Norman Sheil

Norman Sheil (born Nottingham, England, 22 October 1932) is a retired racing cyclist who won world pursuit championships for Britain in 1955 and 1958 and rode the Tour de France in 1960. He became national coach of the British Cycling Federation and later of the Canadian federation. He returned to racing in the 1990s and won the world points championship for over-65s.

Origins

Norman Sheil started club riding with the Phoenix (Aintree) club in Liverpool in 1948. He said: "I shall never forget those 40 miles, especially the look on my mother's face when she saw me after the run ended. She thought I was deadly ill or something. And I didn't feel so good, as a matter of fact."

He rode his first race at the end of 1948, using a bicycle he had built himself from a frame given to him by an uncle, Bill Cronshaw, a racer in the 1920s. He rode a 25-mile [40km] time-trial in 1h 9m 4s. By 1949 he had improved to 1h 3m 30s, in an event held by the Molyneux club on Merseyside. He moved clubs, from the Phoenix to Walton Paragon, rode a little in 1950 and was then called for national service in February 1951. He spent two years as a naval signalman but without cycling.

Amateur career

In July 1954, The Bicycle wrote:

We have to turn the calendar back [only] 12 months to the start of his racing flight to stardom. A 56m 41s '25' 5only 12 seconds off competition record), a 5m 15.1s 4,000 metres which gained him the national pursuit record (and this in his first ride on Herne Hill track) and 'plum' of his life - a ticket to Vancouver, Canada, this month to represent England in the Empire Games... As young as his career is, he has had a bitter disappointment already. After returning a fine 56-41 (after puncturing) Sheil suffered punctures two week-ends running in very important events - the Solihull Invitation 25 and then the National Championship 25... The one-hour unpaced record, the 1,000 metres and other records are among the things he would like to try.

Sheil won the Empire Games pursuit championship in 5m 3.5sec, beating his England team-mate Pete Brotherton by six seconds. His title and then a national record time of 5m 10s later that year in London made selection for the following year's world championship in Milan inevitable. Sheil met the defending champion, Leandro Faggin of Italy, in the semi-final. Sheil won that match and Brotherton won his so that the two Britons met in the final. Sheil won in a British record of 4m 57s. He said:

I was invited to ride the revenge series in Amsterdam against Piet van Heusden who had been champion in 1954. Piet won that match which was very good for the public. After that I raced quite a lot on many tracks and came to know Arie van Vliet, Jan Derksen, Reg Harris and many other great bike riders. After a year out of championship riding I won the title again in 1958 in Paris beating Frenchman Gaudrillot in the final. Later I went to live in France and raced on the road for a year.

Golden Book of Cycling

The Golden Book of Cycling says of Sheil:

Sport has rarely known such a sensational rise to international eminence as that in 1954 and 1955 of Norman Sheil. A series of winning performances in 25-mile road time-trials brought Sheil (who was already recognised in Liverpool to have great potentialities) into the national limelight early in 1954; some equally notable track performances put him among the favourites for the British pursuit championship. He smashed the British 4,000 metres pursuit record with a time of 15min 15.1sec in his qualifying ride for the title, his first event at Herne Hill. Sheil reached the final with P. Brotherton, (subsequently beating him), and since then the fortunes of the two men have been closely linked.

They represented England in the Empire Games pursuit event at Vancouver, in August 1954, and were first and second. Sheil's winning time of 5min 3.5sec being the fastest ever recorded by an Englishman. In Germany they contested the world title series; Sheil finishing third and Brotherton second. In London in September, Sheil, as already stated, won the British title final and his time, 5min 10sec, was a British race record.

On road and track in 1955 Sheil's dominance continued: his second British pursuit title was an early honour, the 25-mile road time trial record with the first ride inside 56 min (55min 51sec) showed that the brilliance was sustained at the end of July; then came the peak performance of British pursuit history when, in Milan in September, Sheil eliminated the reigning world's champion, Faggin of Italy, at the semi-final stage, and went on to defeat Brotherton with a time of 4min 57sec, yet again the fastest time ever recorded by an Englishman, to become the 1955 amateur pursuit champion of the world.