Jamming it up at York Park

 

The 1960’s at Launceston’s York Park Speedway where six-day racing was full of thrills, spills and even some West Indian

cricketers!

 

As I reached for the bag of donuts from high above the counter, the sound of clanging metal and bodies slapping on cement arose in the background over gasps from the packed crowd. “There’s been a fall in the back straight, “race-commentator Alf Brooks blasted across the speakers. “ One, two, – three teams have come down in another sensation here at the six”.

 

I turned and darted for the fence, clinging onto the bag of donuts with sugar coated fingers after quickly devouring my first one. I weaved in and out of the crowd like a goldfish in a tank. At the fence I peered over and towards the mangled wreck of bikes strewn across the track. There was chaos everywhere with riders untangling themselves from the mess and handlers and officials dashing to the scene.

 

 

 

 

 It wasn’t unusual to flee from a food van to see a pile-up somewhere on the track – there were plenty of them. Almost every night without fail riders would come down on the infamous white cement at York Park Speedway.

 

 “The meat-wagon (Ambulance) would be up and down Invermay road all night” ex champion Tasmanian sprinter Ron Grenda explained. “Barely would it get back from the hospital to the track when another rider would need to be taken off “he said.

“The crowds loved it, it kept them going to the race” Grenda added with a wry smile.

 

 

York Park is situated in the Northern suburb of Invermay, about a twenty-five minute walk from Launceston’s CBD. In 1929 Invermay was submerged after the Tamar River’s banks burst and the worst floods in the city’s history were duly recorded.

Now known as the ‘Swamp’, Invermay is a mixture from industrial work-shops to older style housing from the 1920s’. The land is as flat as a pancake and nearby streets move up and down right under your feet with the passing of large logging trucks and tankers.

 

 The sixties in Launceston was a period of sporting starvation. Apart from local football and the odd cricket team on tour to play an exhibition game, sports fans in Northern Tasmania had little to choose from in top quality events. In 1961 Victorian cycling promoter Bill Long gathered twenty riders from around the world and brought them to Launceston to begin a twelve year history of six-day racing at its best.

 

The inaugural “Six” in 1961 was sponsored by the local paper the Examiner. They gave it great coverage with daily wraps on front and back pages and plenty of photos throughout.

Prizemoney was around $ 6,000 in total and there were plenty of support acts on the programme; flying furlong attempts, sprint championship and miss and out races.

 

Admission was cheaper than buying a loaf of bread today. Session prices varied from anywhere between 20c and $1 during the week long race. Riders raced for three sessions a day; morning session 10.30 – 1.30, afternoon session 3.30 – 5.30 and a night session from 7 – midnight.

 

In 1968 sessions were reduced to two a day with the day session from 2 till 5.30 and at night from 7.30 until the gun at 11.30pm. In each session a rider from every team must be rolling around the track. This meant that riders could take meal brakes or simply rest whilst their partners would remain on the bike. On some nights however, the racing was so frantic that handlers would often hold a rider on the lower slopes of the track, cover him with a rug whilst he tucked into a bowl of rice…and all this whilst his team-mate chased down any attacks from in-considerate riders.

 

 In 61’ crowds flocked to York Park when word had got around town that the “Six” had everything. Spills, thrills, blood and feisty Italian champions who would constantly feud with local officials and riders. Hell there was even good old fashioned stoushes along the home straight – right in front of the main grandstand!

 

Yep the Examiner “Six’ had it all, and on a warm summer’s evening in the swampy flats of Invermay, the roars from the crowd at the track would travel far and wide, rising out of the speedway and into the night.

 

Local sprinting star Ron Grenda partnered Victorian Fred Roche in the first six back in 1961. Together they stamped their authority early thanks to Grenda’s powerful sprinting and ability to chase down any teams looking to take laps away from the pair.

 

With crowds of nearly 50,000 attending the race for the week and 9,000 for the final night the “Six” had made its mark on the sporting calendar in Launceston in its first year. “Just more happened here with the fights and people falling out of trees”, Grenda explained as he browsed a collection of ‘Six’ memorabilia from his top drawer in his office.

 “I remember the night the tree had been broken and about a dozen people fell out of the tree but it didn’t stop the race”, added Grenda who now runs a real estate business in North Eastern Tasmania.

 

The morning session of the Wednesday (1961) was attended by touring West Indian cricketers; batsmen Cammie Smith and Peter Lashley and fast bowler Wesley Hall. The three became six-day addicts during their stay in Launceston. They played a match against some of the cyclists and handlers on the inside of the track, using a piece of wood for the bat and oranges and lemons as cricket balls. Hall bowled a bouncer at Keith Reynolds and the lemon landed on the track causing the riders to swerve. The three cricketers were each given a bike and rode laps with the field during a slower period. They rode about twelve laps before giving up. Before leaving to catch their plane to Sydney, Hall said “We’d sooner stop and see the end of the race than play in the next Test. We’ll be looking for the results” he added.

