OPPERMAN’S FIRST TOUR DE FRANCE

Southland Times, Issue 24153, 15 June 1940, Page 16

OPPERMAN’S FIRST TOUR DE FRANCE

I have heard Hubert Opperman say the 1928 Tour de France, his first appearance in that 3300-mile event, was the longest sustained gruelling he has taken in his long career awheel, writes Harry Hopman in The Herald, Melbourne. Perhaps no greater example of hardihood, determination and will power could be found than in the many record-breaking exploits of our endurance champion, Opperman. A reader has now asked for one of Opperman’s toughest rides.

The Australian team in the 1928 Tour de France was H. Watson (Nev/ Zealand), P. Osborne (Victoria), E. Bainbridge (Victoria) and Opperman (Victoria). Our fellows were handicapped before they began, for other countries had teams of 10 riders, and their co-operation, from experience, was almost perfect. It was Opperinan’s “first up” in Con-

heat waves and renowned adversaries created a fatigue which almost reached delirium.

The team all suffered from the chafing of ill-chosen shoes, and they were saddle-sore, blinded with dust, and bruised from many falls in nerveracking mountain descents. Bainbridge dropped out somewhere in the Alps, but his performance for a man of 37 was considered so excellent that 10 years later the courage of that “old crocodile Bainbridge” was still referred to when Tour de France was discussed. Opperman believes he has since raced in contests that have taken just as great a physical toll, but experience has built up a mental adjustment which enables him to take it with far more equanimity than that nightmare of 1928. tinental racing, and the strange cobbled and mountain roads, midnight starts,