Tabak applies to enter cash cycling events

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33106, 22 December 1972, Page 20

Tabak applies to enter cash cycling events

The professional cyclist, T. J. Tabak, yesterday wrote to the Caledonian societies which promote sports meetings in South Canterbury during Christmas and New Year, applying to enter for the cash cycling events.

This came after an announcement by the New Zealand League of Wheelmen — which administers cash cycling in New Zealand — that Tabak would be barred from the code’s races because of a dispute with the Canterbury track cycling committee. “I was upset to see there

was a chance I would miss riding in South Canterbury,” said Tabak yesterday. "I am really looking forward to going back down to the circuit where I enjoyed myself so much when I rode as an amateur in New Zealand.”

Tabak said he was making entry for the Waimate, Timaru, and Temuka meetings just as another profes-sional—-or cash—rider. “I imagine the New Zealand league—and thus its riders—belongs to the F.I.P.C. (world professional organisation), just as I do,” said Tabak. “I have an international licence, and apart from the special charity races in centres where there is only amateur cycling, cash cycling meetings are the only places I can race.

“The most important thing to me,” said Tabak, “is that I race as much as possible. I am out here under contract to no-one. There is just a gentlemen’s agreement — which I am honouring—that

I should race wherever meetings can be arranged. “I am only too grateful to Coca-Cola for making this trip possible, and if my riding at different meetings helps make the programme more attractive, and perhaps attracts more spectators, then I am quite happy.”