Re: [CR]Re: Clockwise and anti-clockwise

(Example: Production Builders:Peugeot:PX-10LE)

References: <c35.186fd81d.33ccf494@aol.com>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: Re: [CR]Re: Clockwise and anti-clockwise
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:25:44 -0400
In-Reply-To:
From: <loudeeter@aol.com>


I don't know about runners in the UK today, but runners in the U.S. and the Olympics run counterclockwise, as do bicycle track racers, speed skaters, horses, cars, harness racing, dogs....? Lou Deeter, Orlando FL

-----Original Message----- From: StuartMX4@aol.com To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Sent: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:19 pm Subject: [CR]Re: Clockwise and anti-clockwise

May I shift the question away a little from bicycles? Surely the early cycle races in the eighteen seventies were on running tracks either specially laid out with cinders or marked out on turf? Why did runners run anti clockwise?

The theory that car racing road circuits run clockwise because of right hand drive doesn't really hold water. Continental Europe drove on the right after Napoleon. Sports racing cars were fairly equally divided between RHD and LHD, but virtually all road circuits were and are clockwise. It is difficult to think of a road racing circuit that is anti-clockwise. I am not sure that Stardust really counted as a road circuit. Didn't New Zealand circuits like Teretonga (?) and Wigram run the wrong way round? Any New Zealanders out there?

So cars at one end and runners at the other... not much bicycle content, really. And don't get too excited about the precedent set by horse racing courses. Over here, I would think that about one in three or four is a right hand circuit.

As they used to say in the best radio comedy show ever, 'It's all rather confusing, isn't it?'

Stuart Tallack in Sussex by the Sea