British League of Racing Cyclists

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The British League of Racing Cyclists was an association formed to promote road bicycle racing in Great Britain.

It was established in 1942 and was in direct competition with the National Cyclists' Union (which had banned all cycle racing on public roads in 1890).

The impetus for the BLRC came from West Midlands cyclist Percy Stallard who organised a 59-mile massed-start road race from Llangollen to Wolverhampton on Sunday 2 June 1942. Stallard and all those who rode in the event were immediately banned from the NCU and responded by establishing the League (formed at a meeting of 24 people at the Sherebrook Lodge Hotel, Buxton, Derbyshire on Sunday 14 November 1942). In 1943, the League promoted the first British National Road Race Championship, in Harrogate and later the Brighton-Glasgow stage race - a forerunner to the Daily Express Tour of Britain first run in 1951.

The BLRC also organised representative teams to attend races in other countries; for example, from 1948 it sent a team each year to the Peace Race (winning the event's individual - through Ian Steel - and team classifications in 1952), and it backed the first British team - including Brian Robinson - sent to the Tour de France in 1955 (as the BLRC was not recognised by the sport's international governing body, the UCI, and the NCU would not select BLRC members, the team was selected by a panel of British newspaper cycling correspondents).

Many other road racing cyclists joined the BLRC. British cycle racing became quite polarised; cycling clubs could not affiliate to both the NCU and the BLRC, cyclists who raced in League races were subsequently banned from NCU events and from time trials run by the Road Time Trials Council, and BLRC achievements were not recognised by those responsible for the Bidlake Memorial Prize.

The rivalry with the NCU only ended in 1959 when the two organisations merged to form the UCI-recognised British Cycling Federation.