Fast, far from young, female pedaller awarded MBE

Veteran racer Yvonne McGregor has been awarded the MBE in the New Year’s Honours List.

She retired from international racing with a fourth place at the world championships in Antwerp at the end of September 2001.

In 1994 she won a Commonwealth Games gold medal in the 25 km points race in Australia.

The following year she broke the women’s world hour record with a distance of 47.411 km at Bogota, Colombia.

In 2000 she took the bronze medal at the Sydney Olympics and two months later won the world pursuit championship at the Manchester velodrome.

In its pre-Xmas issue, Cycling Weekly named McGregor as the second best British female cyclist of the century, bested only by Beryl Burton – whose seven world titles between 1959 and 1967 earned her an OBE in 1968.