OBITUARY
Trailblazing time triallist and place -to -place record holder nicknamed the ‘Mighty Atom’
Eileen Sheridan, cycling ’s road record super woman, passed away last weekend aged 99, just eight months shy of her 100th birthday. The Coventr y-born rider was famed for her place-to-place exploits in the 1950s, amassing ever y major record at one point, including the coveted Land’s End to John o’ Groats record.
She even appeared on the front of this very magazine, lauded as “Britain’s Greatest Cyclist ” in a full-page cover ad taken out by cycle manufacturer Hercules, to whom she was contracted to break records.
It was a rare and priv ileged employ ment but far from easy. Sheridan would regularly be set off on major undertakings in any weather with very little notice, describing in an interview with the Road Records A ssociation how she burst a blood vessel in her throat during a London to Por tsmouth and back attempt, such was the cold.
As well as from place to place, Sheridan – nick named the Mighty Atom due to her 4ft 11in stature – was unsurprisingly a dab-hand against the clock at standard distances too. She held RTTC competition records over numerous distances, and won National Championships.
It was in this arena that she announced herself to the racing world, winning the National 25-mile Championship in 1945. Five years later she took both 100 and 50-mile titles, before embarking on her place-to-place career. She started with a new time of 5:22 for the London-Birmingham and shortly after fol lowed that with a successful London-Ox ford attempt.
That was enough to convince Hercules they should give her a professional contract, and from 1951 to 1954 Sheridan broke record after record – despite at this time having had her first child, Clive, with husband Ken, in 1946.
It was one morning in June 1954 that, having stayed overnight at the Queen’s Hotel in Penzance, a confident Sheridan headed to Land’s End to begin the Road Records A ssociation’s blueriband undertaking, the End-to-End. In mixed weather she set a new time of 2 days, 11 hours and 7 minutes, beating Marguerite Wilson’s existing record by more than 11 hours.
It meant she was the holder of 21 women’s records – atally that was honoured by longdistance rider Jasmijn Muller when she made her second End-to-En
