Yesterday the annual report of British Cycling popped through my letter box. Normally it would go straight in to the recycling bin but as 2009 is the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the BCF (and also the 50th year of my cycling “career”) I thought I would take a look. And yes, the President, Preston’s own Brian Cookson, referred to the anniversary in the opening sentence of his address.
There is a nice graph showing membership figures. Now either this graph comes from the Gordon Brown school of statistics, ie it is all bollocks, or my assumption that cycling is a dying sport is seriously mistaken. The BCF starts in 1959 with 23,000 members and steadily declines to the early seventies when the nadir of 10,000 is reached. Incidentally this coincides with my racing career when there seemed to be a race locally every week end. From the low point it is steadily upwards until 2008 when the 1959 membership is finally surpassed with another 4000 members added in 2009.
All this seems remarkable and at odds with what I see, or think I see, out on the road. But perhaps it is not too surprising that membership now exceeds the 1959 level as I see from the report that 100 full time staff are employed in “Participation”! In contrast my 1961 racing licence was signed by G.T. Bassett “hon. secretary” and I suspect that the sole employee at BCF headquarters would be a typist. By 1964 however Len Unwin was general manager and presumably the staff had doubled to two.
I am sure it all makes perfect sense and I know that Brian Cookson is an honourable man. I just can’t understand why I don’t see more people riding bikes.
