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Sid Standard, 1931–2003

A life long lover of the bike and an inspiration to thousands.

Sid lived for cycling, and he passed that love of the bike to countless people, as both the leader of CTC Junior Runs for over 40 years in Leicester and Nottingham, as President of the Notts DA of the CTC and President of Beeston Road Club.

His Sunday Rides are legendary, teaching thousands that ’It’s All Rideable’.

Three men sitting on a low stone wall eating, with a bare scree mountainside rising behind them and panniers on the ground.
Sid touring in the Swiss Mountains
Before the shop

Sid was born in Liverpool in 1931 and came to Nottingham via Leicester, for work. He was a senior draughtsman at Raleigh’s headquarters in the city.

In 1975 he left Raleigh to pursue his dream, to run his own bike shop, taking over from Arthur Panter and Joe Ames, the bike shop on Chilwell High Road in Beeston, Nottingham.

He rode a bike long before he sold bicycles, starting cycling in his teens to escape the war-ravaged City of Liverpool, escaping into the North Wales hills that he would continue to visit throughout his life, and where he took hundreds of children to share the beauty of the Welsh hills.

Two young men in battledress standing arm in arm against a brick wall beside a doorway, in black and white.
Sid (R) doing his national service
Rows of drafting tables in a top-lit industrial drawing office, a dozen men working at them, in black and white.
Sid in the foreground - Raleigh drawing office
The shop

Sid bought the shop on Chilwell Road in 1975 and ran it until he retired in 2000. The first Superbe sheet is dated 1981, and by the time the last one was written in 1999, there were 287 of them.

Despite numerous requests, neither Pete nor Sid would build frames for others to put their names on; they considered each frame a piece of art, and each one would last a lifetime.

Most of the frames were brazed by Pete Riches rather than by Sid himself, in the room behind the shop. How the frames were built is its own page, and the register is every sheet that survives.

Sunday

From the 1970s until his death in 2003, Sid led the Notts DA CTC junior section rides every Sunday from the shop in Beeston, and it is these, more than the shop and more than the frames, that people write to say they remember.

Seamus Kelly, who rode with Sid in the 1970s, described dozens of children turning out every Sunday to learn “not just how to ride their bikes properly, but about nature, mates, laughter, love, naughtiness and sheer lust for life”.

Helen Gutteridge, a future national cycling champion on the road, and one of many female riders on those Sunday rides, puts it simply: he was “practising diversity and inclusion long before it became all the rage”.

Simon Burney was fourteen when he started going out with ‘The Juniors’, describes Sid as providing “a once in a lifetime learning about something we ended up doing for the rest of our lives”.

Several of those children went a long way with it.

Simon Burney
professional cyclocross rider, later a UCI consultant
Bryan Steel
Olympic team pursuit medallist, bronze in 2000 and silver in 2004
Theresa Dark
GB team, 1988 Women's Tour de France
Helen Gutteridge
national circuit race champion, 2003
Paul Wain
team pursuit squad, 1986 Commonwealth Games and the 1988 Olympics
Seamus Kelly
twice winner of the Monsal hill climb
Eight teenage girls in bright cycling jackets sit in a row along a wooden fence rail on a misty winter morning, laughing and looking off to one side. Their bicycles are propped in front of them, bars and saddles filling the foreground.
1990s gang, Helen Gutteridge third from left in pink.
Six young riders sitting in long grass at the side of a lane, eating, with their bicycles laid down around them. One wears a green and red club jersey, another a Miko-Mercier team top.
Stopped for food in the long grass. Simon Burney in the Miko top.
Six riders in single file coming down a narrow grassy track between waist-high summer grass and hedgerow, a church tower on the horizon behind them.
Single file down a green lane in high summer
Several young riders in maroon club tracksuits lying on their backs on a grass verge with their legs in the air, holding two bicycles up above them by the wheels.
Messing about on a Sunday Run.
Sid sitting on a stone bridge parapet in a green and white cycling jersey and a knitted hat, holding a sandwich, with his loaded touring bicycle and blue panniers beside him.
Sid on a bridge, panniers loaded for a Wales trip.

Bryan Steel, who won his Olympic medals on the track, is the one who says the point was never the racing: Sid “wasn’t about racing or winning, he was about just riding your bike, the great outdoors, finding little cafes, falling in love with the sport”.

Sid’s own three children rode too; his son David raced for Great Britain as a junior, against Lance Armstrong among others, at the 1989 world championships.

A rider in a red, white and green jersey out of the saddle on a road, spectators and parked bikes at the roadside behind.
Racing in the Isle of Man
A young man sitting on the verge beside a Beware of Sheep sign on open moorland, with two loaded bicycles propped against the post.
Beware of sheep - Sid in North Wales 1950s
“It’s all rideable”
Sid’s catchphrase, which was as much about life as it was about riding the bike.
Since

Sid died in 2003, three years after retiring, while he was out on his bike.

Beeston and Nottingham has continued to remember him. There is a blue plaque on the pillar between the shop windows, carrying his famous line: “It’s all rideable”.

One of Nottingham’s trams (209) runs under his name after he was voted a community hero in 2005 by readers of the Nottingham Post, two years after he died. In 2022, nineteen years after his death, a mural went up on a wall in Beeston Town Centre dedicated to Sid, opening the brickwork onto a Derbyshire dale with two riders in Beeston Road Club and Beeston Cycling Club colours heading up into it, with his immortal line “It’s all rideable” in the bottom right corner.

A mural painted on a gable wall so that the wall appears broken open onto a steep green Derbyshire dale with limestone crags along the top. Two cyclists in Beeston Road Club jerseys ride away up the road into it. A small painted panel at the lower right reads 'It's all rideable — remembering Sid Standard'.
The Beeston mural, unveiled 2022
A panel painted at the foot of the mural on a rendered wall: 'It's all rideable' in red script inside a black box, with REMEMBERING SID STANDARD beneath it in black capitals.
The dedication at the foot of the mural, Beeston
A man and a boy standing beside a green and yellow Nottingham tram, the name 'Sidney Standard' lettered on the cab door.
Sid’s son David and Charlie Sidney, Sid’s grandson, with the tram named after Sid
Source

Almost everything on this page about the Sunday rides comes from Trevor Ward’s article for Cyclist, published in February 2023, which found the riders and asked them what they remembered. It is worth reading in full.

All the photographsOpen the register