Discovering
the World of
Motor Pacing

Ever since bicycles first started to appear in

the nineteenth century people have wanted

to make them go faster.

HEN I visited the Scottish Cycle

W

Museum at Drumlanrig Castle with

my mate Mave, we borrowed a penny

farthing and a copy of an 1839 MacMillan cycle

and our first thought was ‘Let’s see how fast

they can go!’ So we had a race. The penny

farthing, which came along around 30 years

after the MacMillan, was far quicker and it was

with bicycles like these that the first official

races were run in 1868. English rider James

Moore is credited with winning the first race

at Parc Saint-Cloud in Paris, riding a bike

with iron tyres!

Racing against other cyclists is all very well, but

it’s not the same as seeing how fast you can go –

or how fast you dare to go. Sitting on top of the

big wheel of a penny farthing didn’t feel like the

best racing position I had ever been in on two

wheels when I tried it, but for F. L. Dodds in

1876 there was no choice. He set the first record

for the distance covered in one hour – almost

16 miles. Clever Mr Dodds used a team of other

riders to pace him, riding around the grounds

of Cambridge University. Riding behind

another cyclist, Dodds was able to maintain

a high speed without using as much energy as

the guy in front of him because he was riding in

the slipstream. Slipstreaming was something

that I knew a bit about from motorcycle racing.

I knew how bikers use it, but I was going to

have to delve into the science of how and why it

16    Britain’s Fastest Bike

worked, and we’ll be looking at that a little later.

The riders creating the slipstream for Dodds

dropped out after a few minutes, to be replaced

by someone with fresh legs in much the same

way that you may have seen cycle racers doing

during the Olympic Games. The team tucks in

behind the leader, who takes the strain for a

while before veering off up the banking in the

velodrome and swooping down to rejoin the

team at the back, leaving someone else to take

over the tough job at the front.

It was thrilling stuff to watch,

mainly, as in all sports where

there’s an element of danger

involved, because if it all went

pear-shaped and somebody

came a cropper he might not

live to tell the tale.

Of course, using that pacing technique, you

can only go as fast as the fastest rider. That

was fine for Mr Dodds in 1876 when he was

trying to set a record for distance covered in

an hour, but for a flat-out top speed you needed

a pace rider who can go much faster than you

can, which is a problem if the pace man has

only the same muscle power as you do. The

answer was to use more legs to give more

muscle power on the pace bike. Two riders

on a tandem were used, then three on a

triplet, with up to five on a quintuplet bicycle

hammering around a track ahead of the

would-be record breaker. Bicycle and tyre

manufacturers sponsored race teams and

record breakers, just as car manufacturers

would later do, to show the public how fast

and reliable their machines were.