By the end of the season he progressed to riding 50-mile (80 km) events and the following year to a 12-hour endurance race He rode only time-trials until 1932, when his papers suggest he may have ridden in local grass-track meetings or perhaps on a hard velodrome.
[n 1][4]Confronted by a decision it could not get reversed, the British governing body, the National Cyclists' Union (NCU), allowed the Charlotteville Cycling Club in Guildford, Surrey, to organise a series of races on the Brooklands car circuit.
A crowd put at 10,000 watched a "race like kick-and-rush football, tactics limited to random and eccentric attacking by the best, hanging on for the rest.
"[4] Stallard recalled: The test hill[n 2] that you had to go up five times was that steep that on the first lap I pulled my foot out of my toe clips and I ran up.
Well, I couldn't get back on my bike at that steep angle, so I ran past these other riders and won the prime [intermediate prize] at the top, running!Stallard was chosen for the 1933 UCI Road World Championships team and finished 11th, the best of the British entry.
The British favourite had been Frank Southall, but although his speed got him into the group of 38 leading riders, his inability to change pace on the shallow rises of the Autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry near Montlhéry, gave him difficulties.
Stallard said: "The trip to France was a real education to me, and during my short stay I learnt more about bike racing than I had done during my six years as a time-triallist.
'"[7] Next year, in the 1934 UCI Road World Championships at Leipzig, Stallard was selected to ride with Charles Holland and Fred Ghilks.
[6] The National Cyclists' Union, the governing body, demanded races be held only on tracks and, later, on circuits such as airfields that were closed to traffic.
The 1936 race was spectacular for the crashes that it produced, because for the first time riders were required to negotiate everyday winding streets rather than the smooth bends of a motor-racing course.
There would be no better time than now to introduce this form of racing to the roads, what with the decreased amount of motor traffic and the important part that the cycle is playing in wartime transport.Chamberlin was not impressed.
Stallard protested that the airfields and car circuits which were the only place that the NCU would allow massed racing had been taken by the army and RAF.
On Easter Monday 1942 he called a meeting at the foot of Long Mynd, a hill in Shropshire that was popular with cyclists, and announced his plan for a 59-mile race from Llangollen to Wolverhampton on 7 June.
His plan brought strong opposition from the cycling establishment, particularly from the veteran administrator and writer George Herbert Stancer.
Under the headline A hopeless revolt, George Herbert Stancer wrote: "They have plunged into their dangerous experiment without regard for the consequences...
Cycling reported: "More than a thousand people watched the finish of the massed-start race organised by Percy Stalland, from Llangollen to Wolverhampton, on Sunday afternoon.
Price, of Wolverhampton, won the sprint from his clubmate, C. J. Anslow"The report – in which the frequent mention of the police reflected the magazine's concerns as expressed by Stancer – went on to explain that the race had been banned by the NCU and by the time-trialling body, the Road Time Trials Council, but that there had been no incidents other than a lorry backing on to the course.
The weekly magazine, The Bicycle, apologised to the NCU on 20 May 1942 for misreporting the penalty as a life suspension, although the consequence proved the same because Stallard did not appeal and the ban was never lifted.
Stallard saw the merger as treason by "just three people [who] were allowed the freedom to destroy the BLRC"[14] and until his death saw the new British Cycling Federation (BCF) as a reincarnation of the NCU.
His assistant at his cycle shop, Ralph Jones, was the BLRC delegate at an international meeting in Spain which recognised the BCF as Britain's national body.
He drew up the rules from a hospital bed in 1985, when he was having a hip replaced, and the League of Veteran Racing Cyclists (LVRC) began in 1986.
Stallard fell out with the organisation he had founded, saying in his private papers that the LVRC was not "up to expectation" and adding: It is little wonder that it was three years before an executive committee was convened, and even then neither the chairman or secretary were able to attend.
The fact that no copies of the regulations have been made available since I printed and distributed the original in 1986 does not appear to worry anyone.In June 1989 he wrote to the journalist Les Woodland: "I regret very much my endeavour on behalf of age-related [racing].
While there is a definite call for this type of riding, a big majority of the LVRC membership look upon the organisation as a means of providing them with a few extra races, nothing more, and have no allegiance to it whatever."
Cycling reported: "His initial response was favourable, but now he has written to federation secretary Len Unwin, declining the nomination and an invitation to the annual dinner in December.
'"Stallard believed that he had never been asked to manage a British team or take a national position in the sport because former NCU officials ran the BCF and resented what he had done.
She asked me to see her through the ordeal, and though she had stated on a number of occasions that she did not know how she would have managed without my support, immediately she returned to normality, without ceremony she flapped her wings and flew away to greener fields!
This episode in my life, even at this late stage, has taught me that one should never expect appreciation for their efforts whatever they may be.He died leaving three children, Mick, Yvonne and Olwyn.
They created a division in the sport that outlasted the foundation of the British Cycling Federation and they established an organisation, the BLRC, which is still fondly remembered by the few cyclists old enough to have competed with it.
To the question of whether Britain would have moved to massed racing anyway, without the BLRC, Peter Bryan says not, saying that the established cycling authorities had become entrenched in their positions, their own rivalry overshadowed by their joint fears and interests.