Paul Clare makes a major advance

Press, 11 December 1981, Page 15

Paul Clare makes a major advance

By

RAY CAIRNS

For much of Paul Clare's

brief cycling career, he has. in his words, “plodded along, just hanging in there.” But it took on a new dimension in the season just finished when Clare won a place in the New Zealand junior team for the Oceania Games, and returned with two silver medals.

The first was as a member of the time trial team, fairly handsomely beaten by Australia; the second was much the more important, with Clare second in the individual road race.

"Too right that had to be my best result. It was my first international competition. and the first time. Air New Zealand final apart, that I had ridden in that sort of class." There was rather more to the performance than that, however. While Clare maintains that “we were all given the chance to win," he also acknowledges: — a shade grudgingly, perhaps — that “if anyone was set up to win, it was Craig Griffin." Pressed further, Clare will explain that “when the two of us broke away, I towed him most of the way; I could have just about won it." All of this not bragging, for if anyone is reserved about his better performances, it is Clare, a slight but wiry youth. 18 last August. So it is not strange for him to quickly follow those observations with another, that Simon Kennedy, another team-mate, would have won the race but for. a late puncture. Coincidentally, another silvef- medal was previously

Clare's most pleasing result. That was in the Canterbury championship, also this year, when Clare had to bow to another strong little fellow, Craig Nichols. But he still took satisfaction from the result, "because I was able to dominate the way things went — except at the finish — and it was the first time I had been able to do that." It was certainly a season of growing up in cycling for Paul Clare, who has not .yet completed four years on the bike, the first 10-speed race to be held at the Healing national hard-track championships sparked off an interest. A school friend. Graham Schist, was there too; "told me to come out and have a go; and he entered me."

So started an unusual first vear of cycling for the pair, almost always riding from the same marks in handicap races, finishing together, even finishing with identical times after four stages of their first tour.

They have gone their different ways now. Clare won a place in the Canterbury novice team for the national championships in. 1979, and with it a team time trial gold medal, and went on to an eminently satisfactory first junior ’ road season, second in the Timaru-to-Christchurch the highlight of it.

Schist. five months younger, took a little longer to develop; switched to pro-

fessional ranks; and made a marked advance this year, too.

Clare acknowledges that the longer distances of open racing suited him. “It was certainly something different.” with feeling! “It was a lot tougher; you have to take it more seriously and devote more time'to training. Serious; that suited me; I guess I’m pretty dedicated." That sound first season was an ideal springboard for Clare s 1981 road season, just as he had had his first major dabble with track racing. He was a squad member — and eventual reserve — for Canterbury record-breaking junior team, and pondered that he was “perhaps unlucky not to be. in the team. But obviously, they must have had the right team, the best team,” he is quick to add. On balance, Clare thinks he has been “luckier than a lot of them" with team selections.

So, some national championships behind him, Paul Clare faced a road season which — the “lucky” factor again, he thinks — included the Air New Zealand Grand prix final on Canterbury roads. "That suited me more than anything; I knew the course a bit.”

His performance was not out of the ordinary, but it was sound enough to win Clare his silver fern, with the pair of silver medals the end result. Yet the Oceania Games

did not really figure in the Paul Clare scheme of things. He was aiming at the Healing national road championships at the end of the season, and it was only during the Air New Zealand tour that he got wind of a junior team coming up. The time trial team selection was the basis for that team, and Clare, the teamman and big-hearted worker, has a special affinity for the event. After all. both his national championship medals have come in the event, for he was in the Canterbury junior team that won this year at Invercargill.

But he likes individual road racing even more, and his aims next year will be the Canterbury and South Island championships and a couple of tours. He had intended riding the Rothmans Southland, and Healing-3ZM tours this year but tonsilitis came along at the wrong time. He followed the latter,, however, as a mechanic and learned a lot about tour racing: “you’re that close to it all.”

Clare will be riding the track with a fair degree of seriousness this season, particularly looking at the 8000 m and points races — and the team pursuit, of course, with two places lying vacant.

But he is sure his ultimate preference will be for the road — and a hankering for more massed start racing than handicap events — with the West Coast-North Island junior tour a particular target in his final junior season. It should be a season worth remembering. t