Loss To Track Cycling

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31614, 27 February 1968, Page 19

Loss To Track Cycling

After the New Zealand hard track cycling championships at Kew Bowl, Invercargill, on Saturday night, three national champions announced their retirement from track racing.

The Southland stalwarts, D. L. Booth, P. H. P. Robinson, and A. G. Ineson, all said that they had ridden competitively on the track for the last time. Ineson, a former New Zealand road champion, will make a final effort to win Olympic Games selection in the road team but, after the coming road season, will probably retire from all cycling. Booth and Robinson will

both ride the road seriously: in the past they have used it merely to fill-in between track seasons.

AU three have won at least two gold medals in national championships. Ineson this season won the individual pursuit and was the strength behind the Southland champion pursuit team.

Booth, also a member of the pursuit team, has won two national 10-mile titles, a Commonwealth Games trial over the same distance, represented New Zealand in the 10-mUe at the Jamaica Commonwealth Games, and in his final ride on Saturday evening, was second.

Robinson, a brilliant junior sprinter, went on to win the senior championship, and (twice) the tandem title—with Booth last year, and his

younger brother, Ray, this season. He, however, went'out on an unhappy note by puncturing in the final of the 10 miles.

W. G. Kendall (Canterbury), who has twice won medals in the individual pursuits, and who has been a member of senior pursuit teams which won silver medals at national championships, has also indicated he will not ride on the track again.