Charles Holland (cyclist)

Charles Holland

To person
Full name	Charles Alfred Holland
Date of birth	September 20, 1908
date of death	December 15, 1989
nation	United Kingdom
discipline	Street  ; Train ,
Societies)
approx. 1932 to 1936	Midland Cycling and Athletics Club
Team (s)
1937-1939	Raleigh-Sturmey Archer
Most important successes
Olympic games Team pursuit 1932

Charles Holland (born September 20, 1908 in Aldridge ; † December 15, 1989 there ) was an English cyclist . He was one of the first two Britons to compete in the Tour de France .

Early years

Charles Holland was the youngest of four brothers from Aldridge in the English Midlands and was very athletic from childhood. He aspired to play cricket for Warwickshire County Cricket and had a contract with Aston Villa football club . His father was a member of the Walsall Polytechnic Club . He inherited his first bike from his older brothers.

In 1927 Charles Holland drove his first race, a 25-mile race for newbies, and finished second. On April 1, 1928, he won a ten-mile race for the first time. That same year he joined the Midland Cycling and Athletic Club and tried track racing , but with less success than on the road .

Athletic career as an amateur

The road race at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles was held as an individual time trial, a cycling discipline that has a long tradition in Great Britain . Due to the high travel costs to Los Angeles, the British Cycling Association only nominated cyclists with a chance of winning. Holland was selected along with Frank Southall , Bill Harvell , Stan Butler and Ernie Johnson to travel to the USA from Southampton on board the Empress of Britain .

The winner of the Olympic cycling race was Attilio Pavesi from Italy , Holland was 15th. In the team classification, the British team took fourth place. He was also nominated for the team pursuit on the track , where the British foursome took bronze medals with Holland, Harvell, Johnson and Southall.

In 1934 Charles Holland started at the Road World Championships in Leipzig . The route led over a circuit of 9.4 kilometers, which the amateurs had to ride 12 rounds. Holland drove most of the route with three broken spokes and finished fourth.

Holland was also nominated to participate in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin ; he should start in the 100-kilometer road race, for the team pursuit he was a substitute. He could not win a medal, but still saw himself in 1936 as at the height of his career. In 1936 he won the Isle of Man International (also Manx Trophy) race, which was the most important international amateur race in Great Britain at the time.

In the same year, 1936, Charles Holland won the British Best All-Rounder (BBAR). The competition was based on the speeds achieved in time trials of 50 and 100 miles and twelve hours. Holland was the first to achieve an average speed of 22 miles per hour over all distances. In 1933 he was third and in 1934 and 1935 fifth in this ranking.

Professional years

Holland turned professional in April 1937 . His goal was to take part in the six-day race at Wembley . He drove in a team with the Belgian driver Roger De Neef . Because of his inexperience, he fell several times on the first day, and so badly on the second day that he broke his collarbone and had to give up. A “curiosity” of this race is that the German Toni Merkens started in a jersey with a swastika . In June he broke his collarbone again after stepping into a rabbit hole.

Although Holland was behind with training because of these injuries, he started the Tour de France that same year. This tour was the first to have been organized by Jacques Goddet instead of Henri Desgrange since the tour began . For the first time, Goddet allowed the use of gearshifts that would have been forbidden until then.

“My interest came from the number of riders I'd met who'd ridden it, and I felt that if they could do it then so could I. I had the best massed-start experience of any rider in the country because I ' d won races such as the one in the Isle of Man, which was pretty tough because of its mountainous nature. They seemed very pleased to get my entry to the Tour de France. They thought I wouldn't stand it, that only a real professional could do it. I sent off my entry and I got a very good reply and they offered me this and that so I agreed. The costs were all met by the French people, the organizers of the Tour de France. "

- Charles Holland, circa 1986

Two weeks before the start of the tour there was still an uncertainty as to whether Holland could start, as Desgrange's magazine, L'Auto , had reported something different. But his start was confirmed by telegram, and Holland was to drive in a British Empire team with his compatriot Bill Burl and a Canadian , Pierre Gachon . This made Burl and Holland the first British participants in the Tour de France, Gachon the first Canadian.

