Official jibber jabber
2007 marked the third running Goulburn to Citi Corporate Charity ride. What started as the brainchild of Goulburn’s second favourite son (just behind the Big Merino appropriately named not only for its size but also its striking resemblance to a merino), Simon Poidevin. In that time it has gone from a ragtag bunch known as the Struggle Street Seven to three teams representing Citi, Macquarie Bank and the Campbelltown Catholic Club - [spot the not-for-profit organisation].
While everyone will vouch to the good times and challenges associated with riding 160km over rolling hills in sometimes trying conditions, one fact stands heads and shoulders above all else….In its three years the Goulburn to Citi has raised in excess of $250,000 for its selected charities. The beneficiaries include Odyssey House (drug, alcohol, gambling related support), Kids of Macarthur Health Foundation and the Goulburn’s Palliative Care and Oncology Support Group.
The way the wheels spun
Waking up at the Lilac City (sic) Motor Inn at 4.30am on Sunday morning. The temperature outside was -2 degrees. A fact confirmed by my right foot as it rested against the window pane…A unique albeit unusual feature of the less than feng-shui design of the rooms. Inside, it was -1 degree despite the best efforts of the reverse cycle heating. In hindsight the brand name should have been a clue, Placebo…It had all the right noises but none of the puff but I sure did feel better about the fact that something was humming…
The starting line was at Goulburn’s Greengrocer. The aptly named Greengrocer has the unique distinction of being Goulburn’s only green grocer catering for vegetable loving, pizza eating, coffee drinking, bike buying, pasta dining, Tour de France highlight watching, banana munching Southern Tableland cycling community. Dinner was a pizza/pasta combo that saw the likes of our pastel loving David Butts get stuck into the cold spaghetti cold spaghetti. Importantly, for those blessed with natural woollen leg warmers like Oliver Ansted it provided an opportunity to buy up on another layer for the cold morning…Unless of course you happen to be the paper boy, Ben Lowe, who turned the Goulburn Financial Review into a Chesty Bond.
Once rolling, the scenery was picture perfect. The sight of clouds lying in the valleys through frozen eyeballs was only matched by the vision of our police escort pulling up in the middle of the freeway to drag roo sandwiches off the bitumen by their tails.
Coming up on the first big rise of the ride came the call. “CHAIN!!!”. Arguably the world’s largest cyclist, Warwick “Chainsaw” Waugh moved to the side of the road. His reinforced, industrial strength chain in tatters, buckling under the stress of the 6″8, 130kg mountain goat. With the words of The King still resonating in my ears, “When someone gets a flat or has a problem we stop. We ride as team”, three of us stopped marvelling not only at the sight of the damaged chain but also the sight of the peleton riding off into the sunset. Tom [reportedly capable of riding at his max heart rate for 4 days] Reid, with the unfair advantage of actual ability, floated back to main group sans problem. Mike “Alpha” Betar and myself representing normal people simply had to tough it out in the ANZAC spirit.
There were plenty of people that impressed throughout the ride for a variety of reasons but none more so than Hansie “Cocoon Visch. He rides over close to 23,000km per week, has a resting heart rate slower than a Nora Jones tune, can handle any terrain and can stick with the best of them. Rather than wish that I could ride like that when I’m his age, I wish I could ride like that now.
An hour or so after breaking his first chain, the Kensington farmer, Warwick Waugh snapped another one. Learning quickly from that first experience of seeing Warwick stranded by the side of the road with broken chain in hand, we did what any Wallaby would do….we ignored him and rode on….and somehow he still made it back before the second group.
Pat Farmer did a commendable job combining no sleep, an endurance event and as he suggested stopping often to run through How To Vote cards.
As we entered Picton a sign read, “Picton – Rural Living”…A poignant reminder in case the cows didn’t give it away.
The ride itself was not treated as a race. That was however, until David “Anchorman” Cobcroft spotted the SBS camera crew in the chopper above with 5km to go and it was all go. In what he claims was nothing more than a branding opportunity to a national television audience he made a break for it. An incredibly brave move not only for the fact that sprints of this nature usually take place only in the last 100m of a race but also because the last 5km into Camden is largely uphill. Needless to say that with 4.75km to go Cobby regained his clarity of vision.
The finish itself is largely irrelevant. Partly because the ride was really about the funds raised ensuring that real winners are the charities but mainly because I came last.
Not quite satisfied with the distance Michael Neal was last seen tapering off on the M5 back into Sydney…clearly identifiable by his Explorer socks over his shoes humming Hooley Dooley songs. Joel Wright meanwhile spent a large part of the ride mentally preparing a CV for the Hooley Dooleys but by Camden acknowledged that a lack of appreciation of pastel colours would always work against him.
Remember the good old days? Those days before dogs needed to wear jumpers and could walk for themselves, when debt was bad and when you could watch the Tour de France without having to first endure a swarmy French cook explore the culinary mediocrity of that part of regional France where the Tour just happens to be passing through.
Welcome to confession season in the colourful world of professional cycling. The list of big names that have finally remembered what they did in the mid-90s continues to grow. “Oh I see the confusion. You were asking me about E.P.O. and I was talking about the band E.L.O. No, I definitely took to E.P.O.” 
