When I took up cycling in the mid-eighties, the rules on participation were simple.
If you wanted to represent your province – and by extension your country should isolation come to an end – you had to be a licenced rider.
To achieve this, you joined a club that was affiliated to the provincial body, which in turn fell under the auspices of the national entity and so on.
The licenced road racing season stretched roughly from April to October and I suspect the reasoning was to fit in with the Europeans who, of course, raced in summer.
Without indoor facilities to speak of in the South Africa of those days, it also made sense to schedule the track season for summer when the weather interfered least.
As a roadie (as opposed to a track rider, not mountain biker) I never really saw the logic. We trained while the least number of daylight hours were available and raced when the weather was at its most gnarly.
Races took place on Saturday afternoons and anyone in my valley (aka the Windy City) will tell you that is when the wind is at its most relentless.
The timeslot also meant you missed the weekly round of televised Currie Cup matches on SAUK/SABC, which started at three-thirty. And then you were probably too tired to enjoy the traditional braai afterwards.
The administrators couldn’t make life more difficult for you if they tried.
There were other bits and bobs that came with the privilege of holding a valid SACF (South African Cycling Federation back then) licence.
Non-conforming kit, for instance, could easily lead to a DNS. Socks had to be snow white and shorts, black, were only allowed to display the club name and sponsor – and a prescribed size too.
I’ve seen riders racing with socks turned inside-out and with masking tape covering inappropriate branding.
Every week, you had to show your licence to the same admin lady upon entry. The rules were clear in this regard and they referred to it as “no licence, no ride”.
If you ran afoul of the regulations, you could’ve easily ended up watching rugby instead of racing.
There was even a law that allowed the commissaire to stop the race if he was of the opinion that we were not “racing” hard enough. This actually happened once and, after a stern talking to, we were sent on our way.
We were proud to be licenced riders. That laminated card was proof that you were not a fun rider and one could even argue that it was a symbol of status.
Not that we minded fun rides, which were generally organised by churches, schools and non-profits as annual fundraisers.
You were allowed to take part in these when they did not collide with the province’s sanctioned racing programme and you could actually win money instead of merely racing for status.
Apart from these bazaar fun rides, as I liked to call them, there were two really big ones: the EP Herald in my hometown and the Argus in Cape Town.
In the pre-digital era, the printed press was keen to get involved as participants bought newspapers to see their finishing positions and photos, which upped circulation.
Do-good organisations such a Rotary would provide manpower to run events for a cut of the profits and we provided the racing. But, for us, these two fun rides merely signalled that the real racing season was around the corner.
Largely because of the highly regulated nature of licenced racing, the governing bodies were always at odds with the public. Most people were not concerned with representing their province or country – they simply wanted to ride and have a dice.
So we started seeing the emergence of what I called super fun rides, which were much less descriptive and catered to the masses.
Numbers meant money in the pockets of organisers (mostly entrepreneurs who saw the gaping gaps in the market that the bureaucratic bodies were blind to) and with money came power.
As they accumulated more of both, the governing bodies were left with less of both.
Power struggles not too dissimilar to those that we are witnessing in the national assembly ensued and it all turned ugly at one point.
Last year, one of these super fun rides went to court and won the right to stand independent from the regulatory body.
Therefore, when the CSA (formerly the SACF) sent out a communiqué in February referring to “UCI rule 1.2.019 pertaining to forbidden races” – which basically says that full licenced members may not compete in non-sanctioned events – I suspected that things were about to turn nasty again.
At the time of writing, the mud-slinging had just begun and I was hopeful that common ground could be found to ensure the participation of our top pros against international stars like Mark Cavendish.
Not unlike our country, I reckon the answer lies in good governance that individual entities aspire to be a part of. Questionable governance always leads to a strong opposition.
