Jim Hinds

Despite winning eight races in the 1958 season, Streatham aircraft engineer Jim Hinds was a virtual “unknown” in the cycling world until the 1959 Tour of Britain (Milk Race). He then won three stages, was 12th overall, and placed third in the Mountain classification. Also that year, Hinds beat Bill Bradley to win the coveted Manx International Road Race, thus endings four years overseas domination of the race.

Hinds, who was doing his National Service in the Royal Air Force (RAF) at the time, went to the 1960 Roma Olympics and finished in the pack of 39 riders vying for the bronze medal behind the Russian winner Viktor Kapitonov and Italy´s Livio Trapè. In a bewildering manner that decided the positions of the chasing pack, Hinds was placed 18th, with the same time as the bronze medallist Willy Vanden Berghen of Belgium.

Hinds took part in 1960 World Cycling Championships in Leipzig and again at Bern the following year. In 1962 he won another stage in the Milk Race when he was classified third overall behind Poland´s Eugeniusz Pokorny and Britain´s Bill Holmes.