Off Their Rockers

British cycling hero Harry Hill, the oldest surviving male winner of an Olympic medal, died Feb 5, 2009. He was 92.

Hill won bronze in a team race in 1936, at the Games that made Jesse Owens famous. He got his first bike at 13, and the boy from Sheffield showed serious speed in time-trials. At 20, he made the British Olympic squad. Too poor to buy a train ticket to London, to join the rest of the team, he cycled the 200 miles on the racing bike he took to Berlin.

He spent his last cash on a souvenir jacket, so on his triumphant return to Britain, he cycled back to Sheffield.

“He was very proud of his medal and always kept it safe,” he son, Hedley Hill, remembered.

After the Olympics, in 1937, Hill broke a world record on a indoor track in Milan: the first cyclist to go 25 miles in an hour. In World War II, he built submarines, then went into the garage business. He biked every day, and competed in local club races.

To celebrate his retirement at 65, he spent five weeks cycling 2500 miles from New York to Vancouver and back. At 80, he sprinted all-out for an hour, competing against his earlier self, who’d set the record in Milan. He went 23.5 miles, just 1.5 short of his all-out effort at 21.

In 2002, Hill fell of his bike in Spain and fractured his hip. That ended his life in the saddle. In 2005, he met the Queen and Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace, part of a centennial celebration for British Olympics. In 2006, a bike path he’d lobbied for was opened with his name on it. “His whole life was cycling and everything hinged on that.”

Source: Bury Times