I have posted on the blog a story I wrote a couple of years ago, The Chain Race. It is based loosely on the life of Choppy Warburton and his stable of racing cyclists in the 1890's. The main sources was Gerry Moore's 'The Little Black Bottle' but the story of Choppy crops up as a footnote in a few books on the history of cycling though I suspect that Moore's book is the principle source even for them.
The story takes us back to the point where the sport was just beginning to take the shape we know today. The case of Choppy is often sighted as evidence that there was never and age of innocence in cycling, that doping has been part and parcel of it since day one. But maybe what is more surprising is how Choppy assembled a world class team of British riders, the nucleus of which came from one family and their friends in Wales.
For anyone who has the stamina to read it, thank you.
The story takes us back to the point where the sport was just beginning to take the shape we know today. The case of Choppy is often sighted as evidence that there was never and age of innocence in cycling, that doping has been part and parcel of it since day one. But maybe what is more surprising is how Choppy assembled a world class team of British riders, the nucleus of which came from one family and their friends in Wales.
For anyone who has the stamina to read it, thank you.
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