Nichols is making his mark

Press, 13 June 1979, Page 16

Nichols is making his mark

Bv

RAY CAIRNS

Winning fastest time in the DB Harbour race was , not the most satisfying J moment in the short cycB ling career of Mark NichI ols. Winning the national I boys’ road title at WangaI nui in 1977 commands | pride of place in his affec- ■ tions “and I don’t think i* anything would ever compare with that, the first a top result is always the £ best.” “ But it was the most surprising result, and at- | tracted some degree of satisfaction. Surprising, si “not because I got away from the scratch bunch, because I thought I could, but sprinting Toni Horne. I I can’t sprint for peanuts.” I And the satisfying asI pect to Nichols was that ■ “I had a helluva job getting I scratch because of my age, and I knew I had to do ■something pretty outstands ng to stay on scratch. “There seems to be a Jttle ring of guys at the op, and you have to break nto it. Once you’re there, t’s OK, and now I’ve got ’he mark, I want to keen I ’!•" s Asked if he felt he had | made a point when, placed | on the break bunch for the Frank Grose Memorial earlier in the season, he was ' first and fastest, Nichols replied: "No; too many people.would say too much that if Blair Stockwell hadn’t pulled out to go to a wedding, I might not have got fastest time.

“No, that result got me on scratch, but it wasn’t going to keep me there, so I picked the Harbour race to make my case because I can get up hills probably better than I can do anything else.”

Nichols has wasted no time in racing to the top of the cycling tree, and he has suitable targets ahead of him. He wants the national junior title this year, and that has eluded Canterbury riders — Horne the closest of them — for 34 years; and he wants to represent New Zealand as a junior at the Oceania Games in New Caledonia.

As part of those shortterm aims, he hopes to ride a good Air New Zealand series —- "to remind the

selectors about me” — and would like a share in Canterbury retaining the national junior 40km team time trial title. Nichols played an. outstanding part in that, victory last year, and the day after was in hospital for an eye operation for a detached retina. That cost him 70 per cent of his vision in his left eye, but it is a handicap he has now adjusted to: “I can still see enough if someone’s trying to come up on my inside.” Nichols started racing late in 1976, but. made an instant impression. More.

than a little unlucky to miss selection for the national championships, even though such a rookie, he won second place in the South Island championship within two months of his first race —- which he had also won.

But the following year was one of continual nearmisses, usually at the hands of either Shane Smith, then national champion, or Nick Purcell.

Indeed. Nichols really only won one race that season, but it was the ono that mattered: the national championship, and the day afterwards was, he considered, perhaps his second best result: another gold medal, this time in the 20km team time trial. “Or maybe the next best

was starting on scratch as a first-year junior last year and only 16 then.” He was the youngest in Canterbury history to start from the tpugh back mark, but Nichols was happy to subsequently go back but to the break mark. “It was a learning season for me; I was just, getting experience; it was pretty hard. Also, I was then not as strong as I am now, and I was suffering from a mineral deficiency. I’ve countered that now, though.” Certainly not a robust build, though he looks a

top athlete, Nichols is 1.72 m tall and weighs 57kg. He has, he says, a family background of maturing late in build, and for this reason he is looking at nothing more ambitious than the events he had outlined, and the Southland tour.

But for the future, he is daydreaming about “the Games: the Olympics are obviously the ultimate, but a more realistic look is at Brisbane. I’ll be 20 or 21 then and the next Olympics. after Moscow, are a bit far away to even think about.

“Europe’s another thought, but a lot of factors come into that, most of them to do with money.” Nichols is to have “a bit more of a serious try” at

track racing in the coming summer, particularly looking at team pursuits and the 8000 m, “though I’m hoping the Oceania Games will partly interfere with the track season.” But he finds his greatest relexation in summer is sailing—he finished second overall in a Canterburysecondary schools’ regatta —with the present major drawback at the moment that he had to sell his OK dinghy to buy a new racing frame. There have been no lack of sporting successes to young Nichols, still only

17. He has been a Canter* bury age-group represent tative at rugby (as a halfback), water polo (he was in the first provincial under-13 team) and swimming.

The irony of the latter sport was that Nichols turned down a swimming trip, to Australia with Wharenui in 1976, in favour of a racing bike. That bike was “only” a semi-racer, and Nichols said he “got a real shock’’ when he went to his first race and saw some of the gleaming, expensive models. “Off came the mud-guards,” but he had a racing model before the season was out. Nichols has, quite clearly, raced to a position of considerable prominence in a short time, and his career runs a similar course—perhaps even ahead—to that of Tino Tabak 15 years and less ago. When he left New Zealand, Tabak was then facing a rising challenge from a promising junior in Stockwell, just as Stockwell, still on the pleateau of a magnificent career, now has a talented junior with whom to contend. Some think Nichols is going too far too quickly, but this modestly confident young aggressor has a determination and heart that will overcome many of the usual obstacles and carry him further than most.