A meeting of two passions today - football and cycling - with a long-overdue trip to the northernmost reaches of Nottinghamshire to Harworth, where Harworth Colliery FC were taking on Dearne & District in the Central Midlands Football League North.
Harworth, right on the Notts/Yorkshire border was the home of cycling legend Tom Simpson. Tom was born in Durham in 1937, but the family moved to Nottinghamshire in 1950. Tom joined the Harworth and District Cycling Club and struggled to keep up in early rides and races. However, he was a prodigious talent and soon began to win things. A meteoric amateur career led to selection for the 1956 Olympics. Not being one to mess around, Tom rode down the A1 from Harworth to London and back to collect his official kit and blazer.
In April ‘59, the same year Forest last won the FA Cup, Tom set off for Brittany with two Carlton bikes and £100 in his pocket. There, he turned pro, telling his Mum that he didn’t want to look back in twenty years thinking “if only”. That same year, he rode the World Championships where he finished an astonishing 4th.
Tom was business-minded and developed a very marketable character as ‘Gentleman Tom’ playing up his Englishness in a sport then, as now, dominated by mainland Europeans. He did a lot of photo calls in full pinstripe, bowler and brolly, to complement a super-cool appearance on the bike. Tom did the sunglasses and backwards cap thing very stylishly. Based in Ghent, he became a well-loved top-level pro and became the first and so far only British rider to win the fabled Tour of Flanders, still the maddest and most romantic of one day races.
In ‘62, Tom became the first ever Brit to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France, finishing 6th overall. In ‘64, he won the Milan-San Remo. He surpassed even this by becoming World Champion in 1965, the latter largely responsible for him being voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year. The same year, Tom won another of the biggest races, the Tour of Lombardy. In fact, there are only 5 races in cycling designated ’Monuments’, massive, culturally important, career-defining. Tom had now won three of them (Milan-San Remo, Flanders and Lombardy). For perspective, the only other British Monument winner to date is Mark Cavendish, Milan San-Remo in 2009.
At the height of his career, at the age of only 29, Tom’s life cruelly ended on the fearful slopes of the legendary Mont Ventoux. This massive climb, intimidating even to the cycling greats, partly due to its barren moonscape appearance and formidable heat, is a regular on the Tour de France. The thirteenth stage (13 July) of the 1967 Tour de France measured 211.5 km (131.4 mi); it started in Marseille, crossing Mont Ventoux. Tour doctor Pierre Dumas noted the heat, "If the boys stick their nose in a 'topette' [bag of drugs] today, we could have a death on our hands."At the start line, a journalist noticed Simpson looked tired and asked him if the heat was the problem. Simpson replied, "No, it's not the heat, it's the Tour."
Tom looked ill throughout and stopped for a medicinal brandy on the lower slopes. Near the summit of Ventoux, he slipped from the front group to a group of chasers about a minute behind. He then began losing control of his bike, zig-zagging across the road. A kilometre from the summit, Simpson fell off his bike. Team manager Alec Taylor and mechanic Harry Hall arrived in the team car to help him. Hall tried to persuade Simpson to stop, saying: "Come on Tom, that's it, that's your Tour finished", but Simpson said he wanted to continue. Taylor said, "If Tom wants to go on, he goes". Noticing his toe straps were still undone, Simpson said, "Me straps, Harry, me straps!" They got him on his bike and pushed him off. Simpson's last words, as remembered by Hall, were "On, on, on."Hall estimated Simpson rode a further 500 yare’s before he began to wobble, and was held upright by spectators; he was unconscious, with his hands locked on the handlebars. Hall and a nurse from the Tour's medical team took turns giving Simpson mouth-to-mouth, before Dumas arrived with an oxygen mask. Approximately forty minutes after his collapse, a police helicopter took Simpson to nearby Avignon hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:40 p.m. Two empty tubes and a half-full one of amphetamines, one of which was labelled "Tonedron", were found in the rear pocket of his jersey. The official cause of death was "heart failure caused by exhaustion."
Brandy, amphetamines, extreme heat. A fatal combination. It’s easy to judge from a modern day perspective, but the drugs and the drink were just a part of cycling, necessary to get through the brutality of the sport. The following exchange between Fausto Coppi, the most revered Italian cyclist and up there with Eddy Merckx as the greatest of all time, sums it up. Coppi partook of ‘la bomba’ a mix of, amphetamine, caffeine and cola:
Question: Do cyclists take la bomba?
Coppi: Yes, and those who claim otherwise, it's not worth talking to them about cycling.
Question: And you, did you take la bomba?
Coppi: Yes. Whenever it was necessary.
Question: And when was it necessary?
Coppi: Almost all the time!
Tom was a victim of his sport and of the times. He is looked on kindly by cycling fans and historians. He is buried in the cemetery at Harworth and a visit to his grave is a moving experience. There is a memorial to him alongside the spot where he fell on the Ventoux and this is always busy and heavily decorated with flowers and cycling jerseys from all over the world.
I try to pay regular tribute to the memory of Tom, Durham-born but essentially a Nottinghamshire great. Every so often I like to do a ride starting and finishing at Harworth cemetery, looping North up to the Humber. I’ve ‘done’ Ventoux twice to pay tribute at the memorial there. On the best of days, it’s bloody hard. In 40 degree heat, well…
Great books about Tom abound if this has sparked an interest, notably Put Me Back On My Bike, by William Fotheringham and Mr Tom, by his nephew, Chris Sidwells.
No 40 degree heat for the match and no time (or inclination really) for a ride today. A ‘bracing’ evening, proper mizzly and Autumnal. A detour Past the cemetery, to stay “Ay up” to Tom and off to the Recreation Ground.
Another match, another ex-mining town/village. Harworth Colliery operated from 1913 to 2006, when it was mothballed, leaving North Notts with no mines. The pit had produced top quality coal and the Flying Scotsman was burning Harworth coal on its renowned record breaking journey from London to Ediinburgh. The football club was a formed as Harworth Colliery Institute in 1931. The name was shortened, dropping ‘Institute’, in 2011 though many still refer to it by the full version. They have played as high as tier 6, but are currently in the Central Midlands Football League North. Mid table at the moment, this evening’s match was against Dearne & District, just one place and 3 points above.
The first thing to note was the warmth of the welcome, from the chap on the gate, the gent serving in Tom’s Tea Bar and Paul (‘Tash’) over the way in the pavilion, who gave me a talk through the lovely Tom Simpson museum, where I noticed one Sir Bradley Wiggins in the visitors book, along with a lot of other big name cyclists of various vintage.
The match itself, an entertaining enough 3-3 draw played out in a tidy, smart ground that the club are keen to keep on top of in the hope of a return to a higher tier. Harworth led three times, each time pulled back quickly, and the draw was probably just about right. For Harworth, an end to a short run of poor results, 4 defeats, 16 conceded, which must be some relief.
Another enjoyable night spent watching decent, affordable (£3) football, meeting nice people. Good chip down the road too. I’ll be back. There are clearly a lot of folk watching a lot of football around the North Notts/South Yorks coalfield area and I keep bumping into familiar faces, including the fantastic “Acker” who is a walking encyclopaedia of local football and who covers the area collecting money in his bucket for Cancer Research - currently approaching £90k. A great feller.
Next up for me, in all likelihood, Retford FC v Harrogate Railway Athletic (NCEL Div 1) on Saturday, on the recommendation of David and Rob, who had the small, orange stand above all to themselves tonight!
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