Gods of time

Sometime back in 2008, when Testing Times still lay in the future, Ian Cammish was writing a personal column for the Planet X website, and in one of them he gave us his list of the top five time-triallists of the last fifty years - names like Engers, Griffiths, Burton were on the list. Obviously Ian had set himself a ticklish problem here, since he could hardly put his own name up there without being accused of fixing or big-headedness. So I thought the first anniversary of Testing Times would be a suitable moment to pay tribute to our distinguished editor, and to assure him that he is definitely on that roll-call of greats.
How do you make up that list? Is it personal and subjective, some champion you once saw or rode against and thought was terrific? I think there are more objective criteria, in fact essentially there are two requirements for joining the gods of this sport: first - obviously - you have to go faster than everyone else, you have to break records, not by a few seconds but by minutes, you have to open new horizons for other riders. But secondly you have to keep on winning: one season, one record or one championship isn’t enough, you have to come back year after year and demonstrate that you are the best. It’s like artists, writers or composers: you don’t place yourself among the greats by virtue of one picture, one book or one song, but through an entire body of work. It’s a lifetime’s achievement that only comes through a lifetime’s dedication.
      On both these counts, Cammish is up there among the gods. In 1983, having already won national championships and set competition records, he scaled new heights by putting up times for the 50 and the 100 which no other rider could get near for more than a decade. His 1:39:51 was the first 30 mph 50, smashing Watson’s thirteen-year-old record, on a day when, as Ian recalled, he just seemed to get faster and faster, and when he left the all-conquering Dave Lloyd a minute in arrears. That ride was the first strike in a miraculous two-month period, when every time he climbed on the bike amazing things happened - a national championship or a competition record - and none more amazing than the Goodmayes 100 in August. Already competition record holder at the distance, Ian proceeded to blast the 100 record into outer space with his 3:31:53, and this on a forward-sloping steel bike with the handlebars turned upside down. He rode at absolutely even pace, four 53-minute 25’s. He doesn’t remember suffering, but he just couldn’t get the pedals round any faster. He broke his own record by almost seven minutes, and won the race by twenty-two minutes. Ordinary riders, mere mortals to whom a 21-minute 10 seemed like a distant dream, searched in vain for an explanation as to how any man could string ten of them together non-stop, one after the other.
      This was the high-point that won him his fourth BAR title, and although he never went as fast again, there was so much more to come, and by 1989 he had amassed the unprecedented total of nine BAR’s. His victories in this competition were based firmly on his genius at 100-miling, in which he was unbeatable, taking nine national championships. Indeed there are a few purists who will argue that Cammish is still the 100-mile record holder, since his 1983 time was achieved on an old-style bike, and was only superseded after the aerodynamic revolution of the 1990’s. On both grounds - brilliant speed and long-term commitment - Cammish was in a class of his own.
      How did he do it ? What was the secret ? Was he made to a different biological formula from other people ? One of the interesting things about Ian is that he has always maintained that he had no special talent for cycling, that it took him several years and a huge amount of work to reach his full potential, and that he had no secret. It’s true that he was no child prodigy, no junior champion, and like all time-triallists, he had to find things out for himself. He had no coach and no family support, and at the age of seventeen he bought himself a second-hand moped to get out to races, riding with his bike strapped on behind. Like other young riders, he would gather around the result board looking at the names at the top of the list, wondering what it felt like to be winning races or breaking records, and longing to be part of that elite group. He left school after taking A-levels, and trained as a cartographic draftsman, and he has always built his training around his ride to work - twenty miles or so each way every day, summer and winter. But this wasn’t enough for him, and he would often go out in his lunch-hour for a rapid 10 miles or so, or he would go out in the evenings after the ride home, or sometimes both - lunch-time and evenings. All this riding was fast and purposeful, he wasn’t pottering around, and in this way he did arrive - virtually by accident - at his training secret: he was doing repeated sessions, as many as four sessions in a day, regularly piling up 400 miles a week, but fast, much faster than he could have achieved if he’d ridden four 100-mile rides a week. This was his secret, this combination of speed and distance, this is what transformed him from a better-than-average rider into arguably the greatest 100-miler we have ever seen.
