Revolutionary new saddle design gets cycling champ back on his bike after bladder cancer operation

Hainault Road Club’s road racing vet cycling star Ken Brewer, now 75 and a star rider in the famed Leo Road Racing Club of the late 1940’s and early ‘50’s, had to abandon his life’s passion after an operation on his bladder following a shock cancer diagnosis in September of last year, such was the pain from sitting on his saddle, to the extent that he was getting blood in his urine.

Fanatical about cycling and his personal fitness, Ken was fraught with frustration at not being able to get around this problem, no matter what saddle or padded covers he used.

It was only when he read an article in Cycling Weekly about a completely brand new saddle innovation designed to reduce the pressure on the perineum (crotch) that his search for a holy grail of renewed cycling possibilities was at last fulfilled. “It’s absolutely fantastic, and I would never have believed it. There’s no padding or upholstery on it at all” he said. “The morning I received the (RIDO) saddle in the post I put it on my bike and went straight out and did 25 miles! There was no pain, discomfort or ill effects whatsoever”.

Ken was born near Bow Bells in London in 1926 and spent his childhood in Brentwood, Essex where his mother and father ran a well known ladies’ and gents’ hairdressers. From the age of five he was ‘cycling mad’, but it wasn’t until he returned from military service with the Royal Signals in Egypt in 1949 that he took up competition cycling in earnest. In fact it was an article in a local newspaper featuring the legendary Reg Harris that spurred Ken on to contact him and thereby join the famous Leo’s Road Cycling Club in East Ham. Four years of innumerable race-winning trophies and medals followed before motorcycling, and marriage, finally got the better of his attentions.

The quest for cycling glory and personal fitness, not to mention the camaraderie, however, drew Ken back out of a 25-year ‘retirement’ in the late eighties (he was 60 then). As a member of the Hainault Road Cycling Club he was again collecting both team and individual achievement medals and cups in races ranging from 10 mile time trials to twelve-hour non-stop marathons.

A meticulous record keeper, Ken has covered a grand total of 138,105 miles since 1987, (that’s the equivalent to five-and-a-half times around the earth’s equator!), and now, notwithstanding his operation and thanks to his RIDO saddle he’s again actively adding to this total doing anything up to 25 miles at a time, several times a week!

Ken lives with his wife, Pat, in the tranquillity of their bungalow in Little Clacton and this has been his home for the last thirteen years. He says he can’t cycle up the hills like he used to so the flat roads of east Essex are ideally suited to him as he continues to eat up those miles, (in between being glued to the cycling coverage on the Eurosport TV channel). He now has three RIDO saddles, two for his road bikes and one for his exercise machine and hasn’t looked back.

Article written June 2004

Web editors' footnote: Ken Brewer sadly passed away in October 2005 after cancer of the pancreas sadly got the better of him. He was 76 years of age.