Opperman on Small

Opperman on Small
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In his autobiography "Pedals Politics and People" Sir Hubert Opperman provided an eloquent account of his relationship with and regard for Bruce Small.

"At the beginning of the season (1921), I had traded my gallant Ixion for a Glenroy manufactured by Stan Barnhill, a Malvern trader. As the backmarker in, the newly formed Malvern club, I was now on the way up in a limited suburban sense. The unwritten laws which governed such concessions qualified me for the clean swap of a used frame for a new one, and a free issue of racing tyres. I was now better equipped mentally, mechanically and physically to match the speed of the scratch men. As they swept through the tough Macedon ranges, bounced down to Woodend on the corduroy road, and triumphantly overran the leaders near Gisborne, I managed to hold their pace. It was hot and dust sprayed from the passing cars, glueing sweat to our tired bodies and thirst in our drying throats. I was still one of a bunch of six as we made the momentary additional pause before commencing the last desperate jump for the line. I was excited and pent-up but had not the slightest notion it was one which would decide my destiny and dominate the rest of my life. It was natural to follow Vic Browne, the form man of the day. I had just slipped into the shelter of his big frame, waiting to make a final challenge when an official-ignoring car split us into alarmed and cursing units. Beasley emerged first from the melee, dogged Charlie Shillito was second, and I scraped in 3rd, two places ahead of a frustrated Browne. I was not unduly disappointed. Prior to the sprint, I felt that I would be quite content to have merely finished with the Aces, but I was delighted to know that my prize was a 10 pound Sports model Malvern Star. This through the levitation- of sport was to be transformed into a magic carpet of world-wide travel and competitions. Through it I met Bruce Small-at a most opportune moment of my life.

I was 17, balanced on the verge of head-turning, favourable sporting reviews, unanticipated monetary returns, living away from my parents and commencing to feel the independence demanded by training' traveling and racing, from a normal family routine. One was at a crucial milepost of life, when a sound mature guidance was desirable and invaluable....

... He sold me on himself, and Malvern Star, during a deal which included trading the Glenroy, being fitted out with an entirely new machine, and giving me cash for the Sports model.

From that day we developed an affinity and mutual confidence woven inextricably into our sporting pattern as was Deschamps with Carpentier and Rickard and Dempsey, and a personal commercial relationship so close to him and his brothers, Frank and Ralph, it was often erroneously accepted by many as a family one. I am not from my perspective in the slightest degree fulsome when I state that he ranks in the first 20 Australians of my generation. It explains his appearance in so many future pages. As my history is consistently linked with the moral support of his presence, the infusion of his philosophy, or his practical aid, it merits some further dissection. As with most men who have become leaders, and remained in public focus over a long period, he has many formidable ingredients in his mental and physical composition. He has a deep and inexhaustible well of will power, confidence for aggressive attack, self control when provoked, patience when seeking time, decisive action in emergency, an instinct for public thought, and a remarkable flexibility and depth of mind to grasp, act, or advise on situations previously entirely foreign to him.

There is no exaggeration in the thought he has a particular characteristic which fringes the occult, as though by clairvoyance he has anticipated and avoided physical danger. If a victim, he has escaped injury. In 1926, when driving to the Melbourne Motordrome his car was turned over by a fast-driving drunken motorist. He was uninjured. In 1928 in the early morning during a rain storm at Koo-weerup rail crossing, he was a passenger in a car struck by a steam engine. At the moment of collision, he pulled the steering wheel around. The car smashed to matchwood during its 40-yards end-over tumble but he and the driver pushed their way unharmed from the debris. In 1931, following rapidly-descending cyclists during a Pyrenees stage of the Tour de France, as Manager of the Australian team, the driver skidded the open car over a Flatfeet drop, with one killed, the rest severely injured and a search made under the wreckage for the missing Australian whose departure had not been noticed. With lightning flash reflexes, he had shot out like an emergency parachute as the vehicle left the road. All of that could be credited to good fortune and agility, but the incident which crinkles the hair at the back of my head was the extraordinary evidence of E.S.P. in 1937. He was scheduled to address his Queensland branch managers' convention in Brisbane, a costly undertaking involving expenses of personnel from all parts of the State. He arrived on a Friday saying to John Proud, as he left the aircraft, "I'll see you again on tomorrow's plane". On Saturday morning a violent windstorm with rain erupted. To this day he is unable to define exactly the nagging doubts which influenced his thinking, but he began to develop an ever-growing impulse to cancel his appearance and return to Sydney. This urge developed in intensity as the afternoon meeting time grew closer. Finally, it became so urgent he telephoned the airline to be informed a seat was available on an earlier Snits aircraft. He cancelled his later booking, telephoned his State Manager, Jim Nabbs, to chair the meeting, and flew back to Sydney. When one begins to assemble all the facts and assesses his determined nature, the policy importance of his personal appearance, the monetary outlay involved, his departure within a few hours for a Conference he has personally convened, this was completely out of character and for him absolutely unprecedented. But late that evening following a turbulent return to Sydney, he heard the radio announcement that the later aircraft was missing. It was found by bushman Bernard O'Reilly with the crew and passengers, including John Proud, Bruce's companion of the upward flight, amongst them. This aircraft crash and its discovery became the subject of a dramatic, absorbing book, Green Mountains written by rescuer Bernard O'Reilly.

