South Australian Rohan Dennis posted the top time as Jayco-AIS filled four of the top eight places in the time trial fifth stage of the Olympia's Tour in the Netherlands.

Michael Freiberg has taken over the lead of the Olympia's Tour in the Netherlands after sprinting home in second place on the most challenging of the event's six stages.

West Australian Michael Freiberg is sitting in third place overall and within striking distance of the lead with three stages remaining of the Olympia's Tour in the Netherlands.

An article about how Prospect Road is having success in attracting more people and sales to the street since Prospect council have installed pedestrian friendly policies and a 40 kph speed zone. Prospect city council well done although cycling infrastructure still needs improvement from our perspective but it is a large step forward. Bring on the Integrated movement strategy for the Adelaide CBD. The simple idea highlighted here is to produce streets which attract people not solely cars = more sales and retailers for your street which in turn attracts even more people and sales.

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It was that time of day, the golden time, late on a lazy autumn afternoon when the sun goes all liquid and everything it touches sparkles. A gentle breeze moved the orange-leafed trees and they blushed a deeper shade of red as the sun settled. In ones and twos and all by bike, people were gathering at a tennis court by a picket fence oval. It was time to drink, smoke … and play polo.

Holding steady in position using their home-spun mallets (playing polo sober is considered cheating and at no point are ones feet allowed to touch the ground), two teams, 4 players apiece, face off at either end of the court. A ref shouts “polo!” and a gunner sprints for the ball in the centre of the court. The first team to smack the rubber ball through a pair of dinky witches hats five times wins.

Every Sunday and every Thursday night under floodlights about two dozen young men (well, mostly young and mostly men) gather in Alexandria Park to form Sydney Bike Polo (SBP). The origins of bike polo can be traced back to sometime in the late 19th century in a paddock somewhere in Ireland where traditional polo players, too cash strapped to strap up a horse, fooled around on bikes. But the rules of modern hardcourt incarnation were drawn up in 1998 by bike messengers working at a tech company in Seattle.

On the SBP Facebook page in the section describing what bike polo is, the word ‘sport’ is used in inverted commas. That isn’t to say there isn’t a great deal of skill and athletic prowess and an even greater deal of kamikaze resolve required to be a bike polo player, it’s just that the blood lusting competitiveness that dictates so much of Australian sport has no place on this re-purposed tennis court.

At the core of the Australian bike polo’s bonhomie culture, and not despite it, heckling is alive and well. But unlike professional cricket or AFL, polo heckles are toothless and decidedly wittier, e.g. “Steve, you are such a bunch of sticks!” If you can’t figure that one out, prominent polo blog Goal Hole has strung together a vernacular translation dictionary.

The SBP Facebook page goes on to say, “If you are bikeless or have never played before, don’t worry. Come down and hop on a bike and we will show you how to get started. ALL WELCOME!”

That’s the thing about bike polo. Elitism is shunned. The best players don’t get around on the two-wheeled equivalent of a purebred pony. When a polo horse breaks its leg it has to be shot. As one aficionado explained to me: “You can buy readymade bikes but they’re all a bit shit. Most players put together their own.”
I like this. There is soul in a polo bike.

At this year’s National Championships in Perth SBP placed two teams in the top 4 which qualifies them for the World Championships in Geneva, Switzerland. Joining them will be 16 teams from North America, 16 from Europe and 16 from all of those other countries. For a sport born in a parking lot, a sport that is yet to form a universal governing body, yet to be professionalized or gentrified by corporate sponsors, the clash of cultures is sure to be a spectacle: In Australia bike polo has a backyard charm. In North America it’s a bloody contact sport. In Europe it’s an art.

When the sun set, the tennis court lights flickered then beamed, and another match got underway. Off-court, as the evening wore on, the focus shifted to a swap-meet for bike parts.