      So this was the physical side: through immense dedication and single-mindedness, Ian made himself the outstanding time-triallist of his era. But like many cyclists he was something of a loner, and he would have to discover that there is also a psychological dimension to being a champion. You become the object of people’s expectations or demands, people criticise you, you are no longer riding just for yourself, you become to some extent public property, you get involved in controversies, and the people who have built you up as a hero seem to take delight in tearing you down, in showing that the god has feet of clay. After his miracle year of 1983, all these things happened to Ian, and he found out that a champion may still be a vulnerable human being. A champion cannot survive without self-belief, and he would find that all these knocks can hurt you, undermining your self-belief.
      The first big thing to go wrong was something that still haunts him: the 1984 Olympics at Los Angeles. Selected to ride in the team time trial, he found himself unable to adapt to the joint training sessions, his confidence ebbed away, and at his own request he was dropped from the squad, and flew home demoralised. Everyone in the cycling world was bemused by this, because on paper he looked capable of taking a medal on his own; no one could understand what had gone wrong, and they didn’t spare their criticism. His Olympic selection meant he had missed the 100 championship, thus spoiling his potential run of ten straight victories. Setting about his BAR campaign, he rode a reasonable 12 and then a fast 100 before disaster struck: he was knocked off his bike by a lorry and badly injured. His season was over and he had to lie in a hospital bed waiting to see if someone else would take his title. No one did, but it had been a difficult year: no more records, no easy victories, a lot of criticism and a lot of searching questions.
      Before that accident, Ian had thought that he would like to take six BAR’s, thus beating the record of his friend and mentor Phil Griffiths, and then ease off his racing. But it was while he was lying injured, wondering if he would ever ride again, that he admitted to himself that he could not imagine his life without racing. He determined then to keep on with it as long as he could, and the record books show that he took his six titles plus three more. But it definitely got tougher, physically and mentally. At 100 miles he was still unbeatable, but he hadn’t quite the old speed that had brought him the 30 mph 50, and the 12 was the same old agony. And the criticism that had started after the Olympics continued: people started saying that his victories had become automatic, that he was killing interest in the BAR competition, that he was a limited rider, a mere time-trialling machine, that he should try road-racing, and so on. Anyone who seriously thought riding at this level was now easy for him should have been at the Poole Wheelers 12 in 1987 to see him battle through the wind and rain to see off his arch rival Glenn Longland, the only man to spoil Ian’s run of BAR victories in 1986.
      Nevertheless by 1989, after his ninth BAR, he decided to look for new targets, and a pro contract with Raleigh gave him the chance to attack straight-out RRA records, which he did with breathtaking success. His two most sensational times still stand: 1:24:32 for the 50 and 3:11:11 for the 100. Anyone who imagines that these records are unreal in some way should try - even with the help of a big tailwind - averaging 35 mph for 50 miles or 31 mph for 100 miles: even Tour de France peletons don’t move any faster than that.
      Cammish’s racing career has now lasted an astonishing 35 years. These days he is not unbeatable, but he is still a force to be reckoned with, and in 2008 he finally grasped a prize that had eluded him even in his greatest days in the 1980s: he won the national 12-hour championship. His has been a lifelong obsession with speed that has made him one of the dominant figures in the history of the sport. He is up there with very greatest figures in time-trialling, the gods who have the power to do things that ordinary mortals cannot - to shrink space or stretch time. Sport is essentially ephemeral, but its map is defined by landmarks that are permanent - the championships and the records set up by the greats of any sport, by those who redefine what is possible, who inspire the rest of us, and who will never be forgotten. Anyone can draw up his own list of the greats of time-trialling, but whatever other names appear there, that of Ian Cammish has to be among them.