My excitement at seeing my first big bike race - the 1963 Milk Race

The 2021 Tour of Britain is due to start next week.(recent edition pictured below). It’s not coming my way this year, so I’ll get my fix by recalling my excitement at seeing my first Tour of Britain – the amatuer Milk Race - way back in 1963.

“From Me To You” by the Beatles topped the charts that year. Just one of the many chart toppers to set our feet tapping and pedals turning. We played this Beatles hit on the juke box at the Poplar Café while awaiting for the amateur Tour of Britain Milk Race to come by on the Warrington to Macclesfield road. It was the first stage of the 1963 Tour, from Blackpool to Nottingham. The first Tour of Britain was sponsored by the Daily Express in 1951, and was a huge draw, pulling tens of thousands of spectators. It was proof of the power of press sponsorship. The Milk Marketing Board took up sponsorship in 1958, after professional Dave Orford first put the idea to them. It was to become the longest running cycle racing sponsorship in the history of the British cycling. It came to an end in 1993 when the government killed off the MMB monopoly. Today, over 60 years later, the new-look Tour of Britain is the reincarnation of the Milk Race. It is promoted by marketing company Sweetspot and fields some of the best elite pros in the game, reflecting Britain’s new international standing at the top of world cycling. But in this story I go back six decades to when this novice club rider and his friends first saw the Tour – then called the Milk Race. This was in 1963. The sight of this international road race gave us hope for the sport. In those days, the general public didn’t know much about racing. The Poplar café was an essential watering hole for truck drivers and cyclists, the latter heading for the Derbyshire Peak District. Pint mug of tea, full breakfast and two slice, juke box offering a wide selection of the current hits, including Tamla Motown, the Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers. No lingering there on Milk Race day, mind. We finished up and went outside, took up position with a good view across the huge gyratory under construction there, with slip roads down to the new M6 motorway taking shape, carving a wide brown scar across farmland. The race was quite a spectacle for my young friends and me. All the race vehicles – Fords - were milk white, decked out with roof racks and boards carrying the legend, Milk Race. Team buses came through first. They were a far cry from today’s huge team buses. In fact, they were small vans full of team baggage. Some 20 minutes later the announcer’s car came through, telling us that Great Britain’s Peter Chisman was alone in the lead. Pulses quickened. There was a magic about place-to-place racing, anticipation of the approaching hustle and bussle of athletic action which would, for a moment, make the highway its own. A police car headed the cavalcade, followed by official race vehicles all in white, then the lead car, headlights blazing, red lights on the roof flashing and a big head board announcing “Cycle Race”. Then, there he was. Pete Chisman, a big guy, must have been over six feet tall. Neatly cropped fair hair, muscled legs. Powering into view, sweeping around the roundabout, past in a flash, commissaire’s car at his back wheel, then a service car, a few press cars. Gone, leaving papers dancing in the slipstream. There goes Chisman, with his escort clearing the way. To be waved through traffic lights, waved across roundabouts. Nothing must be allowed to impede his progress. Mind you, oncoming traffic could be a problem in those days. Several long minutes passed before the main field sped through accompanied by the hum of tubular tyres on tarmac, the blaze of colour, a sea of exotic foreign faces and sun tanned limbs – the Poles, the Czechs, the Dutch, the Irish – not so suntanned - the home men in GB colours or riding for the Regions. They had been held up for several minutes at the swing bridge on the Manchester Ship Canal which explained Chisman’s big lead. But that win was no fluke. He had finished 4th overall previously. In the 1963 edition he won a total of five stages, wearing the yellow jersey of race leader throughout. After they race had whizzed by we returned to the Poplar’s, for more tea, and to discuss what we had seen. What was it that had so raised our spirits? Was it because cyclists were considered second class citizens to other road users? That was it. Afterall, cycling was in decline in the Sixties, as more and more people aspired to owning cars. If you were on a bike it was because you couldn’t afford a car, was the general consensus. Cycling enthusiasts barely registered on ordinary people’s radar back then. Oh, big races like this would always impress. The casual bystander, the crowds at the finish showed that if put on a big race they soon cottoned on. But otherwise cycle racing hardly made the news. Except when the annual Milk Race made the road its own. Well, almost its own, they still had to contend with oncoming traffic which didn’t always stop. But generally, other road users gave way, for once. That’s what we young cyclists liked. For a few brief moments, respect for two wheels.