When tiny 12-year-old Lawrence Whittaker set out on his epic quest to ride from Durban to Pietermaritzburg and back on his ponderous Raleigh bike, he had no idea he was about to embark on a journey that would last a lifetime.
The Herculean task had been set by his father to determine whether or not his son was really serious about this strange pastime of cycling.
“My dad was tearing his hair out because I showed little or no interest in school sport,” recalls Lawrence.
“I had tried everything but was a year younger than everyone else in the class and on top of that I was, and still am, fairly short.”
So Whittaker senior said that if his offspring could manage the close on 180km round-trip, he would buy him a racing bike.
Bunking school for the day, Lawrence completed the feat on his ancient set of wheels and came back to collect his hard-earned reward.
“My dad bought me a Cinelli hand-made Italian racing bike, pure white in colour with Campagnolo components throughout.
“On that, I won my first race and never looked back.”
Just four years later he would set the provincial record as the youngest rider to win the KwaZulu-Natal open senior road title – by a full three and a half minutes.
At age 17, Lawrence once again showed his natural endurance ability when he ran his first and only marathon in a shade under three hours.
“I was cycling fit but hadn’t done any running and when I woke up the next morning I couldn’t move my legs, they were so sore. Never tried that again!”
While he also tried his hand at track cycling (“I fell off a lot!”), his first love was clearly road racing.
As a young climber, Lawrence powered his way to a win in a hill climb championship in Zimbabwe one year. He beat Hugo Landsberg, a Rapport Tour runner-up, in the process.
After taking a short break from cycling to concentrate on finishing his law degree at the University of Cape Town, Lawrence returned to the sport in 1977.
By the end of that year, the City Cycling Club rider had notched up his Western Province colours and went on to win the 1978 provincial road title.
That same year, he would claim perhaps the most memorable win of his career – the very first Argus Tour – and open the annals of the world’s largest individually timed road race.
“All the registered riders wanted to ride the Argus because it was around the Peninsula and we hadn’t raced that route before.
“We also knew that being sponsored by the newspaper meant for a change that we would actually get some coverage for our sport.”
The inaugural event featured two races – a fun ride for non-registered riders without helmets and a serious race for the registered riders, which started 10 minutes later.
“Our insurance cover wouldn’t allow us to ride with the non-registered riders and, although we started behind, we caught most of them before the halfway mark.”
Lawrence’s major opposition on the day came from sprinter Wimpie van der Merwe.
“He’d just finished the Rapport Tour where he held the yellow jersey for a number of days. I knew I was stronger on the climbs but he was very strong on the flats.”
The two broke away just before Chapman’s Peak but it was Lawrence who surprisingly outsprinted his rival to the line in Camps Bay.
“It was a great feeling. My wife, Julia, also took part and I then cycled back to Hout Bay and rode back to the finish with her.”
The race went on to become a family affair for the Whittakers and their three children with both of their sons – Craig and Keith – having achieved sub-three-hour finishes.
“As I recollect, Craig finished 52nd overall when he was 19 and Keith was in the top 300 at a similar age.”
These days, Lawrence occasionally rides the renamed Cape Town Cycle Tour and has even participated in the mountain bike event – albeit with a completely different mindset.
“My only cycling ambitions are to enjoy riding on an almost daily basis but I really have no wish to compete.
“I guess because I started racing from such a young age I have no interest in this age-category racing but perhaps that’s also because I’m so involved with my work.
“Perhaps when I retire it’ll be different . . .”
His legal career has certainly been inextricably linked to his sporting one and for him it was a fairly natural transition from competitor to administrator.
As a practising commercial attorney, Lawrence had dealt with everything from sponsorship contracts to protecting brand names and intellectual property in events.
“I’ve also chaired disciplinary enquiries for sportsmen, including cyclists, and have in the past drawn up constitutions for various sporting bodies, including the Pedal Power Association and Cycling South Africa.”
At age 32, he joined the PPA committee and went on to hold the chair for more than a decade.
“When I started, PPA had about 500 members and the Argus had maybe 2 000 entries. When I left PPA, it had 25 000 members and the race had over 30 000 riders.”
Lawrence’s role was to ensure that the Argus wasn’t lost to Rotary or any other organisation as there was competition for ownership and control.
He therefore put on his legal robes and drew up the trust deed for the controlling Cycle Tour Trust, which, he says, “married together the interest of Rotarians and cyclists and guaranteed the autonomy of the event”.
It was during this time that he also became aware of the need to create a unified national body for cycling due to the antagonism between the old SA Cycling Federation and the growing PPA.
“I realised that a unified body was going to be greatly beneficial and I believed that as PPA chairman I should lead and manage the process. Hence I drew up the constitution and conducted most of the negotiations.”
In 2003, Lawrence became the first president of the newly created Cycling South Africa and held that position for two years.
He says it was not long enough to achieve what he intended for the organisation, including consolidating the relationship between CSA and PPA, setting up a simple licensing system for fun riders, creating proper structures and getting good coaches and training for elite athletes to set up a foothold in Europe.
“Unfortunately the atmosphere was too highly charged with provincialism and self-interest in my view. I’ve never been interested in sporting politics.”
In his opinion, CSA has yet to achieve these objectives and there is much work to be done in terms of cooperation between the national body and PPA, as was evident in the run-up to this year’s Cycle Tour.
“I’m not up to speed with the latest developments but I know that even achieving unification in the first place was very difficult.
“As I understand it now, the two parties have broken away from each other and this is a great pity.”
He remains upbeat however about the state of SA cycling in general.
“Things are looking up, there seems to be more money in the sport and it seems to be recovering from the doping scandals. But we wait with bated breath.”
Today, the 63-year-old Capetonian is still practising law and lives in Constantia with his life partner Karrie, after losing Julia in 2004.
He is delighted to have taken on his next challenging role – that of proud grandfather to little Hunter. “I thought it would be strange to be a grandfather but actually I love it.”
