Pete Matthews was a sprinter and while many of his staggering 366 total of wins in the 60's and 70's came from mass charges, he could also win from the break. Impressive and prolific by any measure, high times we caught up with the man I remember Cycling Weekly magazine – our ‘bible’ of the day – describing as, ‘a cheeky chappie.’
We mentioned the other day that Craig Geater is now working for the Discovery team, but before that he was a spannerman for Riis' CSC outfit, and it somehow seemed fitting to now publish our interesting interview with him from that period.
On Tuesday morning we awoke to the sad news that North of Scotland stalwart, Ivor Reid had died at just 57 years-of-age. Tragic. I wasn’t privileged to call Ivor a close personal friend but I knew the man for a long time; from the early 80’s and when we met there was always a warm hand shake and some good chat. When I saw pictures of him racing as a ‘Master’ on the track I always had to smile; the gear was always the best and right up to the minute - be it aero helmets, ‘keirin’ gloves, wheels, shoes, his enthusiasm and love for all things track cycling shone from those images.
We first spoke to Harry Tanfield a couple of years ago having seen him ride well in the Gordon Arms time trial – most recently we spoke to him after he won the David Campbell Memorial road race in Fife back in the spring of 2016. So when we opened this week’s ‘Cycling Weekly’ and there he was spread across two pages as the UK’s number one rated Elite rider we thought we best ‘have a word’...