Cyclists Live Apart In Enviable Comfort

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30559, 30 September 1964, Page 10

Cyclists Live Apart In Enviable Comfort

[From

NORMAN HARRIS

5, o/ the “New Zealand Herald”]

TOKYO, September 28. Any of the runners in the main Olympic village, even P. G. Snell in his grand current form, would probably be tempted to recruit for a month with a bicycle if they were to visit the cycling village at Hachioji.

Hachioji is 30 miles south of Central Tokyo and the New Zealand residents in the village form a quiet, comfortable and enviable community.

There is nothing of the super organisation and regimentation at the main village and training centres, none of the babble, few of the restrictions.

It has the atmosphere of a training camp rather than a village. The New Zealanders say they feel as if they are gathered for a world road cycling championship rather than an Olympic games. Inside the building there is none of the impermanent barrack-like atmosphere of the bigger villages. At Hachioji, R. D. Johnstone, L. J. Byers, M. W. Grace, W. A. Candy and D. R. Thomson relax like hotel residents in rooms which would serve in any hotel.

Although the building was built for the games and will be pulled down afterwards, it has corridor floors with wall-to-wall thick red carpet,, and rooms with imitation marble walls and subdued lighting. Undulating Course The road course where the cyclists train is patrolled each day. It is an undulating course, with rises rather than punishing hills, and a very fast surface. It will, considers Byers, suit most of all the Belgians and the Dutch. Everyone will need to sharpen themselves in training to a keen edge to,

handle the fast pace and a final sprint. The marathon runners, too, have already had a good look at their course—a course with the same smooth fast road surface and with very gentle up and down grades. The only significant variation is a steadier plimb of about 200 ft in a quarter of a mile. This comes at a testing stage of the race, 17 miles. Choppy Water

already produced much choppy water but the facilities. could not be bettered—a road beside the course so that the coaches can drive along looking straight down on their crews and a headquarters for the oarsmen with resting beds to go with the showers. Possibly the happiest people in the camp are the two swimmers after their manager, Mr B. C. Simpson, arranged for them to train with the large Australian team—the elite of the swimming world.

The oarsmen, too, are delighted with their work area at the Toda rowing course. The area is exposed and has