Well, I don’t know about the rest of the Brits, but I spent the week before the 1997 World Championships training harder than I’ve ever done before. OK, I didn’t really. Actually, I spent most of it fighting off a heavy cold, mainly by loafing around in the sun and drinking all the in-laws’ alcohol that wasn’t nailed down. Fortunately, by July 26th  I had recovered sufficiently to make the relatively short journey up to Köln – it would only have been about an hour and a half if I hadn’t got lost… Oh well.

Saturday July 26th

I arrive at the Championship base, at the rowing strip on the northern outskirts of the city. This bit of town can best be described as “Dagenham-am-Rhein” due to the presence of Ford factories everywhere. I later heard that Ford wanted to sponsor the Championships, which cost in the region of 20,000 DM, but the German HPV club had to turn them down; due to their membership’s tendency towards all things Green (they are much less race-oriented than, say, the Dutch or the Brits), they feared that they would lose some 25% of their membership. Anyway, I dig the bike out from the surrounding debris in the back of the car and head into the city centre, so that I can register, watch the drags, find the other Brits etc. etc.
 

Having visited most of the Ford factories in the vicinity, I finally locate the Kölner Dom (not difficult, as it’s the biggest building in town), and find a horde of HPV’ers in the Roncalliplatz next door. It’s not difficult to locate Sherri – just follow the loudest shouts of encouragement… Shoot the breeze with Steve and Sherri, the Tweddles and Geoff Bird & Fiona Grove - Geoff having come to manage Derrick and Fiona, presumably, to try to “manage” Geoff... Also present is Andy Harrington, who will be using Sherri’s Kingcycle for the duration. I managed to miss the Ladies’ competition entirely, but witnessed Derrick knocking out last year’s champion Koen Koevoets. He doesn’t get much further, however, and the final winner is Swiss rider Michael Graf, from Dirk Heinze and his Dalli and the Ostrad-mounted Frank Schwamb. The Ladies’ prize goes to Ulrike Holst, from Rosmarie Bühler, with Sherri third. After the prize-giving it’s back to base for setting up tents, Beer, Sausages etc.
 

Sunday July 27th

To the velodrome. The route has been carefully signposted by the Organisators, but you can’t be too careful, so while Steve and Sherri take their van down there, Andy and I join the convoy of hardy types riding down, guided by Organisatrix Nicole Schön. A moment of low comedy could have ensued when our guide realised that we had left without her father, on his upright bike – “Nicole! Papa!”. However, they don’t have that advert in Germany… Anyway, the velodrome is Dead Good, being a 250 m wooden track, with the centre open but the track itself covered, and all mod cons – even a built-in compressor for inflating tyres. As most of the machines at the drags were unfaired, this is our first chance to get a good look at the streamliners, though this isn’t to say that there isn’t some interesting un/part faired stuff around too. My personal favourite is the bike built by Clemens Bucher. At first sight it looks like a run-of-the-mill full suspension SWB job, but look again and you’ll notice that there’s no apparent transmission! It’s all inside – either the carbon-fibre main frame or the aluminium box-section rear swinging arm (with cantilever rear wheel). Somehow he’s managed to fit 21 gears in there, though I’m not sure how. Another neat machine, or rather pair of machines, are those ridden by Walter Zorn and his mate, who is probably Jörg Wendebourg. These are full suspension touring low bikes, with huge tyres and many useful accessories – mirrors, compasses, thermometers etc. Walter is building a new race bike, but it wasn’t finished in time, hence he was only spectating (though Jörg raced), but the pair of them rode 500 miles to the Championships, which is a bit keen.
 

