Beryl Burton wins her first road Worlds

Beryl Burton claimed the first of two World Championships Road Race titles in 1960, becoming the first rider to win pursuit and road world titles in the same year

- Giles Belbin

The front cover headline on the October 1960 edition of Coureur -Sporting Cyclist could not have been more understated. ‘Dual World Champion – Beryl Burton’ ran the simple tagline with a picture of the newly double-crowned champion crouched low over her bike, eyes locked forward.

‘If there’s anything nicer than one world title it’s two,’ Burton said in the short first-person account that appeared in the magazine. ‘I’m thrilled and happy to have won both the pursuit and the road titles… I have my two rainbow jerseys and two gold watches to take home with me.’

The 1960 event was only the third edition of the women’s World Championships Road Race. Burton, born in 1937 in Halton, a suburb four miles east of Leeds city centre, was not part of the six-woman squad Great Britain sent to the inaugural race in 1958. That was won by Luxembourg’s Elsy Jacobs, with Joan Poole the best of the British starters in fifth. Burton made her debut the following year, finishing fifth in the Netherlands behind winner Yvonne Reynders, who would claim four titles between 1959 and 1966.

Burton was at the beginning of a 30-year career that would see her amass seven world titles (two on the road, five on the track), amid a haul of national records and titles too exhaustive to list. She claimed 13 pursuit and 12 road race national titles and won the Best British All-Rounder title, awarded to the nation’s most complete time-trial rider, an incredible 25 years in a row.

‘Beryl the peril’