[1] The National Cyclists' Union selected teams for world championships and regulated circuit and track racing in England and Wales.
[4] This did not present itself as a cycling organisation, instead initially focusing on production of technical literature distributed to highways boards and surveyors to promote improved construction and maintenance methods.
[4] In the early years of the 20th century, however, the RIA gradually became primarily a motoring lobby organisation, under honorary secretary William Rees Jeffreys.
The NCU defined amateurism in English races and banned the American sprinter, Arthur Augustus Zimmerman when he appeared to be sponsored by the Raleigh Bicycle Company.
The largest French organisation, the Union Vélocipèdique Française, sent observers but was not allowed to take part because the NCU had broken off relationships with it over the question of amateurism.
That made little difference to the British because the few international events to which they sent riders, notably the Olympic and world championship road races, had been run as individual time trials.
This and Donington Park in the north Midlands remained the sole venues for massed start racing on mainland Britain until 1942, along with the Snaefell Mountain Course on the neighbouring Isle of Man.
The trial led to a series of races at Brooklands, organised by the Charlotteville cycling club under Bill Mills, a professional rider who founded the weekly magazine, The Bicycle.
The wording that Mills chose in 1933 led to the NCU's long civil war with a later rival body, the British League of Racing Cyclists.
Mills wrote: "No massed start race shall be permitted, other than on an enclosed circuit, unless the course is closed under statute by the competent authority, to other vehicular traffic."
The BLRC's position was that racing on the road was not illegal, that it did not obstruct other travellers, and that it gave riders from England and Wales[19] the experience to compete internationally.
The journalist John Dennis said the NCU still believed that racing on the road threatened all cycling and did not want to make any change while so many members were out of the country, fighting in the war.
[21] The papers of the Bicycle Union and the NCU, mainly committee minutes, are held by the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick Library, England.