Lionel Van Praag was born in 1908 in Sydney Australia. Fortunately, speedway was about to be invented, so he’d have something to do when he grew up. Lionel’s first full season in the sport was riding for the Wembley Lions in 1931, helping them to become national champions. In 1936, the first official World Speedway Championship was held at Wembley in London in front of a 25,000 strong crowd. Despite being unbeaten in the final, Bluey Wilkinson was not crowned Champion. Bonus points accum...

At a Vincent Owners’ Club dinner in the summer of 1955, Phil Vincent announced that the company could no longer continue in the face of heavy losses and that just 100 more machines would be built, then motorcycle production would cease. After 27 years building some of the most iconic and fast motorcycles in the world, tha last Vincent came off the Stevenage production line a week before Christmas in 1955. A year before, Vincent has developed the new Series D. The Black Knight (based on th...

3 An early version of speedway was born at Maitland, New South Wales, Australia in 1923 when New Zealand rider Johnny S. Hoskins organised a sports charity carnival called the Electric Light Carnival, staged on the Maitland Showground. Hoskins realised that there was a gap in the program of events and a couple of young, local motorcyclists told him that they were prepared to fill the gap by racing around the show ground’s grassy track. Allan Roper on the Duggie he rode at that historic sp...

BBC local news in 2015 reported that the doors to a barn on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall were opened after the owner had passed away. Revealed inside, buried under decades of dust, old machinery parts and ho...

Debbie Lawler came in to the world in Oregon in 1952. Her father, a veteran racer and clearly a excellent dad, bought Debbie a motorcycle for her 10th birthday. Lawler started racing when she was 14. “Motorcross, flat track, hill climb – we did anything on a bike. My dad was always fighting for me and my sisters to race against the men.” Aged 19, she was recruited by a motorcycle stunt troop and started jumping ar fairs and speedways in 1972. "Jumping through the air on a motorcycle gives y...

The motorcycle show season has been a regular autumn feature of the calendar since the early 1900s. People would flock to Olympia or Earls Court (and later the National Exhibition Centre) to see what temptations the manufacturers and engineers brought us. The shows would usually be in November with just a few running in to the first week of December. In 1935, it was the last weekend of the twentieth and penultimate show at Olympia before it outgrew the venue and moved to Earls Court. Among t...

The official world record for the flying mile for motorcycles under 1000cc was set in 1993 by Jon White in Christchurch, New Zealand. He reached 188.092 mph (302.705 km/h) on a Britten V1000. The record remains unbeaten in 2025. He also set the Motorcycling New Zealand (MNZ) National Speed Record for the flying kilometer and the NZ 1050cc Flying Kilometer and NZ Open Flying Kilometer records. Both those records remain unbroken too.

A Norton International Model 30, originally given to comedian George Formby, sold for £29,900 at auction in 2007. The bike was presented to Formby when he visited the Bracebridge Street site in July 1947. George had been performing in the radio show Workers Playtime at the Norton factory. As he was leaving the canteen after the broadcast he was confronted by the Norton factory employees who, at a given signal, all parted to reveal the motorcycle. In reality the presentation a publicity s...

Arturo Magni, Italian engineer, racing team manager and entrepreneur, took the chequered flag in 2015, aged 90. Magni joined Gilera in 1947 when the company had decided to participate in the Grand Prix Championship. He joined the R&D departement to assist Pietro Remor in building a new engine that powered Gilera to six world titles in the 500cc class, including three for Geoff Duke In 1950 MV Augusta hired Pietro Remor to build two GP machines: a four-cylinder 500cc and a 125cc. Remor br...

The first edition of Motorcycle News was issued in 1955. There were two weekly publications for the discerning motorcyclist in the 1950s - Motor Cycling (“The Green 'Un”)… …and The Motor Cycle (“The Blue 'un”). Both were produced in magazine-format, issued every Thursday, and had been around for decades. Cyril Quantrill was an employee of Motor Cycling, learning his trade both pre and post-war. He recognised an opening for a Wednesday newspaper-format publication that could better s...

Two Major Motorcycle Titles Published by Michael O’Mara Highlight Triumph’s 140th Anniversary and Inside Stories from MotoGP

The Oxford Beast Lock Padlock is a premium security solution designed specifically for motorcycle owners who prioritise safety and durability.

Triumph Factory Racing Enduro Team has concluded a remarkable campaign in the 2025 AMA EnduroCross Championship, with Jonny Walker securing the overall series win aboard the TF 450-E.

Sylvester Howard Roper of Boston, USA was born this day in 1823. Depending on who you ask (not literally, everyone from the 1800’s is dead) he invented a steam motorcycle somewhere between 1867-1869. The Daimler Reitwagen is usually claimed to be the first motorcycle because it had an internal combustion engine that begat all others (apart from the electric ones). Steam motorcycles were a dead-end, technologically, so Roper’s velocipede, though an earlier machine, isn’t considered to be ...

Italian, Romolo Ferri was born this day in 1928 and became a Grand Prix motorcycle road racer in 1951. He had his most successful year in 1956 when he won the 125cc German Grand Prix and finished the ...

The first complete motorcycle from B.S.A made its public debut at the Olympia show in 1910 80,000 enthusiasts attended the exhibition that year, the first to be held at the venue. The show report had this to say: Sir Hallewell Rogers, B.S.A. Chairman, had informed the shareholders at the company’s 1910 AGM in Birmingham “We have decided to put a motor-bicycle on the market for the coming season. These machines will be on exhibit at the Cycle and Motor Show on November 21st, after which d...

Full review of the Triumph Scrambler 400XC

As it was then, so it is now - after a summer filled with stories of derring-do at the TT, autumn becomes the season of the bike show Earls Court threw open their doors for the start of the 1967 Cycl...

War was raging in Europe in 1940. The main Triumph factory at Priory Street in Coventry suffered a devastating blow when it was hit during a raid by the Luftwaffe. The whole factory was obliterated an...

It was happy days in 2011 for the successful bidder for Arthur Fonzarelli’s 1949 Triumph Trophy custom. It went to auction with a guide price of $60,000 - $80,000 and eventually sold for $87,500. The bike originally came from Bud Ekins, who took off the front mudguard, replaced the bars and painted the tank silver. According to Ekins, there were actually three Triumphs, all 500cc Trophy models of various years, used on the show, two of which had gone missing – stolen, raced into the grou...

Sammy Miller MBE was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in1933. He had a highly successful career in dirt/grass track racing and trials. He won over 1,300 trials, nine gold medals and the International Six Days Trial, as well as coming 3rd in the 1957 250cc Grand Prix championship.He also won the British Trials Championship 11 times and the European Trials Championship twice, and three 250cc North West 200 events (1956-1958). Sammy rode a variety of machines including AJS 7R, Mondial and N...