gold medallist Russell Mockridge memorial ride

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Comment by vx255 on September 12, 2008 at 8:29pm

my 'ol girl is all ready for the ride tomorrow. well as ready as it gets, ancient brake pads and steel patterned braking surfaces mean I don't actually stop, but I do make a lot of warning noise to those in front :s

Comment by ChrisS on September 12, 2008 at 2:36pm

Article from: Herald Sun - A most unlikely hero

September 12, 2008 12:00am

IT'S taken nearly half a century, but the Russell Mockridge legend has finally been gate-crashed by a contemporary Australian cyclist.

On the eve of the 50th anniversary of Mockridge's untimely death, his friend, training partner and racing rival Jim Taylor has anointed Stuart O'Grady as the one rider whose talent, versatility and results are comparable.

This is a huge compliment for O'Grady, because it has always been taken as read that the bespectacled loner from Geelong was out on his own as the greatest all-round cyclist Australia has produced.

Indeed, he was near the top of the list of all our finest athletes in a golden era for Australian sport in the decade or so after World War II.

Mockridge's amazing career is about to come into focus again with the publication of a new book that examines the controversial circumstances and acrimonious aftermath of his death in a road accident during a race in Melbourne on September 13, 1958.

Russell Mockridge: The Man in Front by Melbourne journalist Martin Curtis, is, surprisingly, the first in-depth look at his life since Mockridge's own autobiography, My Life on Wheels, was completed and published after he died. That work has long been a collector's item and is virtually unobtainable now.

The Geelong Advertiser, where he did a journalism cadetship, devoted a magazine to him early this year.

Tomorrow, members of the Maillot Jaune Club, a Melbourne institution for old cyclists, will gather at the intersection of Dandenong Rd and Clayton Rd, Clayton, to pay silent tribute, with no speeches. Some will get on their bikes.

It was there that Mockridge was crushed beneath the wheels of a bus five minutes into the Tour of Gippsland, with his young wife Irene watching from behind the wheel of the family car. Her two-year-old daughter Melinda was with her.

Taylor and another star rider Peter Panton also hit the bus, but escaped relatively unscathed.

Mockridge was 30 and in his prime as a road and track racer with no peer in Australia and few in the world, having won two Olympic gold medals on the same day in Helsinki in 1952, then completing the Tour de France at his first attempt three years later.

He also won two golds and a silver on the track at the 1950 Empire (Commonwealth) Games.

He so dominated road racing in Australia that the Sun Tour, now the Herald Sun Tour, was run as a handicap race for the first and only time in 1957 - but he still won.

At the time of his death, he was the Australian professional road champion and the Australian professional sprint champion.

As Curtis points out, that's a rare combination in a sport that demands different abilities in both codes.

Taylor, also a top performer in Australia who raced extensively in Europe, said this week O'Grady's win in the famed Paris-Roubaix one-day race last year "puts him up there now".

O'Grady is also an Olympic gold medallist on the track - he won the madison with Graeme Brown in Athens - and has won two stages and twice worn the leader's maillot jaune in a decade of top-line performances in the Tour de France.

This year he was one of the driving forces behind CSC teammate Carlos Sastre's narrow victory over Australian Cadel Evans.

"He probably wasn't as quick as Mockridge but is as good an all-rounder," Taylor said.

Curtis's very readable and diligently researched book paints a portrait of an unusual, intriguing figure, although the author was frustrated by Irene's refusal to discuss her famous husband - or the accident - in any detail.

The late Irene believed the cycling community could and should have offered her more support and, in any case, she was never a great fan of the sport.

Curtis says when he approached her, she launched a vitriolic attack on cycling and the officials who ran it.

"What were grown men with families doing taking thes

Comment by ChrisS on August 17, 2008 at 10:38pm

What a marvelous tribute, hopefully we can attend.

Comment by vx255 on August 17, 2008 at 7:01pm

http://monash.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/general/riders-remem...

More info on the man and his achievements available on the above link