Threlkeld and Pryce take national hill climb titles on brutal Holmfirth lane

There is no other championship in British sport quite like it. Riders strip their bikes of everything that weighs anything, including, in some cases, the paint. They are held upright at the start line by a volunteer, then released up a road so steep that spectators have to lean back to watch. The whole thing lasts between three and five minutes, and most competitors finish it unable to speak.

On Sunday morning the national hill climb championship came to Cliff Lane, a 1.1km dead-end road above Holmfirth that rises 180 metres through dry-stone walls and a final 25% ramp the locals call “the chimney”. Megan Threlkeld, a 27-year-old physiotherapist from Skipton, won the women’s title in 4min 11.8sec, beating last year’s champion by nearly six seconds. Ewan Pryce, 24, a former junior track rider from Wrexham, took the men’s title in 3min 38.4sec.

“I had a plan to pace it and the plan lasted about 20 seconds,” Threlkeld said, wrapped in a foil blanket and a borrowed coat at the summit. “After that it was just noise. You can’t hear yourself think. People are two feet from your face shouting your name and you have absolutely no idea who they are.”

The crowd, estimated by the organisers at 4,000, was the largest the championship has drawn since it moved to a rotating set of northern climbs in the 2010s. Spectators began arriving at 7am with camping chairs, cowbells and, in one case, a brass trio who played the same four bars of the Coronation Street theme for three hours. Several hundred stood on the chimney itself, leaving a channel barely wider than a bicycle.

Pryce, who weighed in at 61kg and rode a bike the organisers measured at 5.4kg, said he had spent the summer riding the climb “more times than I’ve ridden to the shops”. He had not been considered a favourite; two of the three podium contenders from last year finished outside the top five after misjudging the effort on the lower slopes. “Everyone goes too hard at the bottom,” he said. “Everyone. Me included, most years. Today I didn’t, and I don’t know why.”

The event is organised almost entirely by volunteers from local cycling clubs, with a budget that would barely cover a Premier League footballer’s afternoon. Its chief commissaire, Barbara Nuttall, 71, who has officiated at 23 championships, said the sport’s appeal lay in its refusal to grow up. “It’s a time trial up a hill,” she said. “Nobody gets paid, nobody gets a sponsor, and about a hundred people are sick in a hedge. It is the purest thing we do.”

Next year’s championship will be held in the Peak District, on a climb that has not yet been named. Threlkeld said she would defend her title. “Give me a week,” she said. “Then ask me again.”