Embodied in him is some instinct concerning the future which induced him to arrange with the Miroir des Sports for my exclusive story of the win in the Paris-Brest-Paris 50 miles before the end, while still wheel-to-wheel with 14 others. He had a facility for creating belief in his judgement which, under pressure, made one trust him implicitly. I tried again and again after four pursuers caught me three miles from the Buffalo track in the Paris-Brest-Paris, and he called from the car, "Keep jamming, Op! They are dead" - and they were. He has versatility quite above average. With me desperately ill and vomiting from tainted meat in a sandwich on the Scottish side of the border in the Land's End-John O'Groats unpaced record, he rushed ahead, bought a primus stove and a frying pan and my tortured stomach accepted fresh grilled fish he prepared at intervals along the road. This display of initiative on an executive level so enthused the B.S.A. Directorate who followed the final section and admitted their helplessness under such a situation, that they granted their cycle parts franchise in Australia exclusively for Malvern Star; it must be they considered it in safe and capable hands.

In 1928, at the 22nd B'Ol D'or in Paris, his discernment overrode adherents to the long-time accepted riders' formation on the pacers' triplets and tandems. After several hours he altered the tandem and triplet team formula of the bigger man steering with the smaller men stream-lining down to the rear seat for normal speed competition. He reversed this, correctly maintaining it gave extra shelter for the pace follower to have the larger rider closest to him At first this was regarded as most unorthodox and 1 was the only one to benefit. But it was quickly adopted when my speed increased, and became conventional for the entire field. He received approbation from keen Continental critics for the innovation. Physically much stronger than the average, he has lifted me sitting on a bicycle high on to a lorry to avoid a surging crowd at the end of a race. Mechanically minded, he held the world's one-mile straighaway motorcycle and sidecar record in 1919. In 1923 for a dare, he flirted with cycle racing competition. From. the handicap mark he gained fastest time on the Dandenong Road and won club track events at the Melbourne Exhibition. He was exceptionally fleet of foot and rated as not being too far outside 10 seconds for 100 yards. The possessor of above average musical taste and gifted with a. strong true tenor voice, music teachers regretted he had not chosen an operatic career, while the highly rated Salvation Army National Staff Band valued him as a member and player of the euphonium.

If we span years which will be in later review and realise that from 1956, when he retired from the largest and most widespread bicycle business in Australia, he has become a successful perfectionist in land development, a 5 -year's Mayor of the Gold Coast, after a torrid campaign entered the Queensland Parliament at the age of 76 and, at 80 became Mayor once more, it will be appreciated why I have made my earlier claim concerning his status and why I was so fortunate to be pedalling tandem with him as manager, friend and business associate as we pursued our parallel objectives in life. It is difficult for me to assess his value to my cycling but from here his name must appear more often than route signs on the road to Sydney. With few exceptions when mind and muscle still demanded that indefinable stimulus of morale, he was present, for I felt that maximum could not be obtained were he not on hand. I learned to lean on his strength of character and commonsense and his amazing analysis of whatever capabilities I possessed. When flesh and spirit yielded to the insistence of sleepless hours and increasing miles, his calm judgment was a spur to greater efforts. His business acumen steered my wheels to financial returns and dissipated an athlete's dread of failing to balance a commercial future with a sporting past. In later years when one would have bargained the loneliness of political decision for any agonising stage in the Pyrenees, he could still make one feel that there was no need to walk alone.

Over half a century has elapsed between now and those uncertain days when one looked ahead as though through a glass darkly. In retrospect the years were packed full of the things which combined to make cycling competition one of the most gripping, demanding, but desirable professions to follow. The exhilaration of top form, the joy of success, the depression of defeat, the "beltings" from inexperience, the exasperation of punctures and mechanical failure, the internal gut tensions, the luxury of relaxing, the rushing, the idling, the travelling, the variation of towns, cities and countries, the balancing of finance, the bores and beautiful people, the negative and the helpful, have woven a scintillating contrasting pattern into the passing of the years, from where one finds it difficult to extract the most outstanding threads of interest."

From "Pedals Politics and People" Sir Hubert Opperman

Ó Rolf Lunsmann, 2000 How you can help Feedback