“I think I can, I think I can”, I kept telling myself, gasping for air as i laboured up a climb on the back roads near Longford in Northern Tasmania. My legs were praying for the comfort of the couch at home and my mind wandering into a dimension that some of the sport’s best riders find themselves in when they reach the slopes of mountain ranges in Europe.
I was about to ‘hit the wall’, a term in road cycling used when riders reach a point on a climb and realise they have nothing left in the tank. The energy levels are low and finding the strength to grind the cranks over has become a monumental effort.
I wondered, now that I reached the dreaded wall, and on a hill that resembled a cat beneath the doona on a cool night rather than a gut-busting climb towards the heavens, the part that these race defining moments play in Australian cycling?
In France they call the high mountains Les juges de paix:’conciliation magistrates’. It’s a fascination of the sport; how do these warriors get over those intimidating climbs? Its one thing to ride up them at a leisurely pace, being able to take in views and admire the surrounds, but to actually race up them!
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One of the pioneers of road cycling in Australia was the ‘Tour of the North’, held in Northern Tasmania from 1954 to 1991; A race that was regarded at the time as the hardest, most gruelling going around.
The Tour was more often than not decided on the final day’s morning stage between St.Helens and the old tin mining township of Rossarden. There was one major hurdle before reaching Rossarden however, the brutal ascent of Pepper Hill.
Pepper Hill is 2.3 kilometres in length and rises to 2,500 feet. Prior to 1973, riders struggled up the climb on a dirt road! In the days of the heavier steel framed bikes, toe-clips and without the team assistance which we see today; Pepper Hill would have been a nightmare for riders.
The climb is infamous in the history of Australian road cycling. It is said that the first thing asked by riders stepping off the plane at Launceston Airport to ride the Tour for the first time was always questions on Pepper Hill – it had a reputation for breaking hearts.
Former Western Australian Murray Hall is one rider who has indifferent memories of the climb. In 1981 Hall took a four-minute lead into the final day that included scaling Pepper Hill. “I was a little lucky in that the ride out to the base of Pepper was like riding to a funeral” he recalled. “Everyone either new from previous experience or rumor that there was going to be some pain inflicted, and they weren't in a hurry to get there”.
Hall’s handler on the Tour, Tex Delanty, had come across a 24” cog the night before the stage, “I really believed he was having a lend of me, I couldn't believe for one minute that there was a "Hill" in this country that required a 42 x 24 combination to get up it”. (42 were the smallest you could get back then.)
“I remember passing some blokes with their bike shoes off and walking”, Hall remembers. Murray Hall went onto win the Tour that year and climbed the beast in-front of his proud father Ernie, “I freewheeled into the car park over the crest of the hill where my father was waiting, and knowing it was useless trying to have a conversation with me, he just held up his thumbs which meant I had survived Pepper Hill”.
Former Victorian rider, John Trevorrow, has raced on some of the steep climbs of Europe, and has ‘great memories’ of Pepper Hill. “It was the toughest test around in the early days”, he exclaimed.
“It was so steep that one year I can remember Bob Farley starting the stage with a pair of jogging shoes in his back pocket”, he recalls of a well prepared Farley, unsure whether he would make the climb on two-wheels.
In 1968, only five riders managed to ride to the top. Former Australian Road Champion, Ron Jonkers, is said to have dis-mounted his bike, handed it to a youngster on the side of the road to push to the top, whilst Jonkers casually tucked into a juicy leg of chicken!
“I don’t climb brick walls”, he said. The first to the top of Pepper Hill would be awarded King of the Mountain points as well as being presented with a trophy to the value of $15 by the Rossarden Club.
For Trevorrow as an eighteen year old it was all about ‘conquering the monster’ and then trying to take out the tour. He managed to do that in 1979 when the race had become Australia’s first ever Pro-Am Tour.
He had become the new tour leader on the penultimate stage and there was only one thing that could prevent him from finally winning the Tour of the North – Pepper Hill.
“I knew that I would have serious problems getting over it but I was going to give it my all”, he recalled. “We got to Pepper Hill and there was a young Kiwi in the main group who was a classy climber and he put the hammer down as soon as we started the climb.
In no time there was just three of us left; the young Kiwi, Wayne Roberts and me. I knew that if I dropped off one bike length I would lose the tour to Wayne and I suffered like I have never suffered before”.
Trevorrow rode to victory into Launceston and onto the Tour of the North honour board, and so became another to have tamed the beast of North-East Tasmania – Pepper Hill.
Of-course hill climbs can vary in gradient and length as well as road surface; changing weather conditions on the higher slopes can make climbing uncomfortable.
