CYCLING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13369, 26 December 1906, Page 4

CYCLING.

It is recorded that 50 per cent, of the race meetings at Homo last season resulted in deficits.

An announcement is made that Sunday racing is to be introduced at Dublin, the events being one and five miles bicycle races, ten miles motor-paced race, and a ladies' race.

Another alleged lion-puneturable tiro has been placed on the British market, said to be equally suitable for motors, motor-cycles or bicycles. It consists of a single-tube tire into which a number of small rubber balls are. placed. Each of these contains .some gasforming nostrum, such as bicarbonate of soda. The tire is then vulcanised, and the production of gas in the sphres automatically inflates it, while in the case of a puncture, it only deflates a single ball out. of a large number which are contained in the tiro.

A writer in an English journal predicts that three-speed gears will he more generally fitted. next year, and that the attachment wijl' be almost universal on bicycles with any genuine claim to being high-grade. The price of the three-speed gear in England has been reduced to two guineas, and in a year or so it is said that the three-speed gear will "drive the two-speed of? the market." The outstanding feature of the annual cycle show in England was to have been the three-speed gear machines. In Coventry, the great cycle manufacturing centre, the great majority of the high-grade machines for 1907 are to be fitted with the threo-specd gear, it is said. Talking about gears, G. A. Olley, the English rider and road-record holder, says that high gears are all right until one gets the knock," but that with a lower gear one can keep going through a "bad time." He says: "Different men are suited by different, gears, although a much more important factor is -age. In one's 'teens one is more suited lo fast work, and on my Portsmouth record, when 1 was seventeen, I used 65 and 6zi» cranks. I could not do it now on that gear, I am sure, and as one becomes more sot one can increase gear. That it is possible to secure short (and consequently fast) records on low gears is borne out by my fifty miles S.R. record, when ] used 75 (having previously tried 80 Aid failed). 1 scheduled myself to do: downhill 30, on the level 25, and uphill 15 to 17 miles per hour. The average road rider should remember that crack riders on high gears are (1) specially suited to high gears; (2) that they reckon on 30 an hour downhill, when the everyday rider freewheels; and (3) that food and drink are frequently handed up to the trained rider, who thus escapes that ' aching void' which invariably arrives when taking hard exercise."