 

 Strebor Roberts (Sports Editor “Daily Gleaner” in Jamaica) cabled a report to his paper on the touring West Indian cricket team’s visit to Launceston and in-particular the “Six” at the York Park Speedway.

 

 Mr. Hubert Opperman as he was then known started the field of 22 riders in the 1966 Examiner “Six”.  The riders would cover around 6000 laps of York Park Speedway and prizemoney of $6,000 was on offer.

 

 A crowd of more than 3,000 filled the stands at the track half an hour prior to the commencement of racing. “Oppy” (Opperman) the Australian Minister for Immigration rode a lap of the track before the start with appreciative applause from the crowd for the Aussie cycling legend.

 

Graeme Gilmore was just nineteen years old when he rode his first Launceston Examiner ‘Six’ at York Park in 1965.“ I was fortunate to get a good partner too in the first six-day race a bloke called John Young who was a pretty renowned Australian six-day bike rider”.

 

“I wouldn’t say that I was apprehensive about going into the six-day race cause I’d ridden fairly well on the road anyway, so I knew i had the endurance, speed from the track and i’d raced against most of the bike riders anyway in the handicaps so I thought well if they can do it I can do it”, and do it he did.

 

 The race kick started Gilmore’s professional career as a cyclist and it wasn’t long before he was sprinting with the best of them on the boards of European velodromes. “Due to the fact of, you know, I suppose the good performance there and Oscar Plattner and these other Europeans seeing how I was racing, I know in later years, it was only about two years after that when I went to Europe”, said Gilmore, who still remains closely linked to six-day racing with his son Matthew, ranked among the top current riders on the European circuit.  

 

“People talk about the ‘Golden days’ and all that sort of thing – they definitely were”.

“ The bike riders that were around, the bike riders that we had here in Tasmania – like in the ‘Ramblers’ club at that time; Ron Grenda, Charlie Smith, Roly Sloane, Ian Campbell, Neville Veale, Murray Bennett, myself , Richard Daly and Peter Quill. “There’s nine blokes that were Australian champions in the one club in Launceston.”

 

“You had to know how to ride the track and there were a lot of bike riders that didn’t know how to ride the track and would attempt to follow say the likes of Grenda or myself in the sprint and the next minute they would be on their backside because they couldn’t take the corner”, added Gilmore who finished second in his first ‘six’ with John Young, just twenty-one points behind Barry Waddell and Ian Chapman  

 

The Italian riders would venture out to Australia for the summer to compete in the six-day circuit. Promoter Bill Long could syndicate out his riders to other races around the country.  One of those fiery Italians was Joe Ciavola, now the President of Cycle Sport in Victoria. Ciavola’s first ‘Six’ was in 1964. “I remember exciting racing and lots of press from the newspaper (The Examiner), I can remember overseas riders who would get on (the track) and think how the hell are we going to get around this track, it was just too flat, not enough banking”

 

“People like Sid Patterson struggled for years to win it because the track never suited him”.Patterson finally won the ‘Six’ in 1967 with Graeme Gilmore.“The race was normally won on sprints. It was always very, very hectic to win the sprints and that’s probably why a lot of people fell off especially when you had to change at the bend after the finishing line at the bell-lap. “The rider coming in was straight and the other rider was bending over trying to get around the corner, you had to transfer the speed it was always hard to do”.

 

Like many of his peers, Ciavola spent some time on the cement at York Park. “I failed to get around the corner one night in the last sprint of the night, another one I blew a tyre in the sprint and came down pretty hard and another I can remember breaking my shoulder one year”. 

 

“Quite a lot of us used to live at the Bridge Hotel (opposite the track), and we used to walk to and from the track”, explained Ciavola with a look that had me thinking perhaps that wasn’t such a good thing. “There were some funny nights at the Bridge when we used to get back from the racing, I can remember some of those parties were still going when I used to get up the next morning. They used to have one big room where they used to have the parties, most of them were handlers but there were some riders still there”

 

Ciavola describes the night the lights went out at York Park. “I was …ing myself. The donut-stand had lights and that was on the other side of the track, they had their own lights and I thought Gee, there’s the donut stand -  I should be doing a left-hand-turn around here somewhere’, he laughed.

 

At York Park you had to steer the bike around, you had to turn the front wheel. On well banked velodromes the shoulders and the behind will assist in the steering, along with the banked corners taking you around the track. So riders more accustomed to the banked bends of interstate and international velodromes were forced to turn into the corners at York Park.

 

“A lot of guys didn’t know how to do that, it took me years to work that out”, Ciavola explains about steering the bike around York Park. With the challenge of different bike handling skills at high speeds, changing partners amongst a speeding bunch and the dangers of clipping pedals or skipping back wheels. The field of the “Six’ had enough to contend with, let alone the lights going out during racing!

 

During the afternoon sessions when there were lulls in the racing (some say there was never such a thing), Ciavola would leave his bike at the fence and join a spectator in puffing on a cigarette whilst the field rolled around.

