Bicycle races were held in South Africa some years before Dunlop invented the pneumatic tyre (patented 1888). The first cycling club in Southern Africa the Port Elizabeth Bicycle Club was founded in Oct. 1881, while the South African Amateur Cycling Union was founded in 1892 in Johannesburg. On 9 Sept. 11893 the first South African championships were d
ecided in Johannesburg, and in the same year the first world championships. Cycling prospered particularly on the Witwatersrand. Men like L. S. Meintjes, J. D. Celliers, L. C. Papenfus, C. H. Kincaid, F. G. Connock, H. Newby-Fraser, C. E. Brink and J. M. Griebenow were the pioneers of a sound cycling tradition. Lourens Meintjes, who used the first racing bicycle fitted with pneumatic tyres in Johannesburg, achieved high honours in 1893 in Europe and the U.S.A. Between 12 Aug. and 11 Sept. at Chicago and Springfield, Mass., respectively, he won five world titles and established sixteen world records over distances from 3 to So miles (4.8 to 80.5 km). His victories acted as a spur to cycling throughout South Africa. Many types of races were held, one the ‘Wacht-een-Beetje’. In 1897 the S.A. Cycling Union consisted of 39 affiliated clubs. Every city and even small towns like Paarl had or were constructing a cycling track. In the same year the Cape Town firm of Donald Menzies & Co. manufactured the Springbuck cycle. This is the first reference to the Springbok in South African sport. In 1905 the S.A. Cycling Union and the S.A. Athletic Union merged and the S.A. Amateur Athletic and Cycling Association was formed. This singular ‘marriage’ was dissolved in 1958 after 53 years of fruitful co-operation. Since then cycling has been controlled by the S.A. Amateur Cycling Federation.
Two important clubs are the City Cycling Club of Cape Town (1891) and the Paarl Amateur Athletic and Cycling Club (1894).
In 1897 the former had 260 members and in the same year the Paarl Club staged its first Boxing Day meeting. No cycling race in South Africa has a more colourful tradition than the race over 2,5 miles (40.z km) held annually at this meeting. Dirk Binneman, member of South Africa’s best-known cycling family, is the only cyclist who has won this race four years consecutively (1942-45). In 1908 in London four cyclists (F. Shore, F. T. Venter, P. T. Freylinck and T. H. E. Passmore) represented South Africa at the Olympic Games for the first time. Four year s later at the Olympic Games in Stockholm a mine-worker from Johannesburg, Rudolph Lewis, scored the first Olympic cycling victory for South Africa. He won the gold medal in the road race over 320 kilometres (198 miles 1,478 yards), beating 134 opponents in 10 hrs. 42 min. 39 sec. In the years before and after the First World War South African cycling was dominated by five men: H. W. Goosen, W. R. Smith, G. E. Thursfield, H. J. Kaltenbrun and J. R. Walker. At the Olympic Games in 1920 the last four each won a silver medal. Touring Australia and New Zealand in 1921-22, Kaltenbrun and Thursfield won a total of 34 races. From 1920 to 1930 most major honours were shared by the Paarl riders A. J. Basson, F. W. Short, A. J. Louw and I. Roux. At the South African championships in 1928 Short won all the titles except the 10 miles (16 km), won by his clubmate Louw. In the next ten years H. Binneman, T. Clayton and S. Rose of Cape Town were the top riders. At the Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1938 at Sydney, Binneman won the gold medal in the road race over loo kilometres (2 hrs. 53 min. 29.6 sec.). The first visit from overseas was in 1948, by a British team captained by L. Pond. This gave an added incentive to the sport in South Africa, and the standard of track cycling was raised considerably. The visitors won the only test, at Kimberley, by 33-8. The tables were turned when a second British team, under T. Godwin, visited South Africa in 1952; South Africa won both tests. In the same year at the Olympic Games in Helsinki two silver medals were won by T. Shardelow, a silver and a bronze medal by R. Robinson, and a silver medal each by J. Swift, R. Fowler and G. Estman. This gave South Africa the third place in world ranking on the basis of the unofficial Olympic cycling scoreboard.
In Rhodesia cycling was established early in the century, and in Mozambique after the First World War. D. H. B. McKenzie of Salisbury won 43 Rhodesian and 4 South African titles (1931-48).