The Championships sports a semi-faired class – you can have a nose or tail fairing (which doesn’t have to be a functional luggage carrier) but not both. There are numerous examples of tail-faired low bikes, the hardest of which must surely be that of Peter Groeneveld. He’s sold his ultra-light front driver to Sacha Knoop and built a new rear drive machine – 7 kg including tail fairing. Sacha is racing the unfaired machine this year, having installed a more powerful engine into the Meringue – all six and a half feet and sixteen stone of Ymte Sybrandy. There’s not much new in the way of fully-faired machines this year, though Jürg Birkenstock’s Swiss Cheese-coloured machine has acquired a pink brother, ridden by Walter Berger. Sergei Dashevski is present once again, this time with a faired bike rather than his old trike. I think the bike inside is the one he rode unfaired in the crit last year, as although the Dutch club have adopted him and have clubbed together to build him a new bike, the one he is riding seems to have little in the way of recognisably Western components on board. There’s a few examples of the new C-Alleweder in evidence, though only one is to be found racing – also in the hands of Ymte. Dirk Hentschel’s Magic Scooter is here, as is Thomas Klein’s BumbleBike, now with its rear wheel “fin” removed to accommodate a low bike. There’s also a smooth fully-faired AeroProject for Rainer Leroy, and a handsome carbon/kevlar faired device from Swede Henry Riedel. Once again we have a fully-faired machine from North America, and once again it’s Quebecois Robert Lafleur. He’s raised the fairing of his bike a couple of inches, which has slowed it down a bit, but allows him to lean much further over on the flat half-mile ovals commonly used for racing over there. And, of course, there’s Laurent Chapuis and Nilgo, hotly tipped to win just about everything…
 

Anyway, to the racing. A few people fall over at the start, and none more dramatically so than Sherri, who manages to turn her rear wheel into something shaped not unlike a potato crisp, break the Q/R skewer and bend the dropout. Fortunately, they have the “touring” wheel with them, and its big knobbly tyre is rapidly replaced by a very nice skinny slick, courtesy of all-round good bloke Dirk Heinze. And people raced round the track. In order to prevent this article from being both even longer and even more boring, I don’t propose to list results in the text; interested parties can refer to the summary elsewhere, while very interested parties can find the full monty on various Web sites and if all else fails, from me (SAE please…). Worthy of a mention are Peter Groeneveld and his legs, which power his semi-faired bike to an overall third place, while to no-one’s great surprise, Laurent and Nilgo walk away with the win, nearly two seconds ahead of runner-up Ymte. In order to fill in time, there was a Devil, for anyone except fully-faired types, though we were allowed to play after removing our Bags. I got through to the semi-final after a desperate last-lap charge at the expense of Robert Schweier’s front-faired bike, before being obliterated by the Dutch Low Racing Army. Steve made it to the final and bagged third place. I neglected to note who won, and it’s not in the results anywhere, but he was definitely Dutch. The day, if I remember rightly, was finished off with the 500 m standing start race for scooters, in which Ulrich Trojer’s large-wheeled example triumphed over Clemens Bucher’s more conventional version, and the second lap was run in the opposite direction. We return to base, try the new Pashley PDQ, and spend a while chatting with Mrs. & Mr. Sharon Scott, who are here spectating briefly prior to visiting the odd Dutch manufacturer on the way home.
 

Monday July 28th

Back to the velodrome for the 4000 m event. Is it a pursuit? Yes. No, it’s a time trial, run with two starters on the track. Us fully-faired types don’t get there until fairly late, just in time to miss Andy. Sorry. The morning session is taken up mainly with unfaired vehicles and the odd Alleweder, but around lunchtime faster machinery starts taking to the track. By 13:30, the best time has been set by Peter Bruggen - 4:42.20 - in what looks suspiciously like the old Sweet Surprise. Sherri has clocked a 5:58.67; for a while it seemed as though her opponent would finish ahead, but the aerodynamics told, and Derrick (for it was he), finished five seconds down. Being a Very Parfait Gentleman, he then went up to the top of the banking in order to let Sherri catch up, so they could leave the track together. Sadly, gravity had its way, and the unfortunate Twedd slid all the way down again, removing a large area of skin from his arm. Doh! Meanwhile, Sacha Knoop is roundly thrashed by Liet Heringa, to his eternal embarrassment. Liet’s time, however, was only good enough for third in her class; the winner being Nicole Schön in a foam-faired streamliner – the one with 100 mm cranks. I know she’s only little, but those are ridiculous! Into the afternoon, the faster machines and the Editor start to line up. Henry Riedel does a 4:41, encouraged by the Scandinavians in the crowd all chanting “Olaf! Olaf!”. I don’t know why. Steve, meanwhile, optimistically claims to be aiming for a sub-four minute time. He doesn’t get one, however; paired against Robert Lafleur, he manages 4:17.27 against his opponent’s 4:04.32. At this point the fastest time has been set by Walter Berger, in the pink Cheese, and then there’s a pause while the fastest of the semi-faired competitors have their turn, and Andy returns from town with his girlfriend Christina.
 

