Harold "H" Nelson

Harold "H" Nelson BEM (30 January 1928 – 2 July 2016) was a cycling coach credited with helping amateur and professional cycle racing champions.

Nelson started to coach cyclists in 1953. From the early days, his methods are based on care of the body, power training and monitoring the heart rate - using them well in advance of their widespread use. He was the Great Britain team masseur on events including the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, seven world cycling championships, 21 Tours of Britain, three Peace Races (Warsaw-Berlin-Prague) and two Tours of Bohemia. He helped teams during 41 Manx Weeks and 34 Girvan Internationals. Riders he coached in the 1960s included time trialists Keith Stacey (British Best All-Rounder 1965) and Eric Matthews (24-hour champion 1968)[1]. In the 1980s he worked with Alan Geldard to help road riders turn to team pursuit.

In the 1970s and 1980s, he coached a number of international road riders, including Alan Kemp, Ian Binder, Brian Pownall, Mike Williams, and Phil Roberts; international riders who were also national champions included multi-national hillclimb champion, Jeff Williams, national road race champions John Herety and Paul Sherwen and national motor-paced champion Ian Donohue. More recently he helped Hamish Haynes (British National Road Race Champion 2006): he joined the training programme as a third-category rider and under Nelson's guidance he became an elite rider within two years before turning professional for a Belgian team. [2]

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