Pro cycling sticks with massed start racing

Press, 27 October 1982, Page 36

Pro cycling sticks with massed start racing

After the many warm sentiments expressed about the DB-Waipara Hotel national professional road cycling championships' on Saturday, it is hardly surprising that the titles are to be again decided in massed start competition.

The New Zealand Professional Cycling Association's annual conference, just a day after the championships, did not hear a word of opposition to the new format.

They will again be held in Canterbury, though the precise venue is still to be fixed, and what is probably a more suitable build-up has evolved. After the Ashburton to Christchurch on September 3, attention will switch across Cook Strait, with the North Island championships in Auckland on September 10, and the Round the Mountain classic in New Plymouth on September 17. The following week-end, there is the Taranaki two-day tour.

Then it is back to the Canterbury area for the balance of the season: the

national championships on October 1: the New Zealand 40km team time trial championships two days later; and it is expected there will be a further handicap race on the Wednesday, October 5. That programming should keep most riders interested and involved, because the Christchurch to Timaru race next year is on October 8. All this is planned,' too, to coincide with the Healing Tour of the South, next year from October 19 to 22. Another ’ happy development is that the New Zealand 40km championships seem sure to revert to Greymouth on Queen’s Birthday week-end. The other major national titles are in the Canterbury region: the grass track championships at Tinwald on the week-end of January 8-9, and the hard track championships at Denton Park on February 25-27.

The main events in Otago are the annual week-long festival, from January 23-29, and the Tamahine Tour on August 6-7.

In this air of forwardthinking it was a little surprising that a proposal to make veterans “younger” received scant support. A remit from West Coast to reduce the age of veterans to 35, from 40 — in line with the rest of the world — received only its two votes. Similarly the junior age has not been reduced to 18 from 19. However, one step of conformity was the extension of track sprint championships to 1000 m, twice the old distance, and it seems that international racing rules for sprints might be adopted, too. The New Zealand man who most needed those changes, not least because of his sixth ranking in the world, Colin Ryan, of Timaru, was an unsurprising choice as “cyclist of the year.” Ray Cairns