Trade legend dies

Ron Kitching was also one of the co-founders of the CTC’s York Rally and was a key figure in the British bike trade from the late 1940s through to the early 1990s.

He sold – and resold – Ron Kitching Ltd and this later transformed into Zyro Ltd, with no links with Kitching.

A keen long-distance cyclist (see bulletin board for details), he had started out with a bike shop in Harrogate and went on to create a distribution business that was the Madison of its day. The Ron Kitching annual catalogue – Everything Cycling – was the kit bible of the day and contained most of the world’s most desirable bike brands.

In 1955 Everything Cycling (with a pic of Ron Kit himself on the cover) was chocka with 1955 Bartali brake levers, Duprat hollow cranks, VIT bottles and cages, Beborex brakes, TA Specialities, AVA bars and stems, Idéale saddles, Huret derailleurs, REG alloy bottles and cages, Cinelli steel bars and stems, Campagnolo groupsets, Fiammi rims, JOS dynamo lamps, and André Bertin frames.

In 1979 Everything Cycling had kit from Philippe, Bullseye, Vitus, Zeus, VAR, T.A., Bocama, REG, 3 t.t.t., Cinelli, Mafac, Ideale, SunTour, and Milremo.

A full obituary will be included in the January issue of BicycleBusiness. This will be written by Mike Breckon of the National Byway who wrote an authorised biography of Ron Kitching (A wheel in Wwo Worlds, 1993). A consumer version of this obituary will appear in next week’s Cycling Weekly.

No funeral details have yet to be announced. The funeral is being handled by Ron Kitching’s solicitors, the executors of his will. It is expected there will be a private funeral and a post-Christmas memorial service. Full details will be posted here.