to draw riders and sponsors away from the LVW and trigger its slow decline into irrelevance.
The LVW blinked first. The NCU agreed to disband but only if the LVW sanctioned races at the Motordrome, and its members were granted full absolution and allowed to compete without discrimination. During negotiations, Opperman’s (and other members of the breakaway movement) participation in the DGP became an important catalyst to finally bringing ‘peace to the cycling world.’ 38
Opperman’s decision to rebel against LVW jarred with his public reputation as a straight-laced and non-political sports figure. With the affair over and Oppy allowed to once again compete in sanctioned racing, he set about returning things to normal, promptly winning the Sale to Melbourne, finally taking his revenge on the LVW for the previous year’s disqualification.
In preparation for the DGP, Opperman decided to attempt to break the world twenty-four-hour unpaced road record. To do so, he would ride from Mt Gambier, South Australia to Melbourne, Victoria, a distance of more than 600 kilometres. He claimed, with studied nonchalance, that the urge to attempt such a feat was due to an ‘excess of zeal’.39 It was nothing of the sort.
Opperman was at his best riding solo and against the clock. Both he and Small sensed an opportunity to reinvigorate the Australian tradition of ‘record setting’, which had faded somewhat since the war. Since bicycles arrived in the colonies, cyclists had traversed great distances, first between the cities, then through the heart of the continent. ‘Overlanding’, as these rides were sometimes called, became more common from the 1890s onwards when riders such as Francis Birtles, Arthur Richardson, Sarah Maddock, Ted Ryko and others gained national attention for their audacious journeys. Record setting was stimulated by the fierce competition among local bicycle makers keen to show off the speed and reliability of their machines against the harsh Australian environment.
For Opperman it was a chance to stamp his authority on yet another style of riding. For Small, it was an opportunity to bring his champion directly to the people, free of competition or interference from officialdom. If the people couldn’t get to a velodrome to see Oppy, then he would go to them. It was not an accident. It was one of the most calculated and important transitions of his sporting life.
Record attempts had a number of advantages over road and track racing. In races, which were usually too short for Opperman to show his real gift, competitors could combat his great stamina with a better sprint, tactics or race-craft. As Opperman knew well, racing was fickle and dangerous. Months of preparation might be undone by a crash, a mechanical failure, a puncture, or the hasty decision of a race official. A record attempt could be staged at any time and be worked around his racing schedule. Support crews and following vehicles made record setting an expensive enterprise, but the sight of cars, trucks and a caravan following a lone rider across vast distances generated valuable publicity. The major risk was that Opperman might fail. Both he and Small initially minimised the chance of failure by selecting old records that had been set by riders covering more challenging terrain or riding inferior bicycles. On a better bike and on easier roads, Opperman – with his clear capacity to ride without rest for hours on end – stood the best chance of setting a new record. Most importantly, he did not have to share the limelight with anyone.
After weeks of organisation, at 8am on Wednesday 5 October 1927, Opperman pedalled out of Mt Gambier, South Australia bound for Melbourne. His sights were set on establishing a new benchmark in Australian (and possibly world) endurance cycling. Although a solo effort, he was certainly not alone. Behind him followed a retinue of vehicles, including a mobile kitchen that would be driven ahead to prepare food for Opperman as he passed. He spun along at around thirty to thirty-five kilometres per hour, knowing that he would slow during the night. He soon crossed the Victorian border and headed for Warrnambool. In each town, hundreds rushed to the roadside to see him ride by. Those with access to cars or motorbikes joined the procession. Hundreds on bicycles attempted to keep pace, if only for a little while. As night fell, Opperman rode over familiar country on the way to Geelong.
‘Can you imagine anyone waiting on a dark, cold night, just to see a rider flick past?’ asked the Sporting Globe. And yet, they did. Thousands of people waited on the roadside for Opperman to whizz past, bathed in the white cone of a searchlight that had been mounted on a truck that followed a few metres behind him. Groups huddled around fires in a bid to keep warm while they waited.
Australians had seen long distance record attempts before, but rarely had they been reported so widely and in such detail. In part, this was because Small made sure that the press had access to details that would excite the imagination of readers, including Opperman’s diet for the ride; three chickens, four-dozen oranges, a dozen wholemeal bread sandwiches, 250 grams of mint sweets and fifteen litres of milk and beef tea.40
In Geelong, about 3000 spectators waited until 10pm for Oppy to speed in, make a quick stop before remounting and pedalling on. A following ‘glee car’ provided entertainment and moral support, serenading Opperman with rousing renditions of popular tunes. ‘Show me the way to go home’, they sang, ‘I’m tired and I want to go to bed/I had a little drink an hour ago/And it’s gone right to my head.’41 The song’s relevance to the committed teetotaller was doubtful and towards the end of the ride, ragged and ‘nervy’ with fatigue, the singing started to irritate him.42
Opperman arrived at the Princess Bridge over the Yarra River in central Melbourne at 1am before riding two loops to Frankston and back. In the closing hours ‘he looked a pathetic picture, but his great will power came into play … “I shall see the twenty-four hours out if I drop”,’ he said. After dawn, he composed himself to make a final dash to St Kilda. Circling back to Albert Park Lake he nudged the total distance to 670 kilometres, 177 kilometres ahead of Edward Pearson’s Australian record and twenty-two kilometres ahead of the world record.43
While no-one wanted to diminish Opperman’s achievement, a few reports implied that comparing his ride to the pioneering Australian record setters like Pearson might be unfair. After all, Pearson’s 1910 record had been ridden on an inferior bicycle on little more than bush tracks over mountainous terrain as a part of a longer ride between Sydney and Melbourne.44 But by now the tide of praise for Opperman was unstoppable. Pearson himself even sent a gracious telegram congratulating the new record holder. Mr S.R. Lough, Victorian manager for the Dunlop Rubber Company, and past president of the League of Victorian Wheelmen accompanied Opperman from Melbourne to Frankston and back, was astounded at the performance: ‘Opperman is a super-cyclist – a human motor, I suppose there is not another cyclist in the world so versatile as Opperman. He is a champion in every sense of the word.’45
The inherent drama of the record-breaking ride not only sent the press into a tizz, it also caught the interest of the Tivoli Theatre in Melbourne. Within a week, Opperman began appearing on stage regaling audiences with ‘graphic descriptions’ of the journey, his training regime and offering advice to young riders looking to increase their speed. He also starred in a ‘novel act’, riding on a specially constructed stage track. Opperman – along with two other prominent racing cyclists Harry Moody and Fred Keefe – rode stationary racing bikes attached to special rollers that powered little cycling figures around a model track at a speed determined by each rider’s efforts. A painted backdrop of a ‘nice road setting’ gave it ‘the atmosphere of a road race.’46 The ‘cycling act’ (in which Oppy always won) was pure pantomime, only exceeded in strangeness by the theatre’s choice of warm-up acts: a comedian, vaudeville performers and a hat juggler called ‘Stetson’.47
Despite his increasing familiarity with the media, including regular radio slots, Opperman found his two-week experience of thespian life exhausting. Nevertheless, the show proved popular and presented Opperman to a very different audience from the roughhouse drinkers of the motor-paced stadium or the dedicated followers of the road racing scene. Melbourne’s theatre-goers, who included far more women than would typically attend a cycling event, gained a rare glimpse of one of Australia’s most popular athletes. They returned home after a diverse evening’s entertainment with an impression of Oppy as a humble, likeable and engaging young sportsman.
Now firmly back at the centre of Australian cycling, Opperman turned his attention to the looming DGP. He recommenced his stern daily regime of riding over 160 kilometres.