Only three years after a previous profile here's another one, although Jeremy Wilson extends the remit of a conventional biography to explore other aspects of Burton's incomparable cycling career. With limited opportunities in mass-start racing in Britain, time-trialling became the forum for Burton’s talents. it is an excellent book [and] well worth a read * Cycling Europe Podcast * Charts the incredible story of cyclist Beryl Burton, who set a world record in 1967 and was Britain's best all-rounder for 25 successive years.

They are: Be Good, Love Brian: Growing Up with Brian Clough (HarperNonFiction) by Craig Bromfield; God is Dead: The Rise and Fall of Frank Vandenbroucke, Cycling’s Great Wasted Talent (Bantam Press) by Andy McGrath; My Hidden Race (Mirror Books) by Anyika Onuora and Expected Goals: The Story of How Data Conquered Football and Changed the Game Forever (Mudlark) by Rory Smith. In addition, 'course conditions, notably road surfaces and traffic, throw up further possible advantages that can never be precisely measured'. Long before the advent of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Beryl Potter did some of the most important pioneering disability rights activism.His book pays homage to the remarkable life of champion cyclist Beryl Burton, capturing her life through family, friends and fellow competitors to reveal an incredible story about one of the greatest cyclists of all time. This radical essay explores patriarchy and capitalism’s impact on beauty ideals, and inspires us to embrace our own disobedient bodies. My 97-year-old mother-in-law has no interest in cycling but picked it up from our kitchen table, took it home, and loved it!

She seemed like a fascinating person and, as Wilson points out, was doing what she loved right up until her untimely end. Denise was born (with no choice) and then was essentially abandoned so Beryl could pursue her own dreams. Her motivation, sparked by appalling childhood illness, is as fascinating as her achievements are stunning.Wilson springs a few surprises beyond that, with Geoffrey Boycott making an appearance in support of all things Yorkshire – and (presumably drawing on Wilson's main job as the chief sports reporter for the Daily Telegraph), jockey AP McCoy adds comment.

Now in the context of this quote, Denise is Beryl's daughter who also started participating in amateur races.

Joseph Delves is a former editor of Cycling Electric, former editor-at-large of BikesEtc and a regular contributor to Cyclist Magazine and Cyclist. Uncomfortable among her peers, as a child Burton was so shattered by failing her 11-plus and missing the opportunity for social advancement it presented, she suffered a mental breakdown.

A survivor of more than one hundred surgeries, a dangerous opioid addiction, and multiple suicide attempts, Beryl Potter devoted herself to bettering the lives of other people with disabilities and made a tremendous contribution to disability awareness from the 1970s to 1990s. Whether that is enough to persuade anyone to own more than one of them is less certain, except perhaps for the most fervent fan. She was clearly a complicated character too and the book does a good job of praising such an incredible sports person without avoiding her flaws too. A woman determined to prove her worth against all comers, time on the bike was time away from the expectations of cycling’s various governing bodies, life at home and society at large – and in the end, it was the time that mattered. Since our earliest beginnings, every documented society has gathered to perform elaborate rites and ceremonies - from mass worship to body modification - yet ritual poses a deep paradox: why do we give the utmost importance to otherwise pointless activities?There’s an element of early life trauma, but also just being driven to the detriment of everything else. Seems she was a relentless competitor, but once off the bike a much nicer person (except when coming second to her daughter), but that’s just part of her desire to succeed. Despite the inevitable similarities to another Burton biography, there is enough new material here for it to be an equally compelling proposition – so the same score is justified. At the very least Beryl Burton should be talked about like pre-TV era male footballers who hold records that will never be broken (Dixie Dean etc). Driven by something almost beyond rational comprehension, what emerges from Fotheringham’s biography is an occasionally uncomfortable but always engaging portrait of one of Britain’s greatest ever athletes.