In Pursuit of Stardom

Les Nomades du Velo Anglais

Tony Hewson. Mousehold Press, 2006. 278 pages paperback, £12.99. ISBN 1-874739-41-2

Most real cyclists of my age know, thanks largely to Jock Wadley and Sporting Cyclist , that during the late 1950s three British riders lived in a converted ambulance in France and made the world of French professional racing sit up and take notice. This is the survivor's story from the inside.

In 1955, the year in which Tony Hewson won the last pre-milk-sponsored Tour of Britain, the immensely talented and equally determined Brian Robinson finished 29 th in the Tour de France, signed for a French team, and made it into the big time. For the next three years he was our man in Europe; there were others over there in France and Belgium, but their profile was so low that it was almost invisible to the British media in the form of Cycling .

Hewson, Jock Andrews and Vic Sutton were bent on changing this state of affairs. They too were talented, determined – why shouldn't they make it too? They'd tried earlier in Belgium and, by their lights, failed. But they were not defeated: they bought the ambulance (it cost £75) and by March 1958 they were in Cannes and the great adventure had begun.

Socrates thought that the unexamined life was not worth living. According to his criterion, Tony Hewson's account of the next three years of his life must be regarded as a triumph. ‘Finding yourself' wasn't a phrase in common currency in 1960, but that's what he did, and he did it in the best possible way – by focusing on something outside himself. It's a truly enthralling tale of life in what was, even ten years after VE Day, a post-war, impoverished France, still smarting from the shame of Vichy. The police are hostile, the racing is hard but not impossible, the locals friendly, eventually, to the extent of adopting them. They acquire a French manager whose principal income seems to come from a chain of brothels, they meet French girls, have problems with transport, and train far too much for the good of their health. ‘Racing yourself fit' even when too ill to stand was what you did: it went with the steak and the wool shorts.

In the off-season, like many able and talented young cyclists, Hewson sold himself to various menial enterprises – a milk-round, a pointless dead-end job with the gas board – to keep going until real life began again in March.

The ambulance only lasted that first year in France before being pensioned off as a chicken house. By then they'd cracked it, with a string of wins and places in provincial races which earned them the press attention they never got in Little Britain. They were, at least temporarily, stars. They encountered the good and great of the day and gave almost as good as they got. Andrews, the one with the great sprint, was particularly successful: his second place in the Tour de Champagne and a win the GP Quatre Vents won him a contract with Mercier. It was the beginning of the end of the three musketeers; later Sutton would also achieve brief stardom through his climbing ability in the 1959 Tour in which Hewson and Andrews also started.

Despite numerous successes based on talent and hard work, Hewson never quite got the breaks. Illness too often neutralised good form; he was eliminated from the Tour after being ordered to wait uselessly for a defeated team-mate; inadequate transport made life difficult. Incidentally you can see from the contrasting photos of the disastrous Wolseley and the Renault Frégate which replaced it exactly why Britain now has no motor-car industry.

Neither Sutton nor Andrews really lived up to their talent, either. All three could have achieved so much more in cycle racing: Andrews finished 13 th in the World Road Championship, Sutton's climbing prowess was praised by Coppi. The reasons why riders like this seemed unable to capitalise on their talents and achievements are complex, but much of it has to do with the British handicap (in road racing) of starting not at the bottom of the ladder, but miles away from it.

Despite his abilities (a ToB win, a finish in the Peace Race, wins and places all over France) you feel that Hewson was never going to make a long career of it. He seems not to have had the robust constitution which Sean Yates insists is essential to withstand the enormous work-load of professional road racing. It's no surprise when he tells his mate, ‘I just keep thinking how hard it is.' He also has other strings to his bow.

France is traditionally parochial, but England is just bloody isolationist: back home the same eccentric views that have relentlessly wrecked British cycling and wiped out the optimism of the 1950s were wheeled out by an insecure professor of French at Leeds University as a reason for refusing Hewson to a degree course. But he made it into higher education via a different route and has never regretted his decision.

In the penultimate chapter Hewson writes a completely convincing account of what's wrong with British cycling: the general decline in fitness, strident and hostile petrolheads, the legacy of years of ‘cycling for cyclists', the destruction of the BLRC. Worse may yet come: our own chairman advocates abandoning the road and returning to closed circuits – back to pre-1942 days.

However, all hope is not yet dead: perhaps we may be able to build on the Tour en Londres, but it's likely to be the last chance. Meanwhile one man who was part of road-racing's Golden Age can look back on a life enjoyably spent. He may not have the answers but he knows what the important questions are.

Ramin Minovi