Olga Kevelos was a woman admired for her fighting spirit who contributed to the war effort by working on the canals from 1943 to 1945 as one of a small group of young women drafted in to transport much needed goods between London and the Midlands.
After the war she took up competitive motorcycling, tackling some of the longest and most strenuous courses in the world and becoming within a few years one of the few women to win two gold medals in international six-day events. She had all the qualities she said that a good motorcyclist should have: balance, anticipation, concentration and fearlessness.
Olga Valerie Kevelos was born in 1923 in Edgbaston, Birmingham, the eldest of three children. Her father was a Greek-born financier. After going to King Edward VI High School for Girls she studied metallurgy and then worked for a time in the laboratories of William Mills, who had developed the grenade known as the Mills bomb.
Kevelos had a passionate interest in astronomy, and when the opportunity arose she went to work for the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Her career there was cut short, however, when the observatory was closed because of bombing; Kevelos was among the staff who then moved to the Admiralty in Bath. One of the members of the senior management there would later describe her as an interesting woman who “could not do arithmetic and terrified people by stalking around with a large knife in her belt”. The job didn’t suit her — she was restless doing paperwork — and when she spotted an advertisement in The Times seeking women to work for Inland Waterways, on boats that were lying idle, she applied.
She was one of about 45 women who completed the training and successfully adapted to life on the canals. They operated in groups of three, each group being put in charge of one engine-powered boat and one unpowered “butty boat” and sent on three-week round-trips, taking, for example, aluminium and steel to Birmingham and returning with coal from Coventry. Kevelos later recalled that sometimes the prefab houses that their load was said to consist of were in fact ammunition. “You’d always know,” she said, “because a bowlerhatted gentleman in a suit would come to check on you en route.”
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The girls worked 18 to 20 hours a day, “with no respite at all. From the moment you cast off in the morning, you just kept going till you were ‘locked out’ — meaning that the lock had been shut — or darkness made it impossible for you to go any farther”.
They were paid a minimum wage, endured all weathers and, as the scheme was not a government initiative, did not, like the Land Girls, receive extra rations. “I don’t know how we managed to live and keep as fit as we did,” Kevelos said. “I was always hungry, all the time.”
One of Kevelos’s worst experiences came after she caught a duck for the pot, when she “bungled one murder attempt after another”. Overall, the work was so gruelling — not only tiring, but also dangerous, with many girls having to leave their jobs because of injuries — that it took an unusually strong personality to continue with it. The girls enjoyed their freedom, though; and there was the occasional pleasure, as when they sat out on deck playing their recorders “very ostentatiously”. Kevelos later described her wartime activity as “a life-defining thing to do”.
After the war, she went with one of the girls she had met on the canals to Paris, having been awarded a grant to study French medieval history at the Cit? university. She also travelled in other parts of Europe, and when she returned to Birmingham, in addition to helping at the restaurant her father had bought, she started her own travel agency.
At this time Kevelos’s boyfriend often spent his weekends racing motorcycles, and she decided to join him. When she borrowed a bike and had a few lessons, she discovered a natural ability; and at her first race meeting she was offered a bike and sponsorship by the James Cycle Company. Within three months she had been entered for her first Scottish Six Days Trial.
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Kevelos then bought an AJS motorcycle, and in 1948 she entered her first International Six Days Trial — the “Olympics” of motorcycling — for which each member of the team had to cover long distances in difficult terrain, competing in a range of events designed to test endurance and skill. Most people transported their bikes to San Remo, Italy, that year’s location, by van or trailer, but Kevelos decided to ride there. On the third day she broke her wrist and ankle and was taken to hospital, but this did not prevent the British team from winning the trophy, or Kevelos from riding home again.
She won the first of her gold medals in 1949, at the International Six Days Trial in Wales. Over the next 17 years she rode in every Scottish and International Six Days Trial event, and won the backing of the Italian motorcycle manufacturer Moto Parilla and the Czech manufacturer Jawa as well as almost every well-known British motorcycle manufacturer. For Jawa she competed in many events in Eastern Europe (one motocross event near the Black Sea attracted about 60,000 spectators) and went through a rigorous five-week training schedule in preparation for the International Six Days Trial of 1953, which helped her to secure her second gold medal.
Around this time Kevelos decided to try Formula Three car racing too, and she raced at Brands Hatch in Kent, Goodwood in West Sussex and on the Continent.She eventually gave up sport in 1970 to help her brother run The Three Tuns pub in King’s Sutton, Northamptonshire.
She also turned her attention to her many other interests. In 1978 she appeared on Mastermind, choosing Genghis Khan as her main subject; and she took great pleasure in pub quizzes for the rest of her life — displaying an extensive knowledge of many areas of science, geography and history in particular, and a certain ruthlessness in her pursuit of the perfect team.
After she and her brother retired in 1992 she continued to make a valued contribution to her local community as a member of the parish council, which she chaired from 2005 to 2008, and as a member of the editorial team of the King’s Sutton Times. Her sharp mind, quiet wisdom and sense of humour won her many fans.
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In October 2008 Kevelos witnessed the unveiling of a plaque at the Canal Museum in Stoke Bruerne commemorating the wartime work undertaken by the Inland Waterways boatwomen.
She is survived by a brother.
Olga Kevelos, motorcyclist, was born on November 6, 1923. She died on October 28, 2009, aged 85