Undeterred by the above mishap, Anne takes to the track against Peter Groeneveld. Four minutes and thirty-five seconds later it’s all over, and that was Anne’s time, which was good enough only for third; the mighty Groeneveld thighs get Peter round ten seconds quicker. Mummy and Daddy Groeneveld are spectating, and are suitably pleased. Next, Jürg Birkenstock takes on Dirk Hentschel; quickest time of the day for the Swiss rider. The final race of the afternoon is expected to be the quickest, though, pairing as it does Laurent in the Nilgo and Ymte in the Meringue. Ymte has elected to run without the top on, in order to place the bike with some degree of confidence on the banking, but in spite of this he’s marginally ahead after four? five? laps or so. At which point there is a loud explosion – travelling at around 40 mph and pulling 1.2g in the curves, Nilgo’s front tyre has let go. At that kind of speed, Laurent has absolutely no chance of retaining control, and the machine goes over, spins, slides up to the retaining wall and back to the inside of the track, coming to rest some 50 metres from where the accident began. Amazingly, Laurent is completely unhurt, and while Raymond Brichet inspects the damage, he is off out to the car to fetch a spare wheel!
 

While most people watch Messieurs Brichet and Chapuis changing Nilgo’s wheel, Sacha, aided and abetted by your Editor and either Allert Jacobs or John Poot (one of the back-to-back tandem guys anyway) carries out some precision engineering on the Meringue’s cockpit cover. This involves hacking a hole in it with a penknife. Ymte tries the modification, and pronounces himself able to see properly. Nilgo is now repaired, and Laurent does a few trial laps. All seems OK, and the pair of them have another go. Is Laurent being cautious, or is the spare wheel slower, or is the machine more badly damaged than just scrapes on the fairing? We don’t know for certain, but the Frenchman manages “only” 3:50.58, while Ymte manages 3:41.92. So it’s first and second for the Birk team, then? Er, no, it isn’t, actually. It seems that the timing system is allergic to Swiss Cheeses, and Jürg is credited with a 3:49 for second, and Walter a 3:52 for fourth. The first ten machines were all quicker than the winner of the 4000m pursuit in the recent World Track Championships, while the first six were inside Chris Boardman’s world record. The excitement over, we return to base – in spite of following an extremely strange route, the riders make it back well before Steve and Sherri, passing the site of tonight’s instalment of U2’s PopMart Tour. Andy and Frank Lienhard agree that the new album is not much cop.
 

Tuesday July 29th

Today is the last in the velodrome, with races for an hour. As the Organisators are worried about safety, they are only permitting a limited number of machines on the track at once, which means that only the fastest from the 1000m qualify to take part. Steve and Sherri are disinclined to spend an hour impersonating aerodynamic hamsters, while I quite fancied the idea, but wasn’t quick enough, chiz. So rather than spend the day loafing around the track, we elected to take part in the rally in the city centre. I am indebted to Frank Lienhard and Kees Bakker for the details of the day’s racing – see below.
 

In the velodrome, the Swiss Cheeses have their day. Walter Berger, clearly the team’s distance man, takes the win, from Ymte and Jürg. Frank reported that he was distinctly unhappy at being a single lap under 50 km, that Thomas Klein had punctured – this must have been somewhere near the end, as he was still credited with 54.49 km – and that Ulf Krollmann managed to crash his machine, but was back underway in 30-40 seconds. Oh yes, and Laurent suffered another exploding tyre, this time after 14 laps, with similar results to the previous day. He didn’t restart. And after the races were over, Liet Heringa staged an attack on the Ladies’ 1 hour record, but no-one I asked seemed to know how she got on.
 

