Leonard Meredith
English racing cyclist (1882–1930)
Leonard "Leon" Lewis Meredith (2 February 1882 – 27 January 1930) was a British track and road racing cyclist who competed in the 1908 Summer Olympics, in the 1912 Summer Olympics, and in the 1920 Summer Olympics. He won seven world championships, set up one of Britain's largest cycle-parts companies, and ran a roller skating rink and ballroom.
Background
Meredith was born in St Pancras, London. Sources give his name at birth as Lewis Leon Meredith. However, reports in the cycling press refer to him as Leon Lewis Meredith, and friends called him Jack.
He was a mild-looking, bespectacled man who parted his hair in the centre. Cycling said:
There was something Clark Kent, the children's comic-book hero, in the make-up of Edwardian cyclist Meredith. Like Clark Kent, he presented a mild, shy, bespectacled image off the bike, but once on the bike, he became Superman, beating all and sundry in a devastating manner.
He was born in central London. He became interested in cycling in 1901 and made his first long ride from London to Brighton, 80 km on badly surfaced roads.
The public source identifies “Leonard Meredith” as english racing cyclist (1882–1930). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Leonard, Meredith and English.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 6, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q889489. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1882, 1930, 1908 and 1912.
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This entry incorporates text from “Leonard Meredith” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.