FEATURE


The boys’ club


The Pedal Club, previously a male-only organisation, fully opened its doors to women for the first time late last year. Rebecca Morley catches up with its spokesperson Chris Lovibond to find out why this rule change took so long


D


uring my time so far at BikeBiz I’ve seen many initiatives launched to encourage more women to take up cycling, hoping to close the gender gap in both the


sport and the trade. But even with cycling’s male dominated image, the idea of an all-male cycling club seems far too old-fashioned to actually exist in the 21st century – but up until last October such a thing still existed. The Pedal Club, founded in 1941, was established to provide a discussion forum for leading members of the cycling world. It would invite ‘prominent public persons’ to address the members and hoped to ‘further the interests of the sport and pastime in all possible ways,’ albeit with one lasting rule: only men were welcomed to join the organisation as members.


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“The idea was that these people would meet and discuss cycling topics that they thought were important,” explains Chris Lovibond, press officer for the Pedal Club. “The implication is that they’d have some kind of influence over what happened. “For example, there was a famous meeting in January 1946


when they got the Secretary to the Ministry of Transport to speak, and he spoke against road racing. And I think it’s quite significant that that happened. “It’s an example of the way the people who were running the club hoped to have an influence.” The club’s members were, even by the standards of 1941, not


very modern, Lovibond continued. “It was quite common to have all male clubs at that time, certainly cycling clubs. I can’t


January 2022 | 33


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