![]() Nobody outside Britain recalls that now, of course, but in Britain it was huge news and, abroad, even Jacques Anquetil took interest and offered West a place in his team. That after saying he wasn't bothered and being far behind the winning break at one stage. The common link is an unassuming rider called Les West, whose talent increased in direct proportion to his protests that he wasn't interested and who always looked as though he was riding a bike he'd just borrowed from someone else.Īs a professional, or in fact as just a part-time professional since he never got a proper living wage for it, he came fourth in those 1970 world championships at Leicester. Good, honest lads who had never been further abroad than a Chinese takeaway found themselves addressed with a mangled "Messieurs, les coureurs." Next year, after a lot of ridicule, sanity returned.Īnyway, I mentioned Benny Foster and his world championships and I mentioned the Milk Race, which at the time was the biggest amateur stage race in the world after the Tour de l'Avenir and the Peace Race. That was the way that someone had read the UCI rule book and that was the way it was going to be. No matter that the races were in Britain, a country not known for its command of foreign tongues, nor that the officials hardly sounded like authentic Frenchmen. One year, back in Britain, the blazer community somehow got the impression that all the loudspeaker announcements to riders at track championships had to be in French. The whole field probably shared the cost between them. It cost them fines, of course, but the official's frustrated blustering as they raced clockwise round the track towards the laughing and co-operative field coming the other way was worth the money. I forget now just when and where it happened - Holland, I think - but I know that riders in a winter six-day got so tired with the bumptious officiating of a blazer man there that two or more set off riding in the wrong direction. Taking the phone out again a few minutes later, Benny would still be talking without having noticed a thing. ![]() It was always a delight when Liggett found Benny Foster at the end of the phone because only he had the nerve and fun to do what you usually see only in TV comedies, which was to put the phone into a desk drawer and close it. I worked at the magazine Cycling then, in London, with an equally fresh-faced Phil Liggett, later race director of the Milk Race - which I'll come to in a moment - and a UCI commissaire and television commentator. And when it wore out or he had to hand it back, he paid for one of his own and, long after the event, had it labeled "World championship organiser 1970". Benny drove this car everywhere, throughout 1970 and long afterwards. Benny got not only a blazer out of that but a sign written car, in an era when sign written cars were something seen in cycling only among professional teams.
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