Sporting Cyclist

Sporting Cyclist was a British cycling A4-sized magazine originally called Coureur. It began in 1955 and closed after 131 issues in October 1968.

Coureur - the magazine for the sporting cyclist was the idea of the journalist, Jock Wadley. John Borland Wadley joined the weekly magazine, The Bicycle, soon after it started in February 1936. The publication opened as opposition to the established weekly, Cycling, to counter Cycling's perceived establishment views, which included not covering massed racing on the open road after the Second World War and giving what some readers saw as little attention to professional cycling, such as the Tour de France, on the Continent. Cycling was originally dismissive of a breakaway organisation, the British League of Racing Cyclists (BLRC) and frequently campaigned against it and did little to cover its races; The Bicycle, on the other hand, saw itself as neither for or against the BLRC but saw the massed-start racing on the road for which it stood as a normal and even exciting part of cycle-racing. That was also the view of Jock Wadley, who used his enthusiasm for road racing and for France to report from the Continent whenever he could.

In 1955, The Bicycle closed and was absorbed by Cycling, which did not take on its staff. Wadley recalled of the months following his redundancy: "I saw more cycling... than in four far-from-dull years on The Bicycle. As the programme included my first all-the-way Tour de France, I had enough material in hand to write a book... The dream, however, was to bring out a continental-style all-cycling magazine."

Money for the new magazine, called Coureur, came from a London cycling enthusiast and timber-dealer called Vic Jenner. Jenner was an enthusiast for all forms of cycling and once offered to pay the Tour de France winner, Jacques Anquetil to race against the clock in a time-trial in Essex. Jenner died, however, before the contract could be organised. He did, though, see the appearance of the first issue of Coureur in autumn 1955.

Issue number one was written entirely by Wadley, who had also taken most of the photographs. It was produced at the home of Peter Bryan, until recently editor of The Bicycle, with help from a photographer, Bill Lovelace, and a designer, Glenn Steward. They too had worked at The Bicycle. The title was the last thing to be decided, chosen by Steward from a list of suggestions from Wadley. The first issue had no advertising, the second had six pages and the fourth more than 12.

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