It was Keirin and Sprint legend Koichi Nakano’s birthday the other day; at 65 years-old he’s the same age as me. His huge claim to fame is that he won 10 consecutive World Professional Sprint titles. Mention of his name got me to thinking that he didn’t really win those titles straight and to find out more we spoke to Gordon Singleton of Canada…
Leicester, England 1982, the World Professional Sprint Championship, Japan’s Keirin King and Pro Sprint phenomenon Koichi Nakano – he’d eventually win the title ten years in a row – has been declassed in the first heat of the final against Singleton.
Singleton has the form of his life; he’s already bested reigning World Keirin Champion, Danny Clark to earn the rainbow jersey in that discipline.
With the Nakano DQ the Canadian is one ride up, if he wins the next ride he’s a double world champion – but just as the two are going to the line again it’s announced that Nakano’s DQ decision has been overturned and the heat is to be re-run.
No matter, Singleton takes the heat; he’s one up – one ride away from his second rainbow jersey of the week.
Into the home straight and it looks very much as if the man with the maple leaf on his jersey has the better of the Japanese rider.
But what happened next is still the topic of bar room debate amongst track racing pundits like me some 30 years later.
An innocent collision – or did Nakano deliberately deck the man who looked to be on the way to divesting the Jaguar-driving Keirin millionaire of his rainbow jersey?
Gordon Singleton will give us his take in this interview; but what is unarguable was how hard the Canadian hit the Leicester boards – it was the sound of some massive tree crashing to the forest floor.
Singleton’s shoulder was separated, he couldn’t ride another heat and the title was Nakano’s.
The Japanese rider’s victory bow to the crowd which earlier in proceedings was met with applause from the big crowd didn’t go down so well this time round; we all knew that the day belonged to Singleton, and so did Nakano.
We caught up with Singleton a while ago and he gave freely of his time to tell us about a career which saw him take various world records and win multiple Commonwealth and World titles.
How did you get into cycling, Gordon?
“I was introduced to bike racing in the spring of 1974 through the St. Catharines Cycling Club; Karen Strong who was a Worlds ladies Pursuit medallist and Steve Bauer were also members in that era although Steve was a couple of years younger than me.
“A guy called Peter Junek was also a member – he came to Canada from Czechoslovakia in 1968 he had raced over there but went on to become one of the world’s premier velodrome builders.
“I was 17 years-old, Peter looked at me and said; ‘I think he can be a sprinter’ – Peter and Colin Hearth from the club took me to the 250m metre concrete track in Toronto and I came away as the Junior Provincial Champion.
“As the season unfolded I won a few junior road races – if I was there at the end I was going to win the sprint.
“My parents were from Warrington in England and when I finished high school in the spring of 1975 I said to them that I’d like to go to England and take cycling seriously.
“In North West England there were tracks in Manchester and Liverpool and you could race a couple of times each week.
“I’d ordered a Harry Quinn track frame before I travelled to England and when I went over to Liverpool I visited the shop to see how they were doing with my frame.
“When I was in Quinn’s shop, Eddie Soens (legendary English coach/mentor – Chris Boardman was one of his charges) came in and we got to talking, one thing lead to another, he decided to work with me and the rest is history.”
What was your first taste of international competition?
“The 1975 Worlds in Liege. I’d just turned 19 – I lost the first round ride then I lost the repechage!
“But before the Worlds, Eddie had said to me; ‘Don’t be shocked by how good they are!’ and that had prepared me for the experience.”
That was a golden era for Canadian track cycling with you, the late Jocelyn Lovell and Curt Harnett.
“Jocelyn came first, his career was coming to an end as mine was beginning and Curt came along just after me so careers weren’t really together but we all belonged to a generation where you had to do it yourself with no help or support from government or sports foundations – those days are gone.
“No one does it now how we did it.”
Which of your performances as an amateur are you most proud of?
“There are three or four but I think that when I broke three world records in Mexico in 1980, that was special.
“Canada had boycotted the Moscow Olympics and that was a big disappointment for me so I thought that I had to do something to compensate.
“I was racing at Trexlertown in the USA at the time and said to Eddie; ‘I’d like to go for the world 200 metres record in Mexico.’
“Eddie said; ‘no, we’ll go to Mexico and we’ll break the 200, 500 and 1000 metre records !’
“That was Eddie; he always wanted more, better.
“So we went and accomplished the goal, breaking all three records. They’d all been held by the French rider Pierre Trentin with 10.69; 27.85 and 1.03.9 – I did 10.58, 27.31 and 1.03.8 respectively.
“I was watching the Wiggins hour record ride the other day – he’s in a packed stadium with all that support behind him – and I thought back to or day in Mexico – a Tuesday at 10:00am.
“There was me, Eddie and Norman Sheil; we paid for the two UCI timekeepers and the doctor for the dope test to attend and that was it – over the passage of time it gets lost how simple and basic our approach was back then.”
Why turn pro?
“I was kinda ticked off at not getting to the Moscow Games and there was no guarantee that the same wouldn’t happen for LA in ’84 with the way things were with the Olympic Movement.
“With hindsight it wasn’t a good decision – I was offered a contract by a company called AMF who had a strong team with riders like Connie Carpenter and Davis Phinney.
“They offered me a contract to endorse their product line and said they’d pay me $1:00 per bicycle sold. The previous year they’d had Bruce Jenner (the Olympic athlete) in the role and they had sold 400,000 bikes … $400,000 was huge money back then.
“I had a sports contract lawyer who worked with the ice hockey pros check out the paperwork and I signed up with AMF – six months later they hadn’t sold a single bike!
“But I was a ‘professional’ because I’d signed the contract.”
Tell us about your relationship with Eddie Soens.
“He had an incredible ability to visualise the potential within an athlete and extract that talent from him.
“He did with a lot of guys, not just me. We’d give 110% for him; he was inspiring.”
You rode for Eddie Soens and Ken Matthews Kirkby CC in Liverpool at the height of their deadly rivalry with the Liverpool Mercury CC.
“Ken managed the