Jock Wadley

John Borland Wadley (1914 – March 1981) was an English journalist whose magazines and reporting opened Continental cycle racing to fans in Britain.

Wadley joined The Bicycle soon after it started, in February 1936, and became the magazine's foreign correspondent.

The paper opened in opposition to Cycling, to counter Cycling's perceived establishment views, which included not covering massed racing on the open road after the Second World War and giving what some readers saw as little attention to professional cycling, such as the Tour de France.

Cycling was originally dismissive of a breakaway organisation, the British League of Racing Cyclists and campaigned against it and did little to cover its races; The Bicycle saw itself as neither for or against the BLRC but saw massed-start racing an exciting part of cycle-racing.

The Bicycle appeared on Tuesday rather than the Friday of its rival.

Wadley translated reports in French and Belgian papers, and cuttings sent by the magazine's correspondent at L'Auto and cycled around the Continent reporting the races he saw and writing accounts of the riders he had met.

Adrian Bell, the British publisher who compiled a collection of Wadley's work, wrote:

With the return of peace, he became one of three press officers for the sport's governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale when the Olympic Games were held in London in 1948.

"And so began a pattern of working life and, with it, a unique style of writing about cycling that Wadley was to maintain, to a greater or lesser extent, for more than 20 years. When not required for race-reporting duties in England, he would load the panniers of his bicycle – spare clothes and maps in one, a portable typewriter in the other – and take to the roads of France, Belgium Holland. Whatever the route, it was of his choosing. And back would come the reports – of major Tours, French classics, frenetic kermesses over the Belgian pavé, or six-day dramas on the steep banking of indoor velodromes – or interviews with current riders or with those whose exploits had once made cycling history, or simply touring features that depicted the appealing variety of the terrain through which he travelled. During one two-month tour in the spring of 1954, he submitted 3,000 words a week; there was simply nothing like it in the English cycling press."

Wadley left the magazine two years later and joined the press department of the bicycle maker, Hercules, which was sponsoring prominent British riders to break long-distance records.

From there he was conscripted into the services at the start of the Second World War.

He then rejoined The Bicycle and stayed until it closed in 1955.

That year he started work on a monthly magazine, initially called Coureur but then, because a magazine with a similar title already existed, Sporting Cyclist.

Wadley recalled of his redundancy: "I saw more cycling... than in four far-from-dull years on The Bicycle. As the programme included my first all-the-way Tour de France, I had enough material in hand to write a book... The dream, however, was to bring out a continental-style all-cycling magazine."

Wadley covered 18 Tours de France from 1956.

He worked for the British weekly, The Bicycle and then started and edited the monthlies Coureur (later Sporting Cyclist) and International Cycle Sport.

He also wrote a number of books.

Wadley began cycling with the Colchester Rovers club when he was 14.

He and a friend, Alf Kettle, were between the towns of Kelvedon and Coggeshall when they took a wrong turning into a farm track by moonlight, riding by the light of acetylene lamps.

Kettle called Wadley "Willy", because it was what all new members were called.

He said it was "like the Tour de France".

It was the first time Wadley had heard of the race, which was still in the era of daily stages that started at dawn and rode on unsurfaced roads.

He wanted to know more.

He went to the world track championships in Paris when he was 19 and came home starry-eyed over riders like Jeff Scherens and Lucien Michard.

He ordered the daily paper L'Auto, which organised the Tour, from a newsagent in Colchester.

The man warned him it cost 1½d (1p or about 3 US cents) and that the cost was extravagant.

In late 1956, Wadley secured the backing of the publisher Charles Buchan, former football captain of Arsenal and England, who wanted a companion to his magazine, Football Monthly.

Wadley told Buchan that he had a proposal which would never make him rich but wouldn't disgrace him, an approach so novel that Buchan was interested from the start.

Issue number one was written by Wadley, who had also taken most of the photographs.

It was produced at the home of Peter Bryan, Wadley's editor at The Bicycle, with help from a photographer, Bill Lovelace, and a designer, Glenn Steward.

They too had worked at The Bicycle.

Sporting Cyclist introduced Continental racing through the Franco-American writer, René de Latour.

His role was "friend of the stars", providing insights into Continental racing at a time when Cycling concentrated on domestic issues.

The cycle parts importer and advertiser, Ron Kitching, wrote:

"This was a real innovation and an instant success. It was filled with exciting stories of both home and overseas events, written not only by Jock himself but also by the top cycling writers of the day – like René de Latour, Harry Aspden, Charles Ruys and Dick Snowden, Geoffrey Nicholson and David Saunders."

The assistant editor, Roy Green, who had joined in 1960, left Sporting Cyclist to join Amateur Photographer.

Wadley set up another magazine, International Cycle Sport, which after 199 issues in 17 years also failed, by which time Wadley's contract as editor had long since not been renewed.

The last edition was in April 1968, volume 12, number 4.

Sporting Cyclist was by then owned by Longacre Press, which had bought Buchan's publications.

Longacre also published Cycling and the two merged.