Meanwhile, many of the non-racing contingent collected a sheet of dubiously-translated questions and rode into town to attempt to answer them. That is, after we visited the chocolate museum… The questions ranged from the easy to the completely impossible, and to make matters worse the Tourist Office had received prior instructions not to assist anyone suspected of having anything to do with the Championships, chiz. For example, “Who indicates the wind direction on the top of the Town Hall?” It’s clearly a bloke with a bugle, but who? I wrote “Dizzy Gillespie”, but I’m not convinced this was right. “What tunes do the chimes on the Town Hall clock play?” You might know if you were brought up round these parts, but we could tentatively identify only one – “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window”, though another sounded a bit like something by Simon & Garfunkel. And “How old is the medal of Prince Peter in the window of the Carnival Museum?” Geoff, Fiona and I spent ages examining the entire contents of the window. No Prince Peter. Finally we asked the curator. Clearly she has already been asked this question several times before today; “No, there is no Prince Peter, only Prince Bernhard” (huge sigh). Enough!! We sup a couple of Beers and return home. After all of which, no-one actually bothered to work out the results – instead we all received a small model of the Dom and a rock. The model was supposed to be glued to the rock, but in the heat the glue had failed to stick. “So we give you the prize in kit form!”, as one Organisator put it.
 

Wednesday July 30th

The 200m sprints (t.s.a.s.a.a.i.e.b (work it out yourselves)), take place on a closed section of country road off by the river somewhere. I reckon the only way I’d ever get to be any good at them would be if I had to chase a Transit through the traps after it had just cut me up. It was very hot, and for much of the day there was little action unless you count sitting at a road junction for hours while the Organisators tried to sort out the timing gear thus. After one run apiece, Steve, Sherri and I make tracks for the riverside bar discovered by some of the American contingent, for Beer and Sausages.
 

We return in time to see the quickest streamliners coming through. Ymte leads from Laurent and Jürg; the first and third placed riders improving their performances on their second runs. In the case of Jürg, this is enough to lift him into second, while Ymte is the only one to crack 50 mph. Given that the course is both narrow and tree-lined, this must have been rather more exciting than pottering down at 35 or so. I’m sure Sacha will forgive me for saying that I don’t reckon the Meringue is that wonderful a shape, but having a power plant the size of Ymte makes a lot of difference. In the evening, Miles and June Kingsbury and family appear for a couple of days spectating en route to Italy.
 

Thursday July 31st

Time for the long race. At least, that’s what was promised on the program I received way back when, but by now it had mutated into a sort of tour-cum-time-trial, I think due to the intervention of the Poldarkpolizei. Anyway, I dutifully set the alarm for Early, but when it went off, I decided that I didn’t like the look of the day very much, and went back to sleep. “Are you coming, Dave?” asked Mrs. D. “No”, said the Editor, in his best early morning voice, and went back to sleep again. Anyway, the event consisted of three laps of a 15 km circuit, with a section of 5.2 km being timed on each lap. The result was taken from average of the competitors’ best two times, which explains how Rudolphe Friemel and his Trice managed to average 6.2 km/h. Or not. Steve and Sherri were going to take part, but then something went “SPRONGG!” on the Wasp, so they joined in the marshalling instead. A good move, as they were strategically located opposite a bakery. Allert and John rode past, then returned, parked up the tandem and dived into the shop. On seeing the stationary machine, divers other Dutch types did likewise, buying buns for the marshals. Meanwhile your idle Editor spent the day chatting with Ian Hague, designing trailers and hoping the sun would come out. Which it did, though not for long, and by that evening it was extremely soggy. Just the conditions you want for trying the Ostrad tandem. I tried it solo – love that suspension. Steve and Sherri tried it together, and managed to fall off. Bad move. Tonight comes the Quote of the Meeting, from one of Miles’ children – having returned from a day in town they find the tent has been less than waterproof: “Dad, my shoes are full of water!”.
 

