Jack Manning, 6/5/1918-25/12/2001
I am indebted to Jack’s clubmate Les Bowerman, and to John Gill for the following palmares of a Charlotteville CC club rider whose achievements were outstanding despite having his career interrupted by WW2.
Jack was a big, strong man who was 6’1″ and 15 stone. He was renowned for his enthusiasm, and talent , for racing over all distances, regularly winning club championships from 400 yard grass-track events to 12-hour time trials, as well as being a leading competitor in the massed-start races held at Brooklands, Donnington and Crystal Palace, the precursor to the BLRC.
1932 Aged 14, he started work as a tinsmith at Vickers, Brooklands.
1935 Jack joined the Charlotteville CC, aged 17, quickly producing some fine times such as his first ‘25’ in 1:08:22.
1936 He rode in the World Championship trials at Donnington and Crystal Palace in 1937.
1938 Jack first lowered the club 100 mile record with 4:39:49 and also (with Jim Brown) broke the tandem 100 record.
1939 Jack first won his first of 5 club track championships.
October 1939 he won the final massed start race on the Brooklands circuit, a 100km points race. Percy Stallard was first across the line on the final lap but Jack had amassed enough points along the way to be the overall victor. He achieved this success by circling at the top of the banking and plunging down – with all his weight and speed – at the last crucial moments. Jack was a prominent figure in the ranks of the pioneers of massed start racing, very much on the same level as Bob Thom and Percy Stallard.
Jack’s skills exempted him from military service. He continued to work at Vickers on Wellington bombers. During the war Jack won many grass track races at the Vickers Sports Ground.
Sept. 4 1940 The factory was extensively bombed by the Luftwaffe, nearly 90 were killed, 419 injured. Jack met his future wife Joyce in an air raid shelter.
1947 Selected for the Paris–London race but declined to enter for personal reasons.
1953 broke George Nightingale’s club ‘25’ record with 59:24, (Comp record – Stan Higginson 56:24) , the Charlotteville club ‘50’ record with 2:04:36, (Comp record – George Bentley 1:56:44), lowered the club ‘100’ record a fifth time to 4:19:44, (Comp record – Vince Gibbons 4:06:31) raised the club 12 hour record a second time to 248.94 (Comp record – Ken Joy 264.87) and was 17th in the BAR.
Before WW2, many Charlotteville riders (including George Nightingale, and possibly Jack Manning) used Baldock bikes, but this marque did not survive the war. Jack’s post-war racing was done on a Carpenter bike #4146, using a Sturmey Archer AC hub gear for longer distances (he dubbed this his “Cocoa Tin”). The bike was generally fitted with a 48T chainring, 16T cog (so, 15-16-17 effective gear options) , possibly a larger cog when necessary. On the track he successfully campaigned Carpenter #4215
Jack was a man of relatively few words, although he thought and knew a lot. Charlotteville legend has it that, on a 140 miles round trip from Guildford to Eastbourne and back with Vic Jenner, the only words he spoke were “Bit hard, ennit?” Vic would have said rather more.
In his retirement Jack developed an expertise for growing Sweet Peas, assisting in judging at Wisley, and developing a new strain which he named after his daughter. He maintained his active involvement in cycling, memorably as a vigorous pusher-off in the annual club grass track meeting and made a bit of a racing come-back in his 70’s getting comfortably inside evens for 10 miles.