Staff Pick: Bicycle Football
Clip from Film: IWM (WPN 267). WORLD PICTORIAL NEWS NO 267
Where cycling meets football
As a sensational summer of sport kicks off with the FIFA World Cup, Head of Image & Film Licensing Annabel O'Connor-Fenton (a keen cyclist) highlights a quirky clip in IWM's film collection.
This clip is from an edition of a 1946 British official newsreel produced by the Ministry of Information, Middle East. One of the featured segments shows Austria playing Switzerland in the the novel sport of ‘bicycle football’. Officially known as cycle-ball (or radball), it is a highly competitive sport combining cycling and association football. Teams of two attempt to strike the ball into the opposing goal using only their bike wheels or heads. The fast-moving indoor game requires a player, as noted by the narrator, “to be a trick cyclist and acrobat combined”.
Beyond the battlefield: leisure and sport
Our film team has been busy making IWM's vast film collection more accessible and easier to navigate.
Earlier this year we launched a Culture and Social History category page. The process of putting this together uncovered many hidden gems and it was notable how many diverse sports feature in our archive from newsreels, home movie footage and beyond.
The global spread of modern sports like football, cricket and tennis were heavily driven by the expansion of the British Empire. Wherever the army established a base, soldiers played sports with local populations observing matches and adapting the rules for themselves.
Explore our Sport Categories
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