These photographs of kids on bikes speak of another age. The smiles on the faces of those young riders in their tracksuit bottoms, football socks, woolly jumpers and bobble hats define an era before riding required the validation of data uploaded to a training app, when bikes were for pleasure and socialising as much as competing and record-setting.
Among the faces in these pictures from the 1970s and 80s are a future Tour de France rider, an Olympic medallist, a Commonwealth and Olympic Games contender, a national road champion, a professional cyclocross rider and a two-times winner of the Monsal hill climb.
Speak to them today and their memories are less about the hard slog and sacrifices they had to make for these achievements, and more about the fun they had riding their bikes in a ragtag assortment of improvised kit, and the lasting friendships they made on all-day rides that often ended in darkness with panicked calls home to parents from phone boxes.
The photographs were taken by Sid Standard, a name that will mean little to most followers of our sport. Yet if you should ever find yourself in Nottingham, there is a blue plaque outside the bike shop he owned for 27 years, a mural dedicated to his memory and a tram named after him. Standard never achieved fame as
