CYCLING.

Evening Star, Issue 11838, 18 March 1903, Page 7

CYCLING.

Msrch 21. —New Zealand Championship, Dunedin. April 13.—Temuka C.C., Temuka. It is questionable if it was a wise policy to postpone the championship meeting last Saturday, but, given a fine day next Saturday, the D.C.C. should lose nothing by it. All the champions are coming back to compete, and the motors will- also be racing Martin has been cutting out the quartermile on that wonderful motor of his in under 25sec, which is equal to lmin 40sec for the mile. Those who have seen him on the track at the Caledonian Ground are quite satisfied as to the sensationalism of the performance, and predict thaithere will be no lack of excitement in the actual races. The motor is weighted with about a hundredweight of lead to keep the front wheel down on the track. Two or three of the other competing machines have been locally made, and several others are also of colonial manufacture. As to actual riding, Martin is by no means an winner of the championship. It has been stated that he came over to New Zealand to be out of the way of Taylor, Walker, and Co., as he knew himself to be far below his form of a season or two back. This may be, but he must still be reckoned with, and that he is not riding badly may be judged from the fact that in training he sprinted away from a motor that other cracks were barely able to hang on to. The Temuka Cycling Club hold a meeting on April 13 next (Easter Monday), the chief event being a wheel race of £3O. The total prize money is £BO. A motor race of £lO is also on the programme. Forbes is the only New Zealander to qualify for the final of the Sydney Thousand, "run next Saturday. Sutherland and Chalmers did well enough in the preliminary heats, but were passed out in the semi-finals, where the real weeding out begins. Major Taylor is not left in, but Don Walker, on the syds mark, may possibly be somewhere near at the finish, provided he gets a clear run. At the Prahran (Melb.) Police Court last week the presiding magistrate was somewhat severe on a cyclist for being in possession of a bicycle on the roadway aftei sunset without a light. The wheelman was fined substantially, notwithstanding his plea that he was merely leading the machine. The magistrate held that that was just as bad as riding jt. The question arises as to what a wheelman is to do, in view of the above decision, supposing he is overtaken by darkness through unforeseen circumstances, and has no Tamp with ■< him. He may not ride—that is understood ; and now we learn that he may not even lead his machine, lest he break the law as it is being interpreted. A prominent American motorist, after sampling the motor cycle, tried the motor car. but after three months of the larger machine he discarded it, and took up the motor cycle a.gain. He states that there is no sport in an automobile to a man who has used the cvcle. One is sport and the other is not. He further adds, apart from the comparative initial outlay for the two machines, that the motor bicycle does not cost a lot of money to keep. An officially-timed record ride over a measured mile on the road was registered in lmin ssec by the well-known French motorist H. Fournier, his mount being a 44 horse-power motor cycle. The pace is equal to fifty-five miles per hour. The world's record for the same distance and for the same class of machine previously was lmin lOfsec, by Darioli, of Paris, on October 17 of last year.