Tabak returning for N.Z. cycle tour

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33093, 7 December 1972, Page 28

Tabak returning for N.Z. cycle tour

(By

R. M. CAIRNS)

T. J. Tabak is returning to New Zealand. Coca-Cola bottlers throughout the country are to sponsor the flamboyant star of amateur cycling in the mid-19605, now riding as a professional in Europe.

Canterbury cycling administrators now face a race against time to negotiate events in various New Zealand centres for the Dutch-born, New Zealand-naturalised Tabak. He is due to arrive in Christchurch on December 18, and a meeting is tentatively scheduled for English Park on December 20. Tabak’s desire to return to New Zealand, which he left five years ago in a youthful desire “to learn how to ride a bike,” has been known for several weeks. But because there is no professional cycling in New Zealand, and because the nearest equivalent — cash cycling —is confined to three or four strongholds of the code, amateur cycling officials first had to determine if Tabak would be allowed to ride against amateurs. Word was only received last week, from the international federation, that Tabak could thus compete.

The conditions are that in these special meetings or races, neither the professional nor the selected amateurs compete for prizes, and the races or meetings are for charity; and that the amateurs compete in national jerseys.

These conditions are not difficult to fulfil, particularly as the South Island, Canterbury especially, is well endowed with New Zealand representatives of the recent past or present, not to mention some who seem certain to ride for their country in the future. The Canterbury Track Cycling Committee has been offered the “use” of Tabak in New Zealand and that body, at present under a little financial strain, might find him a great boon.

In the period 1965-67, when Tabak was dominating all the New Zealand tours in which he competed, and in which he built up an unequalled record, he was the one New Zealand cyclist who was a crowd-drawer in his own right. The day in early December, when he last rode at English Park and broke his Australasian one-hour record, was the last occasion on which a really large crowd were attracted to a track cycling meeting in the city.