Often the short steep ones like Pepper Hill in Tasmania can be the most difficult. They don’t allow you to ride yourself into a rhythm and climb at your own pace, unlike the longer and more monotonous climbs that hold an average gradient.
Similar to those like Mt.Hotham, a 30 kilometre haul to the top which can take anything up to one and a half hours to ride and varies in gradient between four and eight percent.
There is an exception however - Mt.Baw Baw in Victoria. Baw Baw is more accustomed to skiers and snow-boarders that converge on the slopes of the mountain when the plateau is covered with snow between June and September each year.
It rises to 1,567 metres (5,141ft) above sea level and is as steep as they come. It winds its way with countless corners switching back and forth making it difficult for riders to find a rhythm.
The Herald Sun Tour has journeyed to Mt.Baw Baw on two occassions. In 2004 Victorian rider David McKenzie was in the tour leader’s yellow jersey approaching the foot of the mountain.
With one stage remaining and holding onto a 43 second lead, Baw Baw was the only hurdle preventing McKenzie from the tour victory.
“I had a 29” cog on the back and used it almost the whole way up. I think I finished tenth on the stage, so it wasn’t like I had a bad day, it is just a bad, brutal climb”, he recalled, grimacing at the memory of the mountain.
“Mt Baw Baw to this day is one of the toughest climbs I’ve been up in the world, I’ve been over some beauties in the Giro (Tour of Italy) and a host of smaller tours around the world, but The relentless climbing of Baw Baw and the consistent average gradient of around thirteen percent made it so hard to get into a rhythm”. McKenzie said.
In the 2002 Herald Sun Tour another Victorian, Baden Cooke, needed to survive Mt.Baw Baw to win the race. He did, but only after suffering hyperventilation at the finish, describing the mountain as “The toughest hill climb stage” he had ever ridden.
Perhaps one of the more defining moments of Australian road cycling took place on a mountain stage back in Tasmania in the summer of 1998. The scene was Mt.Wellington overlooking Hobart, and a young Cadel Evans was powering towards the stage victory and overall Tour of Tasmania honours.
Sitting in a car just ahead of Evans on the mountain was Tour Director John Trevorrow. “I can still remember, as if it were yesterday”, he recalls. “In a car travelling next to me were a couple of guys who know a little about bike racing in Phil Liggett and Phil Anderson”.
All three realised they were witnessing something special as Evans proceeded to drop Aussie Tour de France stage winner from the year before, Neil Stephens, and a well regarded New Zealander climber in Brendan Vesty.
“I said to Phil Liggett, ‘How good is this’, and he replied, ‘This kid could win the Tour de France one day’, Trevorrow recalled.
Earlier in the day the tour had departed Port Arthur, some 130 kilometres from the finish at the summit of Mount Wellington. It was the penultimate stage of the tour and where the race would be won or lost.
Seasoned pro-rider Neil Stephens was the tour leader, holding onto a nineteen second lead over Evans. A group of twelve riders had broken away from the peloton by the time the race had reached Hobart’s CBD.
In the group were Stephens, King of the Mountains leaderVesty, and Evans. Upon reaching Fern Tree at the foot of the mountain, the group was reduced to the above-mentioned trio.
It was here where the twenty-year-old Evans let rip. In one particular section of the climb he put 30 seconds into the gap on Stephens and Vesty in less than three kilometres.
Stephens recalls the attack. “I went with him and remember thinking that it was hurting, but felt that he could not keep that pace up for too long. I ended up getting blown off his wheel a couple of kilometres later”, he remembers.
“Dr Dave Martin had mounted an SRM on my bike throughout that particular Tour of Tassie and still comments on the high sustained power that I put out on the Mt Wellington climb; Proof that I was going very well and also proof that we were starting to see glimpses of a future champion in Cadel Evans, who had just blown me out of the water”.
It is said that Evans reached speeds of 27 km/h on the steeper parts of the mountain. A mountain that is frequently covered in snow, sometimes even in summer!
On the summit winds have been recorded at sustained speeds of more than 150 km/h, with rare gusts of 200 km/h!
Evans turned a nineteen second deficit into a three-minute; forty-one second lead going into the final day and subsequently won the tour. It was the first time he had ever worn the yellow jersey as a tour leader.
The win of not only the tour but the stage to Mt.Wellington was special for Evans, he dreamed of riding the Tour de France as a young child, ‘That’s the ultimate in cycling’ he said back in 1998.
1996 Tour of Tasmania winner, Stephen Hodge, described the mountain stage finish in Hobart as ‘A real European stage’. A stage where possibly one of this countries greatest cycling performers acted out his first scene in his dream of winning the Tour de France.
