Burton also managed to set or break over 50 National records and her 10-mile, 25-mile and 50-mile records stood for two decades before being broken. Burton’s 100-mile record stood for almost three decades while her 12-hour record still stands.

Xavier Disley owns the AeroCoach company, which works with elite and amateur riders on aerodynamics, and was confident that he could calculate accurate projected ‘Beryl’ times provided that a set of conditions was met. We must source an equivalent bike and clothing from Beryl’s era and a rider of comparable size and aerodynamic potential. Information on the precise courses on which Beryl set her records would also be invaluable. Beryl Burton never competed at the Olympics, as Women’s Cycling was introduced at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, too late in Burton’s career; she was 47. Beryl used to work on a rhubarb farm, even when racing, which was run by cyclist Nim Carline. She worked 12 hour shifts every day during the winter. Wilson’s book, along with a play written by Maxine Peake in 2012 and William Fotheringham’s 2019 biography, aims to relocate Burton from the relative wilderness to a place among the greatest British athletes of all time.As her powers declined and her dominance waned, Burton refused to retire. In 1984, when Burton was 47-years-old, the first women’s Tour de France was held and women were allowed to compete in the Olympics for the first time. She lobbied for a place in both teams but was ultimately not selected. Ken Nichols and Maureen Nichols, Mud Sweat and Gears: A History of the British Cyclo-Cross Association, Mousehold Press, 2011.

She won her first national medal in 1957. It was a silver in the national 100- mile individual time trial championship. Disley’s methodology was fairly straightforward. By mounting a bike inside the wind tunnel and then blowing air through the area as a rider pedals, he can calculate how efficiently a bike and rider are moving, which is known as their drag coefficient (CdA). Disley specifically needed to know Beryl’s CdA once Rhodes-Jones had replicated her positions and fired up the two bikes to a speed of 45kph (which equates to 21min. 30sec. for 10 miles). Beryl Burton’s cycling success reads like the script of a Hollywood film. Five times world pursuit champion, thirteen times national champion, twice road-racing world champion and twelve times national champion. Her accolades include time trials, former world record holder, former British record holder, numerous sports awards, an MBE and an OBE. A large group of competitors wait at the starting line for the men's race; they talk and smile at the camera. The Lord Mayor of Morley, Councillor Laurie Finnegan walks across the grass to the starting line and says a few words. Then the race begins and the voiceover mentions last year's champion from Coventry Road Club, John Atkins who is also taking part this year. He continues on to say that this year has a record 127 men competing, and that the course length is four and a bit laps of the course. The voiceover says that the Yorkshire Champion, Harry Bond, will challenge John Atkins for first place. Cycling was taken up as much by women as by men, providing a new found emancipation for late Victorian and Edwardian women by enabling greater freedom of bodily movement and mobility of travel. It became a social pastime, with local groups being formed to go out riding collectively. Before long, by the early 1890s, with the coming of the ‘safety’ cycle and pneumatic tyres, some women became involved in racing and time‐trialling, with a few even turning professional.That inability to stop wanting to be the best - part of me loves it and part of it is quite tragic as well. It’s also quite moving because she just was who she was,” Wilson says. “There was a sort of authenticity to it. She just kept going and kept going because she wanted to win and didn’t really care about the medical advice.” Joyful, uplifting and utterly delightful ... Get on your bike and get to Dalston!” – LondonTheatre1 Beryl Burton and her daughter Denise both set a record for a British 10- mile ride on a tandem bicycle which took them only 26 minutes and 25 seconds! Many of the participants – such as Jean Smith, Barbara Conway and Pauline Hunter – have since been largely forgotten, although the Croucher sisters, Brenda, Maureen and Carol, of the East Bradford Cycling Club, are perhaps better remembered. Valerie Rushworth was national road race champion in 1964 and won 11 British Championships between 1959 and 1966, going on to represent Great Britain internationally, as a rider and later as coach and team manager.

She set a women’s world record for a 12 hour time trial in 1967 which has not yet been beaten at 277.25 miles. As she passed her fellow male racer Mike McNamara in the 12-hour time trial, she casually offered him a liquorice allsort.

I think a lot of these things get judged on Olympics and Tour de Frances and obviously women weren’t allowed in those events so it’s a bit harsh to judge her on two events she wasn’t allowed to ride in,” Wilson says.

Beryl Burton and her daughter Denise didn’t even shake hands on the podium after Denise won against her in the 1976 national road race championships. With that in mind, my only gripe is that ‘Beryl’ is sometimes in danger of becoming mawkish in its level of reverence for its heroine; when we’re told a record she broke remains unbeaten today, the audience break into applause, and the actors do too. The play ends with a roll call of her achievements, the stage laden with trophies. It’s astonishingly formidable, but we’ve just spent two hours learning what an incredible woman she was – we don’t need to have it, quite literally, spelt out to us. Burton is considered by many as the ‘best ever female cyclist’. She raced for Morley Cycling Club and later on Knaresborough CC. Despite being arguably the greatest woman cyclist ever, Beryl Burton, remains little known outside of Yorkshire and the cycling fraternity.

Beryl Burton’s Death

Viking Cycles Limited was formed in 1939, producing 800 bikes per year. By the end of the Second World War production was over 2000 bikes per year. Then Viking decided to get into racing. The company sponsored a men’s professional team from the birth of road racing until the 1960s, and many successful amateurs raced on Viking bikes ‘loaned’ to them by the company. The cast of four, who play multiple characters, have great comedic skill and excel under Rebecca Gatward’s creative, physical direction, even if this theatre sometimes feels a little too big for such a character-driven homespun yarn. The Beryl Burton film is called ‘Racing is Life: The Beryl Burton Story’ and it’s available on DVD.The 130-minute film is an 88-minute documentary of unique archive film footage from the late 1950s to the 1970s with 42-minutes of bonus features, including interviews with her daughter Denise, brother Jeffrey and sister Maureen and we hear from Beryl herself, who in her spare time loved knitting, as she had no television or radio in her home. You can also watch an 8-minute documentary of Beryl Burton on YouTube. Beryl Burton Memorial Garden