lid When in the summer J. W. Stocks successfully attacked the hour record the day, was go oil, bit not ideal, xnd a month or later, J. Platt-Botts reached within a very fow yards of it, and succeeded in disturbing some of the intermodinte figures: Now. in the fall of the year, on a perfectly: windless evening, Stocks has had another cut at his own figures, "ud has regained. the sequence right away from the sixth mile up to and including the hour's record of 32 miles 1,086 yards. as It is commonly said that the knowledge that Stocks was' intending to ride in the fifty miles professional championship caused all other aspirants to honours of this sort to refrain from sending in an entry, and thus the race was abandoned, without even a walk over for the title. The amateur vent at a like distance, however, attracted vey Ierse, though it must be confessed, a very poor class entry, as with the exception of four or five of the men, the field was unknown. Thirty were started at once on the track, and although the race +as announced as, there was a remarkable dearth of pacemakers, and at.no tims was any one but the leader being Ivoked after. Such a manifestly unfair arrangement is a sorry exhibition of the ssu-celled general pacing rule insisted on by the National Cyclists' Union. Of court the leader. being: helped, at once gained on any followers left to their own resources, and in the absence of an adequate snuply of tandems to pace eve hiody, the presence of any pacers mate conditions so lop-sided that it is not to be wondered at that the great majority retired from-so unequal a contest, and the thirty starters quickly dwindled to.nine finishers, Catford C.C., whose time: for the 50 miles The -dexrth of tandems was Tvgly [accounted for by the fact'that the Auerloy Biey-de Club_was holding a-tandem race at the Crystal Palace during the progress of the Championship at Wood Green. This lame-table clashing is a typical example of the ill-feeling existing betwen t-union and its affiliated clubs. The suspension of the London County Club served to exasperate one of the Union's staunchest supters, snd their action with regard ths Anerley Bicycle Club way equally unfriendly. he A.B.O. has fixed erly the year on this purticu'er date fr ths autumn races. The Union at the last momentselectel thedute for their ¢ sampson shijrin spite of rheic rule bearing on the question of the clashing of fixtures, OF course it ruined ths chance of the Anerley Club's me-ting being a success, and so hey substituted for a general race-merting, a hundred miles' race for tandems, in ordos to tap the supply of pacing tandems which would otherwise have been available for the Championship event, Seventeen pairs started, and a there was x dearth of pacing, the lead passed from one to "nother ¢row many times in the early part of the race, until the brothers Franks, who are the holders of the Brighton-avd-back record, went to the front for a good many miles, About half-way they were led and Tapped by the pair who have been breaking several short-distance tandem records lately, Lewin and Albone, who thenceforth Ted to the end, bea ing the nearest pair, the brothers Rowe, by " little more then five minutes, the Franks having fallen and retired.
'There seems to be one man keen on riding tricycle this season, and ho has just ridden a mile.on the neglecte' type in mins. 12 1-5th secs. R. Percy "Clarke it his name, and he belongs to the North Road Club, which, when tricycling was still a branch of the sport, contained detachment of three-wheelers who /prattically monopolised the tricycling records. But or a spasmodic effort how and again there in very little heard of the tricycle wowndays, al-hough in a country where the roaila-are as well made and skilfully enxineered ax in England, there ate many advantages to be claimed for the type, especially for riders who take to heart the stories of accidents which are so freely current in our daily newspapers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.