'We can reinvigorate the sport' – meet the UK's new time trialling boss

If the name Tim Smith sounds familiar to you, there might be a reason for that – last year he stepped in and pulled one of time trialling's most iconic races – the National 24-Hour Championships – from the brink of extinction, after its former longtime organisers stepped down.

He'll be organising the race again this year, but other things will be competing for his time – his role as new chair of Cycling Time Trials (CTT), for example. He was elected January's AGM – a meeting that has been characterised as a tumultuous affair that saw the resignation of numerous former directors as well as former chair Andrea Parish, whose legacy includes the successful road bike category and a new website, built from the ground up.

Smith is determined to build on those achievements he says, and has ideas of his own that he hopes will make time trialling more attractive and underpin its stability, including direct club contact and exploring racing away from the road.

Manchester-based Smith is 51 and has a background in IT consultancy. As you'd expect, he's a bike rider himself. He came back to riding and racing several years ago after taking a break while he had a young family. The secretary of CTT's Manchester District, he joined CTT as a board director in late 2023.

This year he has signed up with a coach for the first time. "I'm never going to be a superstar," he concedes, "but as I get older I do want to be the best I can be. So I thought, I'll sign up with a coach and at least know that what I'm doing is the right stuff."

He hopes to race up and down the country this season – something he hopes will feed into his new role: "It doesn't hurt to get around and talk to people about it," he says.

Smith is excited about his new-look board, which includes top-end racers that he hopes will add frontline insight.

"We've got a lot of new directors this time around, and some of them are racing at a very high level," he says. "So we've got people who are really engaged and involved at the sharp end, as it were." These include 2016 BBAR winner Richard Bideau and Alex Royle, silver medallist at last year's National 24-hour champs.

Much has been written on social media about those elections, including from those that were there at the AGM in January where they took place. Phrases like 'soap opera', 'sour grapes', and plenty more have been tossed around to describe what sounds like a highly-charged meeting.

"It was certainly interesting," Smith says, "[but] I don't really recognise some of the statements I've seen made. As you'd expect, there was a democratic election, and the delegates cast their votes and outcome from it.

He added: "I think that's it really. It's how these volunteer organisations work. People come and people go as things change, and we work with what we've got and we move forward."

Part of that moving forward, explains Smith, will be to reach out to the cycling clubs, which play such a key part in introducing new riders to racing. "We want to get feedback as to what we can do to help them," says Smith. "How can we help them get more riders, more members, to encourage more people to ride and so on."

CTT will also look at the potential lack of appeal of dual carriageway courses to new and young racers. "It's something we have to bear in mind," says Smith. "We want look at if we can do time trials off the road, whether that be off-road time trials or just off the road in some way," which he says could also include closed circuits.

However, ensuring events and support is in place for every kind of time triallist was important, Smith said – from newbies to dyed in the wool lo-pro aeronauts – but added: "I think the key is, let's get people interested in time trialling first, and then we can worry about finding events they want to ride."

Despite a big influx of riders to the sport via the road bike strategy, the top priority remains the slow decline in event numbers and overall rides, Smith says. The CTT Annual Report for 2025 shows the number of open events has fallen by 28% since 2022, and total rides by 22%.

However, he is, he says, optimistic for the coming months "We've got a great new team, and I think we can really make some differences – really reinvigorate the sport, and build on the good work done by Andrea and the previous board until now," he says.