Walter Fowler’s family are so used to his record hunting that there’s little surprise when he tells them he’s targeting more. “It’s passed off casually,” the 90-year-old chuckles. Still, come next year, he knows they’ll all be on his side when he looks to add another four to his collection.
A great grandfather, Fowler is hoping to set new benchmarks on his track bike in the 200m, 500m, 2km pursuit and the Hour. They’re all records he has held in different age bands throughout his career, and, as determined as ever, he’s now after them in the 90-94 bracket.
In fact, had back pain not kept him away, he may even have swept up a few at the Masters Track World Championships last month. “When you get to 90, you have to wrap yourself in cotton wool, to some extent,” he tells Cycling Weekly. “I thought it would be better to solve the back problem and train for a return next year.
“I’m training now. I’m training indoors, mainly, because I don’t like getting cold and wet. When I go on the turbo, I’m at it for about an hour each time, and that’s at least three times a week, maybe sometimes four times a week.”
Currently, the records for the 200m, 500m and 2km pursuit are all vacant in Fowler’s age category. The 90-94 Hour record stands at 34.498km, set by American Carl Grove in 2019. If Fowler’s to break it, he estimates he’ll need to train for six months, in which time he’ll have to do all the planning, too.
“I have to make all the arrangements separately, independently, with the commissaires, timekeepers and so on,” he explains. When he set the 80-84 record in 2015, and the 85-89 record in 2019 – which he still holds – he did so during the lunch interval at the British Masters Cycle Racing (BMCR) Track Championships. “I was the entertainment,” he says. “It worked very well, because I had a full audience.”
Born in 1934, Fowler first took up cycling when he was 15, at the Preston Park Velodrome in Brighton. He enjoyed touring on his bike throughout his adult years, and returned to the track in 2007, then in his early 70s, when he was convinced by “the youngsters” in his club to sign up to the Masters World Championships. He obliged, and the following year travelled alone to Sydney, Australia, where he won his first world title.
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Ever since, Fowler has kept a sporting CV of his achievements. The document today boasts three Masters world titles, 12 gold medals across the BMCR and British Cycling National Championships, and a handful of age-specific world records. His most recent record in the Hour, set five years ago, is 34.602km – just 100m further than Grove’s 90-94 best he’s hoping to beat.
“If I had doubts that I was in the running, I probably wouldn’t bother,” he says, “so I have to be confident that I could do it, provided my body holds up.
“Now there’s the rub. When I got to 85, everything hit me. A GP once said to me, ‘You may have the body of a younger man, but that doesn’t mean things won’t fall apart inside.’ And at 85, that came true,” he continues. “It’s natural for me to be continuing to do sports in the best way that I can, as far as my body will allow. I’m not able to predict how long that will last.”
Like a lot of people his age, Fowler hasn’t been without his health scares. He’s suffered from cataracts in his eyes, hearing problems, and in 2010, underwent bladder cancer surgery. Late last year, he was diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy, a condition that weakens the muscles and causes numbness in the fingers and toes.
“It’s very difficult to know what caused it,” he says. “In my case, I’ve no idea. I was a fit person, doing all the proper things, eating properly and exercising daily. My bloods are always good, I have low cholesterol and all the usual things, and yet, I went down with a nerve condition.”
Such a diagnosis might spell the end of a cycling career for many. But Fowler has always prided himself on his resolve. “If anything, it’s causing me to dig deeper,” he says.
“I’m firmly convinced that exercise is the way to hold this problem at bay, and it’s also a way to keep me in the mood and in the groove for continuing what I’ve been doing successfully for 15 years. If anything, it’s making me more determined.
“There are times when I feel like giving up, because I’m not getting anywhere with doctors or in my own mind working out how it’s occurred and what to do. Sometimes I feel defeatist. But I always come back again and continue working, because it’s the only thing I can do.”
And so, like the wheels on his bike, Fowler’s record hunting rolls on. He will have multiple opportunities to go after his latest set in 2025; there’s the BMCR Track Championships, the British Cycling National Masters Track Championships, both typically held in September, and the Masters World Championships, scheduled for the start of October in Roubaix, France. If for any reason he falls short, there’s always 2026, 2027 and 2028, by which time he will be 94.
Fowler knows there aren’t many his age who do what he does. Does he ever have any thoughts about cutting back his cycling? “Oh no, no, no. Indeed not. No, I don’t want to slow down,” he says adamantly. “Sport for me, and trying to win championships and individually get records, it’s part of my reason for living, you know. It makes life worthwhile.
“My wife died in 2014, 10 years ago, and at the time – we might have expected that something like that would happen – it was agreed that I would carry on, in the way I always had. That’s always on my mind, that I’m keeping my promises from that time. I have missed her every day since.”
Walter Fowler has requested that anyone with advice for managing peripheral neuropathy kindly get in touch. Emails sent to this article’s author, tom.davidson@futurenet.com, will be forwarded on.
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