Eileen Sheridan

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Eileen Sheridan , b. Shaw , (born October 18, 1923 in Coventry ) is a former English cyclist who specialized in time trials and record drives. In the late 1940s and 1950s, it broke all the Women's Road Records Association records , including the Land's End to John o 'Groats route .

Career as an amateur

Eileen Shaw was a petite woman, about five feet tall and weighing 46 pounds. Even at school she was very athletic. At the age of 15 she preferred cycling and in 1944 became a member of the Coventry Cycling Club . At first she only took part in touring and club trips together with her boyfriend Ken Sheridan and was not interested in cycling . In 1945 she did her first 25 mile time trial, organized by the Birmingham Time Trial Association , and she won that race as well as the British Time Trial Championship over the same distance.

Eileen Shaw then married Ken Sheridan, who also gave her her first racing bike, and in April 1946 was the mother of a son. She resumed training just seven weeks after the birth. In 1949 and 1950 she won the British Best All-Rounder time trial competition . In September 1949 she set a record over twelve hours with 237.32 miles. In 1950 she became British 50 and 100 mile champion. That same year she was awarded the Bidlake Memorial Prize for her services to women's cycling after winning three championships and setting five records in one year.

Professional career

In 1951, Eileen Sheridan signed a three-year contract with the Hercules Cycle and Motor Company with the aim of setting records in road cycling. Her supervisor at Hercules was Olympian and four-time best all-rounder Frank Southall . In 1954 she broke the previous twelve-hour record with 250.5 miles and the 24-hour record with 446.5 miles. During her entire active career, she set a total of 21 records in the women's field, “mostly with a huge lead”. Five of them still exist, including the record for the route from London to Edinburgh with 20 hours, eleven minutes and 35 seconds (as of 2015) . Her three-day and one-hour 1,000 mile record lasted 48 years until it was beaten by Lynne Taylor in 2002 .

In 1952, Sheridan beat the record for the distance from Land's End to London by 23 minutes. However, this record was not recognized by the Women's Road Records Association as the record attempt had previously been made public by the Daily Mirror , which was against the rules.

Between July 9 and 11, 1954, Eileen Sheridan improved Marguerite Wilson's 1939 record for the distance from Land's End to John o 'Groats (about 1,557 kilometers from the extreme southwest of Britain to the extreme northeast) to two days, eleven hours and seven minutes. She later donated the bike she used to make this trip to the Coventry Transport Museum . The bike bears the brand name Hercules , but was built with components from other manufacturers because Hercules frames were very heavy.

In 1955, Sheridan ended her career. She then had a second child, a daughter, and wrote her autobiography Wonder Wheels . She is an honorary member of the Coventry Cycling Club and also its President. Her husband Ken died in 2012 at the age of 98.

Reception and honors

Eileen Sheridan was the most popular cyclist (man or woman) in Great Britain during her active days. In 1952 she was in a documentary by Dunlop entitled SpinningWheels: Cycle Sport '50s style together with Reg Harris , Ken Joy and Cyril Peacock portrays; scenes from the Tour de France are also shown. In 2014 a 20-minute documentary called Come on Eileen was made about her.

In 2016 Sheridan was inducted into the British Cycling Hall of Fame .

literature

  • Tim Hilton: One More Kilometers And We're In The Showers , 2005, ISBN 0-00-653228-4
  • Les Woodland: This Island Race , Mousehold Press, 2005, ISBN 1-874739-36-6
  • Wonder Wheels; The Autobiography of Eileen Sheridan. ISBN 978-1-903088-49-4
  • Peter Whitfield: Eileen Sheridan: a Cycling Life , 2006
  • Peter Whitfield: 12 Champions , 2007

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Mahnke: Come on, Eileen! In: St Margaret's Community Site. March 29, 2015, accessed September 18, 2015 .
  2. ^ Jean Williams: A Contemporary History of Women's Sport, Part One. Routledge, 2014, ISBN 978-1-317-74665-2 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  3. ^ Bernard Thompson: Alpaca to Skinsuit . Geerings of Ashford, ISBN 0-9513042-0-8 , p. 15
  4. ↑ a b The Bicycle , November 18, 1953, p. 27
  5. ^ The Bicycle February 27, 1946, p. 6
  6. ↑ Eileen Sheridan: Wonder Wheels; The Autobiography of Eileen Sheridan.
  7. ↑ Recipients. In: FT Bidlake Memorial Trust. Retrieved September 18, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Eileen Sheridan. (No longer available online.) In: Rouleur. November 12, 2014, archived from the original on September 6, 2015 ; accessed on September 18, 2015 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / rouleur.cc
  9. ^ Records Place to Place. Road Records Association, accessed September 16, 2010 .
  10. ↑ Eileen Sheridan, pioneer of women's cycling. In: Velomotion. July 30, 2015, accessed September 18, 2015 .
  11. ^ John Taylor: Three Days of Sleepless Nights. Caithness Cycling Club, accessed September 18, 2015 . (PDF file)
  12. ^ The Bicycle , October 29, 1952, p. 16
  13. ↑ Georgia Arlott: Look: Amazing story of Coventry cyclist dubbed 'greatest of all women riders' told in new film. In: coventrytelegraph.net. May 21, 2014, accessed September 18, 2015 .
  14. ↑ Sylvia Howe: Eileen Sheridan. In: National Cycling Charity. April 22, 2013, accessed September 18, 2015 .
  15. ↑ Come on Eileen (2014) - IMDb. In: imdb.com. May 30, 2014, accessed September 18, 2015 .
  16. ^ British Cycling Hall of Fame: Seven new inductions at International Gala Dinner. In: British Cycling. October 28, 2016, accessed January 4, 2017 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Sheridan, Eileen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Shaw, Eileen (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English cyclist
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Coventry