Cycling selectors have plunged youth into difficult position

Press, 30 July 1980, Page 18

Cycling selectors have plunged youth into difficult position

By

RAY CAIRNS

Victims of circumstances, maybe, but the national cycling selectors have still been irresponsible to a promising group of young New Zealand cyclist. Their stated policy at the week-end of giving youth its chance may have the reverse of the intended effect of developing the international base of New Zealand cycling; it may instead undermine it.

, :I The selectors are to send a team of five young riders to the Tasmanian tour and three Australian one-day classics, as the result of the Air New Zealand Grand Prix. With them will be a most efficient but self-admitted inexperienced manager in Dudley Griffin, of Kawerau.

Long before the team was announced, Mr Griffin was hoping for what most were expecting: that Vern Hanaray would form part of the team.

To a degree, the selectors had their deliberations complicated by a course that was simply not demanding enough. Auckland officials felt that they should try to simulate as much as possible the terrain of the Tasmanian tour; they failed to take into account the rather higher standard of the field. So the three automatic selections, Simon King (Auckland, 17), Michael Mcßedmond (Manawatu, 22) and Murray Jordan

(Taranaki, 20). face a difficult time in Tasmania. Worse, they could take such a pounding that thev nay find it difficult to recover the mental and physical condition for the sport.

It is ironical that the Canterbury pair selected to join them could well turn out the best-per-formed of the team. Brian Fowler, the second 17-year-old in the team, and Bruce Brunton (21) were certainly controversial choices on this particular trial, which is not to say they will not perform with distinction. But had they been among the three automatic choices, that could have been said with more certainty; then, perhaps, they could have had the experienced men around them.

Instead, this trial did not become that for Fowler, for example. A nagging knee problem had virtually kept him off his bike for two weeks and in common with three-quar-ters of the field at Auckland, he did little. CertainIv, it was his least-spark-ling performance in an otherwise-outstanding season.

And for ail that he was an aggressive figure on Sunday, Brunton has ridden better in each of the two previous years for less recognition. Did he win a reward for perseverance? ■

No. the most demanding nature of the four-day pro-am in Tasmania demands that some experience is not only vital, it is essential. Last year, a team with two juniors, Mark Nichols and Tony Songhurst, and an untried and unproven senior, Robin Stokell, had relative experience to utilise. Kevin Blackwell, the team leader, had ridden — among many other things — the Milk Race, the world’s leading amateur tour, and Toni Home had raced in Tasmania the previous year. That knowledge was invaluable, and would have been ■ again this year. But the selectors have now made clear that it is a personality thing with

Horne. Maybe they don’t like the way he rides, or do they point to his failing to finish each of his two Tasmanian tours, while ignoring the very valid reasons of severe illness and severe injury respectively? * Horne's fourth stage victory in Auckland was the outstanding individual performance of the weekend; he was a close-up sixth in the Sour. But he could not warrant naming in any of th*, three various teams and reserves chosen by. the selectors. How could She selectors possibly justify Blair Cox or Neil Bocock as reserves for Tasmanian, David Bateman as reserve for Tahiti, or Tony Mellsop as a stand-by for the New' Caledonian tour, ahead of Horne?

Horne, himself, was hardly surprised. “Not after ’last year, when they told me after the first day of the final that they wouldn’t pick me for Aussie. I told them they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, that I’d be in the first bloody three anyway — and was.”

Hanaray, too, was pretty phlegmatic, at least in his observation that “they couldn’t; really pick me on that performance, could they?” But there was more than a sneaking suspicion that Hanaray still felt he could have been of much value to the team. He is the sort of personality prepared to pass on his vast knowledge on request and, indeed, King was at his side before the team was even announced, seeking a hurried training schedule.

There is irony in the fact that Hanaray will probably travel to Australia under his own steam, anyway, contesting the same events as do the official New Zealand team, much as he did last year. All of that before he and Steve Cox head for the New Caledonian tour, where they should perform with distinction, for they are men rich in experience.

That was important, said the selectors, yet they then named as the backups Songhurst and Mellsop. Even considering he had the Tasmanian tour —

ill-prepared and negative of attitude — last year. Songhurst is hardly a veteran of the cycling game. And Mellsop’s greatest distinction in demanding tours, of which he has ridden many now, has been the frequency with .which he gets dropped. ' So that left only Tahiti, for which Mcßedmond was also named and the choice left to him. And therein lay the real -consolation prize, that to Paul. Flattery, fourth in the grand prix, and, had Mcßedmond taken a minute longer to finishthe final stage, behind the main bunch, Flattery would have been off to Tasmania as of right. Instead, .said the seletors, they were looking for men who could handle track racing capably as well, for Tahiti, “Gee,” said Flattery, a social and intermittent cyclist in the summer, “I don’t even know if I’ve got a track bike at home.” That was the sort of end result produced by the selectorial antics, the panel responsible for which New Zealand is stuck .with for another year.

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