Gears down for the Oddicombe Hill challenge

The organisers of next year’s 50th Totnes-Vire 2-Day cycle race are hoping to hold one of the stages, a short, sharp and spectacular time-trial, on Torquay’s Oddicombe Hill.
Mid-Devon CC has applied to Torbay Council for permission to use the 800-yard hill, which runs from the beach to Babbacombe Downs, for one of the Totnes-Vire’s three stages in mid-May.
The Oddicombe Hill Climb was synonymous with motorsport for 40 years, until a combination of the deteriorating surface and a Council ban on ‘racing’ above 30mph, ended that tradition around 2000.
But a bike time-trial has also been held there at least twice before, and the MDCC would like to celebrate the Golden Anniversary of its flagship event by returning there next Spring.
Cars used to race up the hill, which includes four hairpin bends, in just over half-a-minute at speeds of 60mph.
It will take some of the best semi-pro and amateur riders in the UK around two and a half minutes to pedal up the same course.
The hill rises 330ft in less than half-a-mile at an average gradient of 8%, with steeper ramps on those hairpins.
Yet when a forerunner of the Totnes-Vire was held there in the 1970s, it wasn’t the strong climber Colin Lewis, former Tour de France rider, who won the stage, but one of the UK’s best-ever sprinters, Sid Barras from Middlesbrough.
If the Council gives the go-ahead, it may well be another ‘power’ rider who wins there next May.