IT is pleasing that the 25 Years Ago and 50 Years Ago Sporting Archive column has been restored to Tuesday's Bury Times sports pages.

And those of my generation would, like me, have been delighted to have been reminded in that column of Reg Harris winning the World Professional Cycle Sprint Championship in 1951.

In the 1940s and 1950s Reg Harris was a national sporting hero as he was one of the very few UK athletes matching, and even beating, the world's best in any sport. For this he was voted Sportsman of the Year in 1949 and 1950.

This son of Bury, though, was more that an athlete on a bike as he started club cycling with the local section of the Cyclists Touring Club in the 1930s. His attendance at the club's 50-year celebration back in the 1980s, when he reminisced about his riding with the club, is remembered with pleasure, as are those occasions when he delighted us with his superb sprinting skills at the Fallowfield Stadium in Manchester. At 19 years of age, in 1939, he was selected for the World Sprint Championships but the imminence of hostilities meant he was recalled without competing. Service in the armed forces saw him in the thick of it in the North Africa desert campaign where he was badly burned escaping from a burning tank.

He was determined to recover his fitness and make a bid for international fame and this came in 1947 when he won the World Amateur Sprint Championship in Paris.

In the London Olympics of the following year many sports commentators considered him a virtual certainty for a sprint gold medal but, alas, a wrist injury and conflict with the ruling body of the sport meant he was not in prime condition. He was beaten in the final by 18-year-old Italian Mario Ghella who never lived up to that achievement.

Reg immediately turned professional for Raleigh and went on to win the World Professional Sprint championship in 1949 at the Odense track in Denmark. He won another three world sprint championships before retiring at the age of 37 in 1957. The story was not over, though, as he made occasional comebacks and even won the British National Sprint championship in his early fifties.

Reg sadly died in 1993 while out riding his bike. Perhaps he couldn't resist the temptation to launch one of his fierce sprinting efforts! A striking life-size bronze sculpture of Reg can be seen looming above the last bend at Manchester Velodrome.

On a personal note, some years ago I was delighted to find my name mentioned in the 25 Years Ago column for a rather modest sporting performance. Who knows, in the not-too-distant future I, along with other sportsmen of my generation, may see a mention for their performances of 50 years ago.

PETER ROSCOE,

Horncastle Close,

Bury.