130 years of Cycling - How it all began

Cycling Weekly magazine celebrates its 130th year through 2021. The story of how it all began is one of quiet revolution inspired by a group of young men in a drastically changing cycling scene

It might be the elder statesman of cycling magazines, a constant throughout a century of two-wheeled progress and a reassuring presence in the lives of five generations of cyclists, but it was a group of anti-establishment, angry young men that created Cycling.

Its founder, Edmund 'Sally' Dangerfield, was just 26 when Cycling was launched on 24 January, 1891. His editor, Charles Sisley, was 23. Walter Groves, the assistant editor, was 24 and Ernest Perman, who looked after the business side, was 23. They were all young, but they had more than their youth in common: they belonged to the first generation of cyclists to have embraced the diamond-framed, chain-driven Safety bicycle, which had arrived six years earlier. They had become increasingly frustrated that not only was there still no magazine for the new type of cycling, but the publishers of the era had no intention whatsoever of creating one.

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