 

Barry Waddell would ride laps without a chain, John Tressider would ride backwards around York Park. Oscar Plattner would ride around on his back-wheel or on his front- wheel doing handstands. Racing in the afternoon sessions was often beneath a blistering Tasmanian summer sun and riders would use all sorts of measures to combat the heat. Geoff Molloy used a cabbage leaf under his crash helmet to keep him cool during the afternoon’s racing at York Park Speedway. On some days the cement track became white hot and team handlers were able to cook eggs on it!

 

“The better riders on that track that I remember distinctly that really rode well: I thought (Barry) Waddell was always good on the track, Gilmore was good on that track, Grenda was always good on that track – always”, explained Ciavola still puffing on a cigarette as he remembered the six looking through a window from his home in Melbourne’s northern suburb of Eltham. At that moment somehow I couldn’t imagine him being that fiery.

 

Frank McCaig was another rider who instantly connected with the atmosphere of York Park. “I just got contracted by Bill Long, he offered me a ride and I went down and raced and loved it so i kept going back”.“Probably the highlight of my cycling career was going to Tassie to ride the six at York Park, and the Tassie Carnivals - it was great!”

 

 “The most vivid memories were the big crowds, the quality of the riders and how hard the race was”.“I like the track because it was similar to Bendigo; a lot of people didn’t like it because they were brought up on velodromes”.“It was dangerous though, the bends weren’t steep enough”, he added.McCaig rode the ‘Six’ on three occasions, each with a different partner; Tony Kelleher, Frank Atkins and Bob Panter.“Crowd wise Tassie was the best, there was more atmosphere at York Park. I’d never seen crowds like that in any Madison or six-day race”.“When I went there the first year, I couldn’t believe how the people supported it”.

 

McCaig has been an organiser of the Bendigo International Madison since the early seventies, and has developed the event into one of the country’s leading track cycling carnivals. Held on the Victorian Labour Day long week-end in March each year, the carnival attracts some of not only Australia’s leading track cyclists, but international stars as well. He now takes a back-seat to one of his sons, Rick, in putting the event together but still takes a keen interest in cycling both track and road and sees a future for Madison style racing.

 

Most riders used to ride a 52x16 gear on their bikes, if you were a stronger rider you may have gone for a 53x16. There was no clicking in shoes to cleats or rolling around with disc wheels, strap in toe clips and the old black stack-hats were in fashion and wheels glistened under the old York Park lights. Advertising on rider’s clothing was as far away as the mainland to locals. It was a skill for young fans to be able to judge where the resting rider would roll around to on the fence, eager to grab an autograph and perhaps a word of encouragement for their favourite rider.

 

“The other thing that stuck in my mind too was the railway work-shop at the back of the track, during the day at lunch-time all the workers used to sit up on the roof and watch the race”, explained the quietly spoken McCaig.With riders traveling form all parts of Australia and abroad to race the ‘six’, a little bit of home sickness could well have played a part on their performances, but support from family and friends was never too far away. Local postman “Handsome” Harry Elmer would ride his bike into York Park Speedway to deliver letters to the riders. The track is on Harry’s round and he was a sight for sore eyes with letters of encouragement for the teams.

 

McCaig rode against many great riders during the ‘six’.” In the years that I rode I thought that (Bob) Whetters and (Keith) Oliver were terrific, blokes like Waddell and Patterson were good”.Keith Oliver made the ‘six’ his own in its final years. He won it four times; 1968 with Bob Ryan; 1969 with Bob Whetters; 1971 with Ian Stringer; and in 1972 again with Bob Whetters, this was to be the last of the six-day races on the track.Ironically in 1969 at the local Majestic theatre in Launceston, “Oliver”, starring Oliver Reed and Harry Secombe, was playing whilst another Oliver – Keith, was dominating down the road at the York Park Speedway.

 

The old cement track of the York Park Speedway was on Invermay Road adjacent to the local football ground also entitled York Park. Today the football ground has been transformed into one of Australia’s finest and assumed a new identity as Aurora Stadium.  The cycling track however has been demolished and bits and pieces now lie all over Launceston. With the advancement of television and other sports becoming more prominent in the region, it became increasingly harder to sustain the interest and public support that had followed the race in the sixties. The depth of the teams’ deteriorated and enticing riders, the likes that had slung each other into the action in front of huge crowds’ years before was becoming a struggle.

 

With the final race held in 1972 before moderate crowds and a sinking media exposure, the end was nigh. No longer would the roars of the crowd or the dulcetones of Alf Brooks be heard hovering over the flats of Invermay; the sound of metal on metal and body on cement as riders bit the dust at speeds not even some makes of cars could travel in those years.

 

Sure those sounds are long gone and so too is the track and all its characteristics. But the memory of the Launceston Examiner ‘Six’ is still alive and well today in the minds of many a great rider who graced the track there.

My fingers may not be coated in sugar anymore, but i can still smell those donuts now, and reflect on a discipline of cycling – the six-day race, that we may never see here in Australia again.

Published in Bicycling Australia magazine Sept/Oct edition 2006