Reg Harris

1948 Summer Olympics : Reg Harris wins the 1000m cycle race

Reginald "Reg" Hargreaves Harris (born March 1, 1920 in Bury , † June 22, 1992 in Macclesfield ) was a British track cyclist .

Athletic career

Reg Harris was one of the best track cyclists of his time. In 1947 he won the world champion title in the sprint of amateurs , 1949 to 1951 and 1954 the professionals and was second in 1956 and third in 1953. At the Olympic Games in London in 1948 he won the silver medals in the track sprint and together with Alan Bannister in the tandem competition . In the sprint he was the favorite at the start, but a spinal injury suffered shortly before the games hampered him, so he had to leave the title to the Italian Mario Ghella . Harris won the sprint classic Grand Prix de Paris three times, in 1946, 1951 and 1956 .

In total, he won more than 40 Grand Prix for sprinters. Other outstanding successes include:

• Grand Prix Copenhagen 1949 and 1954 to 1957,
• Grand Prix Aarhus 1954,
• Grand Prix Antwerp 1950,
• 1957 German Grand Prix ,
• Grand Prix Brussels 1954 and 1955,
• Grand Prix London 1955 and 1957,
• Champions of the Champions Trophy in London in 1949 and 1955
• Grand Prix Amsterdam 1950, 1952 and 1956, and many more.

Nevertheless, he could not live on his income as a professional driver all year round, as he himself admitted in an article in 1945. It was not until his sponsorship contract with the British company Raleigh that he earned an income of around 60,000 DM.

In 1957 he resigned from active sports. He finally became a British legend in 1971 when he made a comeback after a 14-year hiatus and became British champion in 1975 at the age of 54. Harris was persuaded to make the comeback by the director of Carlton Cycles , who promised him a bonus for it.

Honors

Harris was called to the Order of the British Empire . The former Reg Harris Stadium in Manchester was named after him. There is a sculpture of him in the Manchester Velodrome .

Web links

• Reg Harris in the Radsportseiten.net database
• Reg Harris in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Interest group for cycling (ed.): The cycling . No. 61/1948 . Cologne, S. 7 .
2. ↑ BDR (ed.): Cycling . 9th year, no. 40 . Cologne December 7, 1954, p. 14 .
3. ↑ Les Woodland: This Island Race . Mousehold Press, Norwich 2005, pp. 70 (English).