Syd Cozens

Manchester-born Syd Cozens attended the Newton Heath Junior Technical School and, after finishing his education, helped his father, who was a Salford sub-postmaster. Syd started cycling at the age of 12, and joined the Manchester Wheelers when he was 16. Cozens soon became a leading club member, winning the NCU Manchester Centre Quarter-mile Championship in 1927 and 1928. Also in 1928, he was runner-up in both the National One-mile Tandem Championship, with Lew Wyld, and in the National 1-mile Championship, after looking certain to cross the line first. Cozens won the National quarter-mile title in 1929, when he won the first of three consecutive Grand Prix de Paris, and became only the second man, after fellow Briton Bill Bailey 20 years earlier, to achieve this feat. Cozens won the National 1,000-yard title in 1930 and followed up his Paris success with wins in Oslo, Naples, London, Warsaw and Cologne. The winner of the London Centre NCU sprint title in 1930 and 1931, Cozens was runner-up in the World Amateur Sprint Championships of 1929 and 1930. He turned professional in September 1931, and enjoyed competing in six-day races and, in 1934, won the London six-day race with Piet Van Kempen (Netherlands). It was the first six-day race on the Olympia track, and it would be the last win in the event by a British rider until Tony Gowland’s success in 1972.

Cozens’ cycling took him all around the world, and he was in Buenos Aires in 1940 when he returned to England to join the RAF, and serve in Burma. After the War, Cozens worked as a technical representative for a cycle manufacturer and served the National Cyclists’ Union for 29 years, and was a delegate to the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). In 1955 Cozens was, despite his lack of road racing knowledge, the manager of the English Hercules team that competed in the Tour de France.