plains of Carrum, Kirkham was tall and angular, with a soldier’s bearing. A man of ‘temperate habits’, when he wasn’t riding he disappeared into the crowd. On the bike he ‘epitomised rhythm’ and possessed a seemingly indefatigable power, able to finish epic rides in the same composed and efficient manner that he had started them.
Small sent Opperman to train with Kirkham in 1922, hoping for a rapid transfer of knowledge from the legend to the protégé.21 Kirkham taught Opperman how to manoeuvre safely within the bunch, how to seek out shelter from behind bigger riders and how to avoid rapid changes of pace when taking his turn on the front. Kirkham schooled Opperman in sprinting over unstable roads, picking the best lines through rough or muddy surfaces. He also taught him useful tricks such as how to use a pothole in the road to dislodge a rider who was ‘sitting on’ (drafting in his slipstream) by suddenly forcing them to slow down and face the wind. Opperman greedily absorbed all of Kirkham’s experience. This gave him an immeasurable advantage over his rivals and accelerated his development.
The most important advice Kirkham gave Opperman was not about racing at all. It was not intended to sound trite, but when he explained that ‘you are never as tired as you think you are’ he neatly captured a truism of athletic performance; that the greatest barrier to success would not be the strength of his muscles, but the power of his mind.22 Although the idea of being able to push through the deepest tiredness was still an abstract concept to the young rider, this lesson from one of the country’s most experienced riders would later help him overcome the most desperate psychological battles with exhaustion and fatigue.
A quiet pioneer of elite cycling in Australia, Kirkham died in tragic circumstances. Knocked down by a drunken motorist during a race in 1926, his thighbone was shattered. Worse still, after he was struck he had been left wet and exhausted by the roadside and contracted pleurisy. The disease lingered and led to his premature death in 1930. He was forty-four years old. For the close-knit cycling community, it was a sobering reminder of how dangerous road racing could be for even the toughest of men.23
Just as the people he mixed with were utterly absorbed with cycling and bike racing, Opperman, too, had been undergoing his own transformation. The simple act of riding, when exploring new roads on a training ride or even while racing, nurtured his sense of wonder at the world around him, opening ‘vistas of interest’ with time to ‘study and ponder’. The bicycle not only extended the distances he could travel and the speeds he could achieve, it had become an extension of his self and ‘represented as much as [his] heart or oxygen’. When riding he became a fusion of blood, flesh and steel. In this cybernetic state, he felt more energetic, more capable and more alive. The bicycle, he said, had become a ‘basic element for living’, indistinguishable from other physical or mental needs.24
Throughout 1922 Opperman juggled his full-time job and a demanding schedule of races. Increasingly, he started to think about the possibilities of a life completely dedicated to riding and racing bicycles. In addition to the hours of training he needed to undertake, more prosaic matters started to intrude on the delicate balance he had struck between working and competing. Opperman rode as a professional and as his victories amassed so too did his winnings. The conditions of employment in the public service required that additional income be declared, for fear that any external source of finance might compromise a government employee’s impartiality. For a time Opperman was forced to engage in the charade that he raced only for trophies. But as Opperman’s name (in addition to his prize winnings) began to appear more frequently in the newspapers, the subterfuge became difficult to maintain. In November, he reached a crossroads.
One of the more prestigious (and well-paid) races on the professional circuit was the Launceston to Hobart. When Opperman’s boss denied him leave to compete, Bruce Small suggested that he quit and join Malvern Star. He would be expected to earn his salary in the shop, but he would be given time to train and any race winnings would be his to keep. It was time to decide between accepting a more modest cycling career within the confines of his secure job and exploring his full athletic potential with the backing of Small’s emerging business. His heart knew the answer. But he feared that Grandma Wil might not be supportive. He told Small he would talk it over with her before making a decision.
At first, Wil resisted her grandson’s impassioned arguments. After all, she had watched her own hard-working son roam across the country trying to sustain his small enterprises with varying degrees of success. Now, her grandson was proposing to give up a reliable and safe career for a life racing bicycles, working in a still emerging small business run by a man she had never met. The astute Wil also knew that the life of a racing cyclist could be a fickle one. Beyond the glamour of the podium, professional cycling exposed young men to danger, drugs, and a cast of nefarious characters looking to involve vulnerable young riders in gambling, corruption and race fixing.
She refused to give her blessing until she had met Mr Small. Luckily when Wil and Bruce eventually met they got along famously. Small was at his self-assured and charming best and promised to nurture, and not exploit, young Hubert’s great talent. Wil was also impressed by the twenty-six-year-old’s business acumen and his prediction that bicycles would continue to be popular, even as more cars began appearing on Melbourne’s roads. This wasn’t just another marketing pitch for him to put over an old lady. You could see it on the streets and read about it in the papers. Motor vehicles were still the preserve of the rich with less than one in ten people owning a car in the early 1920s. Bicycles – not cars – still inspired wild enthusiasm both as a symbol of human potential and as a device that might revive a generation exhausted by war.
The First World War re-energised popular fondness for the bicycle and its role in developing the ‘national physique’. Social reformers, religious leaders, suffragists and eugenicists all embraced bicycles as a conduit to a more vital, healthy and disciplined lifestyle. Exercise, toned muscles, rising heart rates and expanding chests all created a palpable sense that the bike was indeed the technological marvel that humanity had been waiting for. The bicycle ‘puts new vigour into the human frame’, claimed the Adelaide Mail, ‘and from the very urgent need of health in these strenuous times [is] all the more important to humanity’.25
Beyond any talk of a golden age of bicycle retailing, Small’s proposed weekly salary of three pounds ten shillings (fifty percent more than Opperman’s public service pay packet) helped dispel any lingering reservations Wil may have had. To allay his own anxiety about leaving the security of the public service, Opperman negotiated twelve months of unpaid leave during which time he could return to his old job should things not go to plan. Shortly after, he steamed across Bass Strait to contest his first interstate event, the 190-kilometre Launceston to Hobart, then the richest and most respected cycle race in Tasmania.
At a time when more conventionally strong men with large, powerful bodies won long bike races, the Tasmanian press doubted the prospects of the slightly built Victorian. Some noted his solid performance in the Warrnambool to Melbourne, yet the truth was his rivals did not see him coming. He started from what was called ‘virtual scratch’ (a modest handicap of nine minutes), but gave nearly an hour away to the lower graded riders. The day was fine and sunny, the roads in good condition. He narrowly avoided a field of tacks that had been ‘scattered freely’ over the road outside of Launceston by a road-race hating ‘malefactor’.26 He dropped his co-marker after sixteen kilometres and ‘mowed down a strong field’.27 Twenty miles from the finish, Opperman punctured. His prospects looked bleak until a young boy, riding in the opposite direction, saw the rider in difficulty and offered him his bicycle. Opperman jumped on the undersized bike and either stood in the saddle or sat and rode bandy-legged to complete the race. Confusion about how many laps the finishers were required to ride of the Newtown sports field spoiled the finish, but Opperman’s fourth place with fastest time was undisputed. The Tasmanian press were stunned. ‘It seemed almost incredible that such a youth should achieve the distinction’, exclaimed the Examiner.28
In an article titled ‘A wonderful lad’ the Mercury became the first newspaper to recognise that Australian cycling fans might be witnessing the emergence of a special, maybe even exceptional, talent:
Looking at Opperman, who made fastest time, one marvelled at the fact that such a slim, spare young man possessed the stamina and energy for a contest such as a great road