Stonnington Leader: Tragedy finds voice (September 23, 2008)

He was the original Geelong flyer. On the track and on the road, Russell Mockridge was Australia’s champion cyclist, a rider blessed with endurance and brilliance. He had the sprint and the stamina, and built an enviable record.

In 1950 he won a pair of gold medals at the Auckland Commonwealth Games. Then at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics he secured two more gold medals, in the one day.

But his life was cut short: on September, 13, 1958, at the age of 30, Mockridge was killed on the Princes Highway in Clayton. He and another cyclist, Jim Taylor, were struck by a bus at the start of the Tour of Gippsland.

“We got as far as the corner of Princes Highway and Clayton Road and this bus shot across the road in front of us and cleaned two of us up: Russell and myself. Another rider just brushed the back of the bus and missed being hit,” Taylor said in a newspaper interview in 2005.

Mockridge was killed instantly.

It was in his capacity as a reporter with Leader Newspapers that Martin Curtis’s interest in the great cyclist began. Curtis was filling in on the Oakleigh paper and learned the accident happened on his patch. He thought about a campaign for a memorial at the corner.

Irene Mockridge was less enthused, remaining bitter about the circumstances of her husband’s death. She had always questioned the absence of a steward at the accident site.

Curtis believed the life and death of Mockridge should be examined in detail, and on the 50th anniversary of his death he has finished a biography of the cyclist, Russell Mockridge, The Man in Front. Published by Melbourne Books, it was released this month.

The book takes up Irene Mockridge’s assertion that her husband’s death was avoidable.

“There were five riders in that scratch bunch and they rode through that corner at 35 to 40kmh,” Curtis said. “They expected a steward there, as there had been in previous years.

“They had an hour to make on the frontmarkers and they didn’t expect to have to stop for a bus at one of the first major intersections.

“She (Irene Mockridge) felt short-changed by the cycling authorities and ultimately by the inquest and at the damages case they brought against the bus company.

“They won the case but the jury found that a large proportion of the blame rested with the cyclists.”

Consequently there was a certain awkwardness about the Mockridge story, Curtis said.

“Every time you tell it, people ask, ‘Well, why wasn’t there a steward on the corner?’ That is a question that the cycling officials of the day were never asked to properly explain, certainly not at the inquest or in the civil case that followed.”

Curtis said Mockridge, a Tour de France competitor, should be remembered more for his stunning achievements in the saddle.

Sid Patterson was his main rival, and Patterson could sometimes best him on the track, but could never beat him on the road.

In 1952 Mockridge won both the amateur and open Paris Grand Prix, a track event.

“The amateur winner was invited to ride in the open as a courtesy and tradition, and Mockridge beat the pros,” Curtis said. “They changed the rules after that so that an amateur couldn’t ride in it again.”