Friday August 1st

Time for the Crit – at last some real head-to-head racing! We’ve heard various things about the circuit – it’s narrow, it’s twisty, it has a 12% hill in it (all true, as it turns out) – but these warnings do not prepare us for the reality of the thing. Not only is it all of the above, but part of it is over a loose-surfaced path, one corner is surfaced with brick-like items instead of tarmac, and the weather is such that a human-powered boat might be more suitable for the course than a bike. Steve and Sherri immediately decide to give it a miss, and Andy, regretting the absence of his Speedy, does likewise after dropping the Kingcycle and filling the chainring guard with mud. Which leaves Derrick and me the only Brits in the event. The Twedd borrows Sherri’s arm pads as insurance, and states his intention of finishing fourth in the first heat, to ensure that he doesn’t reach the final. He promptly wins it. Heat two goes to Ymte on a tail-faired bike, with Sacha retiring Scared. Walter Berger, also part-faired, takes heat three, while Frank Lienhard crashes avoiding someone else’s accident. As it will take him longer to get his chain back on than there is time left in the race, he retires. The Editor is not entirely sorry, as this means one fewer fully faired competitor to beat him. The final heat has eleven riders rather than seven, with the first five to qualify. Allert Jacobs and John Poot win, while various others retire. Among them are the fully-faired Henry Riedel (insufficient easily-selected gears for the hill) and the equally-faired Sergei Dashevski (a crash or two). Sadly, Tom Klein, using what appears to be part of a BumbleBike mould with a fabric fairing (a BumbleBag?), remains upright and ahead of me chiz; my chance of being a World Champion is spoiled forever. I manage to get seventh, after a race-long battle with the not-young Bernd Bleckmann on a Bike Friday. I’m quicker on the straights, but he’s better on the climb and in the corners, particularly on the transition from tarmac to dirt, where most riders are using the grass anyway.
 

As the final draws near, we are all grateful for the arrival of Annie and Fiona, bearing gallons of hot coffee. The final starts, and Derrick manages not to fall off – proof that the armpads work, but instead the Velodynamics tries to shed its left crank. A rapid pitstop sees it secured enough for Derrick to finish eleventh, while That Man Sybrandy cruises home for an easy win. If they’d had a prize for Rider With The Most Enthusiastic Supporters, Derrick would have taken it; daughter Hannah’s cries of “Come on, Daddy!” were taken up by most of the crowd. The tandem manages only one lap before shedding a chain, while sometime BHPC racer Simon Nef crashes and retires with a well grazed arm. “If I’d known I was in third at the time, I’d have carried on” he said later. As the rain finally stops, the entourage returns to HQ once more, to take part in the Geschicklichkeitsfahren, or Larry, or Riding-Into-Traffic-Cones event. The usual sort of format – carry two litre Coke bottles somehow while performing various tests to determine one’s ability to turn tightly, not spill a cup of water while riding, juggle with tennis balls etc. Fun to do and more fun to watch, especially watching Steve making a complete ass of himself trying to do it on his “Wee Bike”. I know it’s a long way down from the saddle to the top of a cone, but various Dutch types managed it on unicycles.
 

The final prize-giving comes around. Only overall prizes for the crit, no class ones. Double chiz. We amuse ourselves by reading some of the comments written by participants on the board provided for that very purpose. “Too many people with beards and Jesus sandals” says one, while another complains of a lack of serious racing. Sometimes you just can’t win. Especially not when you find Dutch people whom you previously believed to be healthy, sober and upstanding citizens drinking too much Beer and scrounging the Editorial Marlboros. Yes, you, Sacha and Mariëlle! We round off the evening watching the torchlight procession of the HP boats, whose events start in earnest on the morrow.

Saturday August 2nd

Saw some boats. Packed up and left. Tony Hunt has covered the aquatic stuff far more competently than I could hope to, so that’s that. So, it was pretty well organised, and mainly good fun, and not so wet that anyone who didn’t come home to shoes full of water would complain that much. But it lacked in the type of racing that we Brits tend to prefer, and it lacked Brits too. Next year’s Europeans are in Roskilde, Denmark and don’t go on for the whole week, so be there!

Postscript

Sherri would never forgive me if I left this without the “Schwimmbad” gag…