WA’s first ever world championship winning cyclist Steele Bishop was reunited with his 1983 winning bicycle at the WA Museum Collections and Research Centre in Welshpool last week.
WA Museum has donated the bicycle to the Museum of Perth on Grand Lane in the Perth CBD but invited Kalamunda-born Mr Bishop to see the bike before it left its Welshpool home.
Designed with better aerodynamics and a more rigid frame than any bike before it Mr Bishop’s bike signalled the start of a design revolution in the sport.
He rode it to first place in the 5000-metre individual pursuit in the Zurich World Championships, the first West Australian to win at that level.
He first saw the bike being ridden by Swiss pursuit cyclist Robert Dill-Bundi at the 1980 Olympics and they ended up competing against each other on the same design in the 1983 championships.
“It was three years before at the Moscow Olympics, Robert Dill-Bundi from Switzerland came out with this revolutionary bike,” he said.
“It was cut away down at an angle from the top tube and the handlebars were reversed and cut off at the front so you had less wind drag.
“It made the frame a much smaller triangle and it made it much more rigid so when you pushed down on the peddles, there wasn’t much movement in the frame.
“He came out with that and blitzed the world at the Moscow Olympics…after I saw his bikeI had the same guy that built his bike build me one. Way back then it was $1500.
“We both entered the 1983 championships on the same bikes.”
Mr Bishop said seeing the bike again brought back memories of his win.
“The whole championships, every moment I can remember vividly, the whole lead up for years to get to that point, the emotions of that race, the emotions of winning, it was interesting,” he said.
“It’s lovely it’s coming out of its hiding spot and at least someone is going to see something they’ve never seen before and hopefully a story behind it so they think ‘wow there’s a bit of history here’.
“I hope it inspires just one young person to fulfill his dreams and goals and go for it, Ihope it changes someone’s life.”
WA Museum chief executive Alec Coles said with the WA Museum closing down soon for four years of redevelopment it was important to showcase the collection elsewhere.
“The WA Museum takes its responsibility as the state’s museum very seriously and it truly believes it holds its collections on behalf of all of the people of WA and has a responsibility to make them as widely available as possible,” he said.
“With this in mind we are delighted to be able to lend those collections to appropriate museums and partner organisations.
“In four months when the WA Museum closes its Perth site for a planned four-year redevelopment, it will be even more important to ensure our collections are on display in other venues.”
The Museum of Perth is on Grand Lane, parallel to Barrack Street between the Murray Street Mall and Wellington Street.
