Isabel Best is the author of 'Queens of Pain: Legends and Rebels of Cycling', and has contributed to Cyclingnews with feature stories 'Vital Statistics' and 'Can women race a three-week Grand Tour?' You can follow more of Best's historical writing on Cyclingnews during the 2019 season.
In September 2017, I sat down to research and write Queens of Pain – a book that sought to celebrate some of the great female champions of cycling history. While some riders, like Alfonsina Strada and Beryl Burton, have entered cycling mythology, I wasn't confident about the history of women's cycling as a whole, or whether I might even find a narrative that tied riders' stories together. Was it possible to trace an evolution in the women's sport, just as there's a very clear, chronological history for the men? Or did women's cycling history consist of isolated pockets of excellence from different countries and eras?
I was surprised to discover that there's pretty much an unbroken thread in the history of women's racing from the 1880s to the present day, and that most of the riders' stories overlapped – sometimes in surprising ways. For example, in Australia in the 1930s, there emerged a generation of formidable women who set about creating and breaking ultra-distance records. Although they were mainly competing against each other on specific place-to-place challenges, they also read about and were inspired by the latest records set by Marguerite Wilson on the other side of the globe.
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What follows is not so much a selection of the greatest champions, but a celebration of great – and often forgotten – riders who have marked key milestones in cycling history and helped the sport become what it is today.
Tillie Anderson
Tillie Anderson was one of the first truly 'badass' female cyclists. She won just about every race she took part in and dominated a brilliant generation of riders who were feted in the press. The most remarkable thing about her story is that she was doing Six-Day races in the 1890s, on very small and technically challenging indoor velodromes where riders covered anything between 17 and 21 laps to the mile. They took their racing very seriously indeed, did strength training, and had coaches and managers, and in no time at all dispensed with restrictive mutton-sleeve jackets and knickerbockers, favouring figure-hugging tights and jerseys instead. They were onto the notion of 'marginal gains' 100 years before Team Sky came up with that term.
Tillie was not necessarily the fastest of the top riders who were known as 'The Big Five', but she was as tough as nails, and could always grind down her rivals through persistence and continually upping the pressure.
Alfonsina Strada
Marguerite Wilson
Millie Robinson
Eileen Gray
Elsy Jacobs
Marianne Martin
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/international-womens-day-7-remarkable-women-who-made-their-mark-on-cyclings-history
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