As I set off, I pictured the scene at sun up when tennis lessons would reclaim the court … the local society ladies arriving in white-soled runners and gravely shaking their heads at the skid-marked court and wondering …

Keen?
SBP on Facebook
Goal Hole polo blog

Words and pictures by Marcus Costello

The wild wet weather that has struck at unseasonal times over the past 18 months has not only been a frustration for fine-weather cyclists, but has also impacted heavily on roads and trails in many of Victoria’s popular parks. It has required a massive recovery program and to bring people up to date with the work done and the extent to which the most popular vents are now accessible again, Parks Victoria has produced a series of youtube videos which can been reached at the following links:

You Yangs:

Lysterfield Park:

Wilson’s Promontory:

Grampians National Park:

Joyce Currie recalls life growing up in a suburban bike shop, Duggan’s Cycles, in post-War Melbourne. These were the days when everyone aspired to ride a Malvern Star — even it was really an anonymous treadlie built from an assortment of spare parts, painted, and slapped with a Malvern Star sticker.

My father, Jack Duggan, was a true character, one of a kind, as they say. He moved to Melbourne from Castlemaine (not that far from where the fabled Mulga Bill first made bikes de rigueur in the bush) in 1937 and opened a bicycle shop in the suburb Gardenvale.
Jack had been a keen competitive cyclist in Castlemaine before the move to Melbourne.
The shop was in Nepean Highway on the bank of the Elwood Canal and he ran it for almost 40 years until his sudden death in 1976. Like all good bike shops of the day, he sold Malvern Star bicycles, Dunlop tyres and thousands of other accessory lines and spare parts. I am sure some of them in 1976 still dated from 1937.
Jack also established his own brand of reconditioned cycles, Open Road. These were a restored and repainted frame, rebuilt wheels and a mix of new and second-hand parts, according to what was available.
During World War II, Jack served in the Royal Australian Air Force. Mum had to look after the shop, but luckily for part of his war service Dad was stationed at Ballarat airport and able to catch a train to Melbourne on weekends to do the bike repairs that still came through the shop door.
The bike shop was a central part of our lives. My mother, brothers and I all worked part-time. My mother, however, was determined that my brothers would have “a good trade” away from the shop so they were apprenticed to become tool makers … but not too far away from bikes. My eldest brother Malcolm was apprenticed to Malvern Star factory which was on the corner of Clarendon Street, South Melbourne, where the Melbourne Exhibition Space now stands.
I was the only daughter, but my father still believed I should have some knowledge of bikes, bike tools and the bike business. I was able to eventually be responsible for the final assembly of a new bike. Dad also taught me to build a wheel … quite an enlightened attitude in the 50s and 60s. Looking back, the think I remember and miss is that very special bike shop smell. A mixture of grease, rubber and workshop dust.
What drew people to Jack’s bike shop was his extraordinary knowledge of everything to do with bikes. He could build or customise according to need. I remember him modifying one bike for a boy who had been born with no arms. Another chap, George Stirling, had had a very bad motorcycle accident, and left with brain injuries which had a severe impact on his movements and speech. Jack built him a full sized trike, and for years Jack kept repairing and modifying it … due to Georges’ frequent falls, there were always repairs to be done! George was difficult to understand because of his impaired speech, but Jack was always patient; always made time for George even if it meant other customers had to wait.
Growing up I had a varied stream of bikes and trikes for myself. When I was eight, I had a blue chain-driven trike with a little luggage boot on the back. No-one else had a boot on their tricycle! My first two-wheeler was an Open Road built by Dad.
At secondary school, I would often go to get my bike to ride to school only to find it missing. If Dad had had a customer looking for a second hand bike he had sold them mine. Eventually, my mother decided to put my bike beyond such dealing. She went to the Malvern Star factory and ordered me a new bike. Dad got wind of her plan, and arranged with Malvern Star to paint it especially for me, complete with my hand-painted name. Dad could never sell this one.
Dad was a shy man who never crowed about his abilities, but he had a wonderful reputation in the cycle trade. After his death, my mother received a wonderful letter from Sir Hubert Opperman, noting their long friendship and shared experiences with Malvern Star.
I often think about the changes that have occurred in the trade since Dad’s death. In the 50s and 60s the popularity of the car saw bikes mostly ridden only by school children. Dad would be astonished to see today’ groups of Lycra clad men and women pedalling the highways and bi-ways of suburbs and country, especially along Beach Road, which is very close to where the shop was located. And he would have been staggered by the technological advances; especially the new materials which have made bicycles so light but so strong. And the prices!
I recently visited the newly renovated Gove cycles in Ballarat. It smelt like Jack Duggan’s bike shop … and the memories just came flooding back.