LATE CYCLING.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 461, 25 May 1899, Page 8

LATE CYCLING.

Our Canterbury correspondent wires : —As I predicted the Pioneer Bicycle Club has decided by a substantial majority to again throw in its lot with the Cyclists Alliance and secede from the League of Wheelmen. The meeting held on Friday night was thoroughly representative, over thirty of the most prominent members including about fifteen amateur racing men voted strongly for the Alliance. The members who voted injfavour of the League were chiefly supporters of cash cycling, some of them being cash racing men. The action of the Pioneer Club in thus severing its connection with the League must be taken as a great victory for amateurism and the Cyclists’ Alliance. No doubt clubs in other parts of New Zealand will quickly follow the example of the Pioneer Club. League men here worked hard to get the Pioneer Club to remain under the League banner. For some days prior to the meeting the League touts canvassed the members of the Pioneer Club who had a leaning towards the cas i governing body, but they refrained from approaching the amateur members. Even the cocksure prognostication of the Auckland correspondent of the League’s official organ published on the eve of the meeting of the Club, was crushed to the ground like many more prognostications emanating from the same source. Now that the Pioneer Bicycle Club one of the oldest and most influential clubs in New Zealand, has again declared itself in favour of the Cyclists’ Alliance, amateurism may be expected to boom next season. The League never made any serious attempt to cater for the amateur riders, and it is not likely that clubs that suppoit amateurism are going to give that support to a body like the League. The League’s proposed alteration of amateur definitions is likely to meet with strong opposition from several South Island clubs, who are beginning to wonder whether the League really has any backbone. A few months ago the League prided itself on having only a pure amateur definition, now it proposes to fall back to the old order of things, and cater for that cycling pest, the “ shamateur.”