As community buildings go, Hirwaun village hall, in South Wales, is nothing special. Its modern and inoffensive brick exterior, complete with solar panels on the roof, sits within the perimeter of a slightly forbidding galvanised steel fence. The hall hosts the usual variety of community
goings-on. Short-mat bowls on Mondays are followed on Tuesdays by a Welshlanguage craft club, while Thursdays see practical sewing and Weight Watchers. Weekends in Hirwaun are set aside for “birthday parties and events” – and it was at one such event, here at this innocuous little venue in early May 2018, that one of the greatest time trial performances in history was announced to the world.
The event in question was the Welsh CA Championship 25, which fell in early summer, the season only just beginning to swing and the weather as yet so-so. Remembering the post-race scene, Martyn Heritage-Owen tells me that only a few cars were left in the hall’s small car park at the
