Early last year, Maurice Burton was inducted into the British Cycling Hall of Fame. The 68-year-old Londoner joined just 68 others, who’d made “an outstanding contribution to cycling across all levels and disciplines”. Over the phone from his holiday home in Lanzarote, where he’s often to be found when not in his south-London bike shop De Ver Cycles, Burton tells me he was humbled by the accolade. “They asked me if I wanted to accept it and, of course, I did,” says Burton. “But I did feel when I looked at some of the other people in it, the likes of say, Tom Simpson [Britain’s first road world champion], and… I mean, I did okay as a rider but I didn’t do anything that was on the level of someone like him.”
He’s being too modest, so I remind him of his own quote from the newly released book, The Maurice Burton Way, where he tells Paul Jones, his collaborator, that “everyone has to fight to get what they want, but they didn’t have to fight the same fight as me”. This prod leads to a necessary qualification. “It’s true… things were different for me back then. They had doors open for them, not just in cycling but in life in general.”
The ‘they’ refers to the white bike riders from Burton’s racing career in the 1970s and early ’80s, which is to say almost everyone else he came up against. Little has changed, you might observelong on social media to realise that – but what Burton endured throughout his racing career, whether from the British Cycling Federation, fellow riders, the media or fans, as documented extensively in the book, is particularly shocking through the lens of 2024. Perhaps the most notorious incident was at the 1974 British National Track Championships, where Burton won his first senior amateur title, aged 18, in the 20km scratch race. On the podium, in his moment of glory, he was booed by the crowd. What should have been a defining event in his young career was remembered for all the wrong reasons. “They didn’t like the colour of my skin. That’s what I think,” says Burton in the book. It was a catalyst for Burton turning away from British racing and forging a career as a pro in Belgium.
