now my friend Dave, who were riding a few weeks ago, he has read your book. Okay, he recommended it to me anyway. And you know, at that point, I hadn’t read the book. But the only anecdote I could tell at that time was the Licorice Allsorts anecdote. That’s the one I knew very well. And now I’ve got so many more anecdotes. So thank you for absolutely going, you know, so deep into into life of Beryl Berton that we now have all these anecdotes, including strapping being strapped to a track bike in a championship, which is which is amazing. So your book has absolutely open many people’s eyes, I’m sure who weren’t aware of her story, hopefully outside. Absolutely outside of cycling. But just for now, as we wrap up, can you please tell us where we can get this book? And and how much it costs? Give us the give us the biography of your book.

Jeremy Wilson
Yeah, I think it’s available. You know, from all certainly independent stores, Waterstones, Amazon, Profile Books was the publisher. So I think all the kinds of outlets that you would expect to be able to, to get a book. It’s it retails at 20 pounds, but I think that it is a hardback book, and it’s pretty, it’s fairly a lot of photos and a lot a lot in there. But I think it’s sort of 15.99 or something like that on Amazon, I noticed. So it varies slightly the price, the exact price of it. So yeah, but it’s pretty widely available.

Carlton Reid
Thanks to Jeremy Wilson there and thanks to you for listening to what has been a much longer than normal episode of The Spokesmen podcast. A click through to Jeremy’s book and a transcript of our mammoth conversation can be found on the show notes at the-spokesmen.com And this has been episode 315 of the Spokesmen podcast brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. The next episode will be Milan flavoured but meanwhile get on out there.