As promissed Part 2, for those that haven't seen it. The video clip on this page wont download but you can still see it here; https://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=FA7YLJSaMaE
Interview: Graham Webb, 1967 World Champion
Part 2 - Turning the Corner
Phil Julian, who writes our Cyclingcrazy column, travelled to Belgium to meet Graham Webb, the 1967 World Amateur Men's Road Race Champion and now one of the first fifty people to be inducted into British Cycling's new Hall of Fame. In this, the second part of a four part interview, they talk about the race in which Graham claimed that magical world title.
"It was grey when we lined up at the start. I reckoned that there must have been almost 300 riders. We were gridded, like in motor racing and GB were right at the back. I remember saying to Derek Harrison, I think it was, that if it rained he would puncture" (Harrison was riding very light tyres and in the five minutes that it did rain during the race, guess what!).
"I said to the lads, ‘look, we've got to go flat out from the gun or we'll never get in this race'. I went absolutely full gas and it took me nearly four kilometres to get to the front. When I got there, I just kept hammering away. The race went up this long straight climb 15 times. I think they use the same climb in the Amstel Gold. Anyhow, after the third time up, I was still at the front and there were only 13 of us left at the head of the race".
The front group swelled to 15 when Belgians, Roger DeVlaeminck (winner of Paris-Roubaix four times winner) and the late Jean Pierre Monsere (amateur silver medallist in 1969 and world professional road champion a year later, aged 22, Leicester, who was to die tragically, racing, in 1971) came across after a frantic chase. The break also included Rene Pijnen (the great Dutch six day rider), Klaus Ampler from East Germany, Frenchman Guyot and Conti, an Italian.
With three or four of the fourteen kilometres laps to go, looking back down the long straight climb, he spotted a GB jersey in the remnants of the bunch - it was Peter Buckley. Graham eased up and shouted to Buckley to get on his wheel and back they went up to the break. But when they got back on, with Buckley unable to come through, they found the situation at the front had changed.
"Monsere, Conti, Ampler and Pijnen had gone off up the road. DeVlaeminck and the one or two Dutch weren't going to chase their teammates and Pete Buckley couldn't contribute much. I thought ‘right, all or nothing, if I can get to the bottom of the climb last time with a bridgeable gap Conti, the Frenchman and a couple of the others perhaps will jump and I can use them.' The four still had a minute on us at the bell with about 14 kilometres of the 200 kilometres race to go. As far as I was concerned, I still had a chance".
He still had good legs, better he believed, than those of the riders around him. With no communication from the team since the start and having survived on just two bottles of water and a banana (he saved one bottle for the last lap) this was it! 14 kilometres or twenty minutes that would change his life?
"I just had to get on with it and believe. I did 7 kilometres on the front to get our group to the bottom of the last climb and a bridgeable gap. The wind was coming from the right and I was in the right hand gutter so the others were going to have to use some energy too. Sure enough,h others in the group saw their chance now and jumped to get across. I hung on following a wheel except I had tried so hard I was seeing three wheels! I believed if I could recover as we went over the top with 3 kilometres to go, then I could really think about winning".
Graham had a plan, genesis of which could be traced back to his impoverished yet adventurous childhood: as a kid in Birmingham he would test himself on sharp downhill corners. He had an old fixed wheel version of a cycle speedway bike with a huge chainring and turned cowhorn bars. Graham remembers it producing a position not unlike the superman of more recent history. He'd keep trying to corner quicker until he lost it. He would sprint along city streets, behind buses and lorries. An old childhood mate told Graham just recently that his mother had spotted him doing this. She'd warned her son "not to ride his bike like that mad Webb boy!" Thanks to this childhood "training", Graham believed that no-one could corner as quick as him. For him, it was time to put that skill to good use. The race was going to come down to one corner, one and a half kilometres from the finish of the 1967 World Championship.
"On every lap before, we had taken the corner as you'd expect, approach from the right hand gutter and cut across the apex, accelerate out. But I knew if I went into it from the left, tight, then there was a chance by cutting the distance and the rest looking at me, hesitating, as if I was crazy taking the wrong line, that I could get a gap."
And that's exactly what happened: "I kicked like a mule out of the corner. I knew that I mustn't get up out of the saddle because that would have been like a red rag to a bull. I took the speed up without appearing to, looked under my left elbow and saw no wheels. I knew I could win now". He was just one and a half minutes away from being on top of the world .
"There was a fast downhill left hander and then a right to join the motorway run- in to the finish. I must have been doing almost 50 miles an hour into the right hander which was brick paved to give cars more grip - except it didn't work for narrow, hard bike tyres and the back wheel skipped across. I thought ‘just get round this without falling on your head Graham and you're going to be World Champion.' I never looked back, went full gas and won by three seconds. Roger DeVlaeminck who was desperate to win that day and who still wants to win even now every time he gets on a bike, said I was lucky that they let me go away. I replied, ‘Roger, you just couldn't live with me at that speed'. None of them could that day."
Nowadays, the winner falls into the arms of a soigneur with a sponge and a towel, is hugged and congratulated by teammates who have helped, and confronted by a wall of photographersand other media. On this Saturday afternoon, all those years ago, it wasn't quite like that.
Right: Graham's World Champion certificate from the UCI
"I just freewheeled down the straight. I knew that I was champion but now quite quickly I realised what I'd taken out of myself. I kept on to the GB pits. I was desperate just to sit down quietly on a chair and recover. I found a chair alright, but only just before Beryl Burton found me. Beryl went mad with happiness for me. She was jumping up and down on top of me, ecstatic. I was struggling to breathe. Then this huge Dutch TV Camera appeared and before I knew it I was being interviewed in English by the Dutch presenter, with me, this Englishman from Brum, answering in Dutch. The fellow took a few questions to cotton on before asking me in Dutch if I'd prefer doing it in English, ha"!
He made his way to the podium through massive crowds with an army of police around him. He shared his podium with the Frenchman, Claude Guyot (silver) and the great Dutchman, Rene Pijnen (bronze); but the sweetest moment of all was that Cycling magazine had run a coach trip to the race and on that coach was his mother, who was lifted onto the podium so she could be with him:"She'd brought me up on nothing and now she was there to share this".
Youtube Video - including some remarkable footage of Graham's winning ride
Footnote: I first met Graham in the track centre at Ghent, it must be ten years ago or more and we shared a beer with a mutual friend. I thought then, even amongst all the noise that is the Ghent Six Day, how calm, quietly spoken and tranquil he was. Ten years on, during our afternoon's conversation at his home, I was struck by his complete lack of any arrogance. I believed him completely when, in spite of the disappointments which were to come in 1968 and 1969, when he should have achieved so much more, he insists that he has had and is still having, a wonderful life, with no regrets.
In part three, we'll look at just what did and didn't happen in 68 & 69, discover an explanation of his extraordinary physical capacity and get some advice for any rider who is keen to ride better. I must however give Graham Webb, 1967 World Amateur Men's Road Race Champion, the last word, for the time being.
"I'd always had this belief since I was a kid, riding my bike around the streets of Birmingham, before I even knew about racing, that one day I could beat the world riding my bike".
