Page 16 - PBCOctober2016

Pickwick Bicycle Club Magazine Volume 13 No.2 October 2016 16

R.I.P David Duffield 1931-2016
The Voice: so expressive, resonant, inspiring.
The man who made bicycling so much the people’s thing

In an early year when the Tour de France raced in
England, the Voice commentating on Eurosport came from Mr.
Pickwick. In 1994 he sent me the photo here, my friendly
table mate at many a Pickwick Bicycle Club gathering. David
Duffield will be remembered all over the world: people tuned
in to listen to him describing the Tour de France battle of will and wheels, even words from
last evening's menu. The Tour de France is where David’s voice resonated on the mic’ for
twenty years, bringing peer inside reporting of the world, which is bicycling. He knew about
riding a bicycle, about racing a bicycle, and tricycles, too - he knew about making bicycles
and he knew how to get them sold. David Duffield built his communication skills in an era
when marketing the bicycle idea was more than hype and wordy manipulation of minds via
social media.

My first recall of David is exactly the one Cycling Weekly used to report of his passing:
hanging off a trike, fully committed, riding towards putting his name to another record. On
his race shorts is the brand Phillips, a Midlands manufacturer with the proud slogan “Known
the World Over” - words that are so true of David himself. He began working for the good
of bicycling from that very company. The David Duffield I got to know was a big man in the
Trade, full of vision and confident integrity. At a time when he didn’t like the way the world
cycle-race scene was heading under a Dutchman, he wrote:
“the UCI is bonkers”. Facing up to forces which preferred
our cycling world stood still, David Duffield worked to ring
changes within the UCI: where with its Verbruggen led
ergonomic mindset, the organisation outrageously set to
outlaw even the sloping top-tube on racing bicycles. Since
at least 1893, it's been a most obvious feature on
competition models: David Duffield’s common sense thinking
on the matter saw through in the end, much to the chagrin
of a former choc bar salesman trying to rewrite cycling’s
heritage from his UCI fiefdom.