Holland, Burl, Gachon and the other riders were greeted at the start by the dancer Josephine Baker . Neither Burl nor Holland knew Gachon before the tour, but Holland didn't think much of their qualities. In fact, the Canadian gave up during the first stage. Burl fell out on day two after being jostled by a photographer, fell and broke his collarbone. But Holland was also unlucky: after around 3,200 kilometers he had several flat tires and finally had to end his journey because he had no organizational support. Holland was seriously disappointed:

“My riding in the Tour de France was a big disappointment to me because I felt I'd never been extended. I had a lot left in reserve. I didn't expect to win because we didn't have a team and I didn't have a manager. It seemed that they wanted me out of the race. They didn't give me a fair deal. You need a manager for a race like that, someone who can hand up your rations and your drinks, which you get through a lot of. But to have an organization for one man wasn't in their thinking. They thought that nobody could ride without a manager. So they got all the publicity they could out of me but they wanted me out because what would people think if an individual rider with no support finished their race? "

- Charles Holland, circa 1986

Records on the road

In 1938, Holland tried several record runs. This was the only way in the UK at the time to advertise a sponsor as mass start road racing was uncommon and time trials were reserved for amateurs. In June, Holland, sponsored by Raleigh / Sturmey-Archer , drove from Liverpool to Edinburgh and set a new record of ten hours over this distance of 210 miles, improving Frank Southall's previous record by twelve minutes. A record attempt in August 1937 for the distance of 287 miles from Land's End to London was not recognized. So Holland repeated this record attempt the following year and improved it by 25 minutes.

In 1939 Charles had to quit Holland because of the outbreak of World War II . He was drafted into the Royal Corps of Signals .

After the Second World War

After the war, Holland was too old to race as a professional and the rules of the time did not allow them to regain amateur status. He turned to golf and played in semi-professional tournaments. In Birmingham he opened several newsagents.

When it became possible to compete in amateur races as a former professional in the 1960s, Holland took advantage of these opportunities, even though he was now overweight and a heavy smoker. In 1974 he was named Best All-Rounder of the Veterans Time Trial Association . In 1975 he took part in a Masters race on the Isle of Man , a race in which he had also started 39 years earlier. He also set records in his age group over 25, 50 and miles as well as over twelve hours. His 100 mile record was an hour and a half better.

Charles Holland died in December 1989 and is buried in a family grave in Aldridge.

Honors and memories

In 1937 Charles Holland was honored with a listing in the Golden Book of Cycling .

In 2007 Charles Holland's son, Frances Holland, a teacher, wrote a book about his father. His sister, a publisher, published it under the title Dancing Uphill. The cycling adventures of Charles Holland .

literature

• Frances Holland: Dancing Uphill. The cycling adventures of Charles Holland . M-and-N Publishing 2007, ISBN 978-0-9555676-0-5 .
• Les Woodland: This Island Race. Mousehold Press 2005, ISBN 1-874739-36-6 .

Web links

• Charles Holland in the database of Radsportseiten.net
• Charles Holland in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Frances Holland: Dancing Uphill. The Cycling adventures of Charles Holland, the first English rider in the Tour De France . MandN publishing 2007. S.?
2. ↑ Cycling , November 4, 1936
3. ^ Charles Porter: Sporting Cyclist : Lonely Man of the Tour de France
4. ↑ Hetchins. History of a Marque , accessed June 26, 2019.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} The Brit Pack . 1986, Bromley Video, London
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Les Woodland: This Island Race . Mousehold Press, UK, pp. 95-100
7. ↑ Charles Holland thepedalclub.org ( Memento of 28 July 2011 at the Internet Archive )