Tabak To Continue Cycling In Europe

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31879, 6 January 1969, Page 12

Tabak To Continue Cycling In Europe

Unless someone is prepared to sponsor him to New Zealand, it is unlikely that the Commonwealth Games cycling representative, T. J. Tabak, will return for four or five years.

With the cyclists who represented the Netherlands at the Olympic Games in Mexico, Tabak has signed with a leading cycling firm. He will ride in all the major amateur track and road races in Europe this year

after the team has finished its special training next month. Tabak has sent this information in a letter to his father in Christchurch. He went to Europe in December of 1967 after representing New Zealand at the Commonwealth Games in Jamaica. He was expected to ride for New Zealand at the Mexico City Olympics but later decided to represent the Netherlands. However, a few weeks before the games he fell and broke his right-arm in three places. Now he has resumed riding, and last month did well to finish fourth with his partner in his first six-day track race. .Had he not lost his original partner on the fourth evening he might have finished higher. Also, he rode well to finish fourth in the last international criterium df the season in the south of the Netherlands. Tabak has had several offers to turn professional but he is anxious to be in the top class as an amateur before making the change.