EXACTLY one hundred years ago, in the summer of 1908 when the Olympic Games first came to London, one of England’s cycle track stars was a young carpenter from St John’s hailed ‘The Worcester Wonder’ by an ecstatic nation.

Ernie Payne pedalled to Olympic gold in the team pursuit as part of the Great Britain cycling squad. In the days before cars were common currency, cyclists were the fastest humans on earth and Ernie was one of the fastest. A national as well as local hero, he was a footballer too, turning out for Manchester United as an amateur.

Although Ernie’s gold medal was lost during the First World War, when he served as a motorcycle dispatch rider, a replica was struck and is held by Worcester City Museum.

He was born in a cottage in London Road two days before Christmas 1884 and no doubt fate conspired to make the most of his natural gift.

Around 1900, a Worcester lad called Walter Payne was a successful racing cyclist, but during a Worcester St John’s Cycling Club meeting at the city’s Boughton Park track, younger brother Ernie borrowed his machine and never looked back. “It was seen at once he was going to be a champion,” a club official later recorded. Had it not been for Walter, Ernie might never have got on a racing bike and a major talent would have passed the sport by.

Walter became Ernie’s trainer, although the youngster’s competitive career had an inauspicious start when he crashed and damaged his bicycle during his first race at Stourbridge in July 1902.

Undeterred, he borrowed a machine for the following half mile handicap and won it. Ernie joined the St John’s club in 1903 and in his first full season was virtually unbeatable, winning 13 out of 14 races and coming second in the other, leading The Cyclist magazine to christen him ‘The Worcester Wonder’.

Most of his racing was on the grass tracks of the day with one-and-a-half miles his specialist distance.

However, he was just at home on permanent velodromes, as his Olympic triumph was to prove.

By 1904 Ernie Payne had become one of the country’s top racing cyclists, making the sport’s Challenge Cup his own after winning it outright at a meeting in Bath that year. Standing four feet tall and containing 450ozs of silver, it was reputedly the largest cup ever offered for a competition in England.

In all, his remarkable career, which covered less than nine full seasons, produced more than 150 wins, including regional, national British Empire and Olympic championships.

The 1908 Olympic Games had a unique build-up. They were originally to have been held in Italy, but the government ran out of money after Mount Vesuvius erupted in 1906, devastating Naples.

Reconstruction costs crippled the Olympic budget and so another host city had to be found. London got the nod over Berlin and Milan, but it was barely ready. The White City stadium in Shepherd’s Bush had to be built at short notice to stage the athletics, swimming and gymnastics events and the distance of the marathon, until then 25 miles, was extended to its current 26 miles and 385 yards so the Royal Family in Windsor Castle could see it.

No such complications affected the cycling competitions at the new White City venue, where Ernie Payne was to ride in the Great Britain pursuit team along with Benjamin Jones, Clarence Kingsbury and Leonard Meredith.

The races were over three laps of the 660-yard track with the Britons convincingly beating Canada by 10 seconds in the semi-finals.

The final, in which they faced the Germans, was dominated by an extraordinary effort from Ernie. At the end of the first circuit he grabbed the race by the scruff of the neck and stormed to the front of the British quartet, where his blistering pacemaking for the last two laps brought them home a clear 10 seconds ahead.

Ernie also reached the semi-finals in three individual events, the sprint, 660 yards and 5,000 metres, but failed to progress further in any.

That proved to be the peak of his cycling career, because football was taking over. He signed for Worcester City in 1908 and during the 1908-09 season made two appearances on the right wing for Manchester United’s first team as an amateur. His debut was against Nottingham Forest in a division one match in February 1909.

But four months later, after scoring one goal in two games, he left the club and was back in Worcester.

In 1910 Ernie played for Worcester Early Closers and in 1912 was in the Worcester City team which won the Birmingham League.

He continued his career as a carpenter and died at the age of 77 in 1961. After his death, his widow presented Worcester St John’s Cycling Club with money to buy an Ernest Payne shield and this is now awarded annually to the club’s juvenile champion.

Over the next couple of weeks, the British cycle pursuit team has a decent chance of an Olympic medal, even gold. So the ghost of Ernie Payne may yet ride again.