years earlier – and prepared to race over one mile. When the traffic cleared, they roared down Dandenong Road tucked in behind the specially modified pacing motorbikes at almost seventy-five kilometres per hour. The race was over in less than a minute and a half and Opperman won by a single second. The papers quietly reported the results, but the stunt was exciting enough to pique Campbell’s interest and for Opperman to be offered a ride at the Exhibition Oval.
Opperman’s first race on the notoriously tricky track nearly ended in tragedy. Without warning, his front tyre rolled off its rim, pitching him onto the track directly in front of his opponent’s motor-pacer, Bob Finlay. Known as one of the best in the game, Finlay altered course narrowly avoiding crushing the sprawling Opperman beneath the heavy motorcycle. Opperman refused to give up and fearlessly returned to the track. The handlebars and saddle were switched to another frame. With heavily bandaged arms and legs Opperman rode, and won, the next two heats. Campbell liked what he saw and booked Opperman to race the next season.
The following Monday, Opperman hobbled into Campbell’s bicycle business in Prahran to collect his winnings. Never one to miss an opportunity, Campbell tried to poach the young rider, offering him double his present salary, two days off a week to train and free access to all the bikes and equipment he desired. Stunned by the overture, Opperman went to work and explained what had happened. Small confessed that he couldn’t match the offer and that he would understand if he accepted. Yet, for Opperman something wasn’t right. In the cutthroat world of sports entertainment, he did not trust Campbell to look after his interests should he be injured or if his results ever faltered. Opperman swore his loyalty to Malvern Star and Small swore that his commitment to the young rider went beyond mere short-term gain. The equation was elementary, as Opperman recalled, ‘I sought success on the wheel – he sought spectacular returns for Malvern Star.’4 But it was more than this. Their relationship was not merely an alliance of their respective sporting and commercial goals. They had become friends.
Not even the astute business mind of Bruce Small knew how long the motor-pacing fad might last, though he intuited that its attractions would fade sooner rather than later. Opperman continued to compete on the track and in motor-pacing. But both men knew that the long-term future of cycling in Australia would be in road cycling, with its greater popularity and established traditions. Road racing, though far from safe, offered a more sustainable and less dangerous career than motor-pacing. By the end of winter, as another road season loomed, Opperman began diverting his energy towards making his biggest mark on the Victorian racing scene to date.
Victorian road cycling revolved around a staple of annual races that traversed much of the state. Like the road and railway networks that crisscrossed the land, bike races provided another kind of link between the rural heartland and the city. Separate events from the east, west and north of the state converged on Melbourne. The big races from Ballarat, Bendigo, Colac, Geelong, Sale and Warrnambool brought economic benefits to the hundreds of towns and villages they passed through, as well as proving a focus for regional cycling clubs. Importantly, they offered aspiring local racers an inexpensive opportunity to test their legs against riders from outside the area. By radiating toward the capital, these races symbolically confirmed Melbourne as the hub of Victorian (perhaps even Australian) cycling. No other capital city was connected by such a network of sporting energy in quite the same way.
Riders wanting to assert their talents typically targeted one or two of these races a season. Opperman tackled them all. He started the road season knowing that he now rode as an equal to the best in the state. Earlier in the year, Victoria’s cycling officials removed his handicap, finally bestowing upon Opperman the most coveted position in racing. He was now a ‘scratch man’. No longer would he have to leave ahead of the best men in the field and hope to ride in their slipstream as they passed. Now it would be for others to fear his remorseless pursuit, just as he had dreaded the inevitable ‘catch’ from the strongest riders. He raced with ever growing confidence and his name began to appear on the result sheets with increasing frequency.
A major breakthrough came with his performance in the season’s first Sale to Melbourne race, when he took fastest time in windy conditions beating his cycling idols, Ernie Bainbridge, Don Kirkham and the NSW champion Ken Ross. The Monday after the race, Small took his ‘dashing young rider’ into the offices of the Sporting Globe, Victoria’s popular sports newspaper. Determined that Opperman should overcome his natural modesty, he hoped that his flair for storytelling might come across to the reporter. Although still uneasy with the attention, his ability to compress his eight hours of toil into a good yarn became clear. He spoke about racing with an authority and immediacy that sports journalists (and most professional sportsmen, for that matter) could not:
Reaching Dandenong we learned that we were six minutes behind the front bunch, who were reported to be sailing along at a good turn of speed. The road was swarmed with motors, cycles and other vehicles, and it was with some difficulty that we threaded our way through the vast crowd.
We were coming to the end of our long journey, and, as we swung into Caulfield half a mile from home, Don Kirkham lead out and made the pace a cracker for a quarter of a mile. When I realized how far the finishing sign was, I found that I had sprinted a bit too early. Glancing under my arm, I saw that I managed to hold it over Bainbridge and cross the line first. There a vast crowd of 10,000 had waited for hours to welcome home the winners.5
The relationship with the Sporting Globe lasted many years and became critical to cultivating Opperman as a sporting celebrity, as well as educating the cycling public about the finer points of racing at the highest level.
Every professional rider in Australia raced and trained with an eye to the Warrnambool to Melbourne. Even by the 1920s, the ‘Warny’, as it later became known, was already steeped in tradition. First run in 1895, it was regarded as the greatest and the toughest road race of the year, a contest where ‘virile and young cyclists [came] to meet on level terms’.6 The race was (and still is) Australia’s oldest one-day classic and the world’s second oldest, after the Leige–Bastogne–Leige in Belgium. Although a handicap event, until 1939 the title of Road Champion of Australia and New Zealand went to the rider who achieved fastest time over the full distance of 266 kilometres, even if they did not take line honours. There was no greater prize on the Australian racing calendar.
In ordinary circumstances, the idea of a wispy nineteen-year-old lad taking the great crown of Australian road cycling champion seemed preposterous. In addition to the dusty, rock-strewn roads that plagued most road races, the defining factor in the ‘Warny’ was the wind. Crosswinds from Bass Strait ripped across Victoria’s western districts with monotonous consistency. With few hills to give advantage to the lightweight climbers, the race was usually won by heavier, well-muscled riders, better equipped to power into a gale. But as racing observers had begun to realise in the last year, nothing about Hubert Opperman was ordinary. Two weeks before the great race, Opperman travelled to Tasmania for the Launceston to Hobart. Yet again, he produced the fastest time ahead of Don Kirkham with a ride considered ‘nothing short of miraculous’.7 Finishing fresh faced and seemingly unaffected the ‘great little man’ was ‘cheered enthusiastically and carried off the ground by barrackers’.8 Opperman’s ascension to the throne seemed inevitable.
Good form, experience and smart tactics were important for racing success. But there was always the question of luck. When Opperman arrived at the start of the 1923 Warrnambool to Melbourne, he was considered the rider most likely to test the defending champion, New Zealander Phil O’Shea. The race began well. The weather broke fine and mild. Opperman avoided the early crashes and usual hurly burly of the opening miles. Then, about fifty kilometres outside of Geelong, a hiss of air signalled the end of his chances. The bunch, containing the top contenders for victory, pedalled into the distance. He was left scrambling to repair his flat tyre. Regaining the leading group of such high calibre riders would be unlikely. His best chance would be for the coarse metalled Victorian roads to inflict misfortune upon the front-runners. It was not to be. He rode on and finished with the fourth fastest time, around three minutes behind O’Shea’s winning ride.9 The press noticed his ‘undaunted’ and plucky response to misfortune, but it was nevertheless a disappointing end to a season in which he appeared to have an unstoppable momentum.10 He would have to wait twelve months for another attempt at the