In 1946, a young teenager accompanied State Champion Joe Casserley on a ride from Fremantle to Subiaco to watch some amateur cycle racing. Encouraged to compete, Geoff Baker “stripped” his old bike, flipped the bars and promptly won his first U16 road race.

By October 1949, the now 18-year-old Geoff was the Senior Amateur Sprint Champion of W.A. and racing against the likes of Sid Patterson in 1000 meter and 5- mile races. Patterson commented that “Baker had a great future, though he would need to go east to reach his full potential”. (Daily News 5 Dec 1949). He was picked up and sponsored by Rainbow Cycles. As W.A. Champion of Champions and holder of the Australian 1,000 meter title in 1951, Geoff was rated amongst the best track cyclists in Australia and he set his sights on making the 1952 Helsinki Olympics cycle team. Though beaten by the legendary Russell Mockridge in team selection trials, Baker’s place in the Australian Olympic cycling team was cemented after Mockridge declined to sign a contract requiring him to remain an amateur for two years after the games.

In the age of “true amateurism”, Baker, working as a clerk, duly began saving to fund his Olympic dream.
With the Olympics set to begin in July 1952, The Australian Olympic Federation dropped Baker from
the team in May that year because his fund raising fell £250 short of the £750 required. In today’s money, these amounts are estimated to be around $13,000 and $40,000 respectively.

It is interesting to note that the eastern states based Federation required the West Australian to cover the extra expense of getting himself to the eastern states so that he could travel with the team by air to Europe. They would not consider allowing Baker the cheaper alternative, to sail from Fremantle to Europe and meet the team there. “The Australian Cyclist” (May 1952) states that Baker would take no chances and “stepped out” by booking his boat passage to U.K. anyway.

Not including Hubert Opperman, who lived briefly in the south-west town of Greenbushes, and then as a toddler, at the time of writing there are only two other W.A. riders known to have raced overseas before 1950. The Smith brothers - Harold, Les and Eddie - hailed from Fremantle. Harold at one stage held 3 Australian championships. In 1927 he headed overseas and in the U.S.A. was considered, amongst other accolades, “the pursuit king”. Eddie at one stage was Australian and World Sprint Champion and was a member of Hubert Opperman’s Tour de France team that raced in Europe.

In a Daily News article (27 Sep 1949), it is reported that Eddie Smith and Geoff met in Perth and that Eddie suggested to Geoff that he travel to Victoria to be coached by Harold. Skip forward to 1952, in presumably peak condition with his Olympic ambitions dashed, and little doubt influenced by the allure of the overseas experiences – and wisdom - of Eddie and Harold, Geoff used the ticket he had booked to get to the Olympics and the £500 he saved and jumped on the boat to England to pursue his cycling ambitions on the Continent.

Geoff made his way to Birmingham in central England and found work with B.S.A.. His objective was to establish a reputation as an amateur and then be invited – as was the way - into the professional ranks and big races where the real money was. New South Wales cyclist Alf Strom was riding on the pro circuit at the time and is estimated to have been earning in excess of $250,000 per annum in today’s money. In July 1952, the same month that the Helsinki Olympics kicked off, Geoff introduced himself by beating two of England’s best sprinters in Shaw and Abrahams in an omnium match race. In a 1,000 metre time trial soon after, he set a time of 1min 12.9 secs at a speed of 49.4kph. This was 0.6 seconds faster than Mockridge’s time when he beat Geoff in the Olympic trials and 0.5 seconds faster than Sid Patterson’s Australian record. Geoff was riding well and in 1953 he won the Coventry Grand Prix by beating Alan Bannister, the runner-up “in English championship events” to four times world professional title holder and Olympic medalist Reg Harris.

In the 1950’s, Denmark was where many professional cyclists spent their winter. There were four tracks, meetings three times a week, 27-hour track races, crowds of 6,000 at each meeting.... and totalisers. Geoff’s abilities were by then recognised and promoters invited Geoff to race in Denmark. He was offered “expenses paid and pocket money”. Back in Perth in 1954, Geoff reflected that he was impressed with the prospects of Denmark for a professional rider and if he were to return to the Continent, he would go to Denmark.

It was not to be. On his return to England in the summer of ’53, he was racing in Bradford on the 1st of July when an accident occurred in front of him. Unable to avoid the carnage, he also crashed hitting his face on a notoriously bad section of the track. He suffered severe injuries around an eye socket and returned to Perth to begin saving for plastic surgery. Geoff had just been selected alongside Sid Patterson, Russell Mockridge and Lionel Cox to represent Australia at the World Championships in Zurich Switzerland in August that year.

Geoff would in time get back on his bike and race but, despite stating that he had improved tremendously whilst overseas using different training methods and bike gearing, the highs were behind him. He would go on to give back to cycling by training young riders and get into cycling administration.

The overseas chapter in Geoff’s cycling life is unique and warrants more research. Since January 2020, the club had hoped to record an oral interview with Geoff. The extent of COVID-19 pandemic was unknown at that point and it soon became apparent that Geoff was in the high risk category and the interview was put off because of this concern. Regrettably, Geoff passed away on the 4th December 2020, just after we rescheduled our interview from the 29th of November, which happened to be his 90th birthday. His death was not related to COVID-19.

Research and text by Frank West.