Cyclist Reached 50m.p.h.

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30960, 17 January 1966, Page 12

Cyclist Reached 50m.p.h.

(New Zealand Press Association) INVERCARGILL. An Australasian and two New Zealand records were broken at the Southland Cycling Centre’s meeting at Kew Bowl on Saturday night.

W. Dalton, making his first appearance on the Bowl for three years, thrilled the 2300 spectators by bettering the Australian and New Zealand three-mile motor-paced record by 43.8 sec with a time of 4min 12.2 sec. His time for the first mile was Imin 29sec, which broke L. Byers’s New Zealand record, set at Western Springs, by 2.9 sec. For the next mile Dalton recorded Imin 12.6 sec, smashing his own record by 16.4 sec.

Earlier, in the quarter-mile and one-mile events against three Otago professional riders, Dalton was not extended and won as he liked. In the two-mile professional teams race it was not a matter of whether Dalton’s team would win but whether his partner,

W. Claperton, would stay with him.

Dalton sped around the track on a gear of 117 inches behind a motor-cyclist. At times he reached speeds of more than 50 m.p.h. in the straight but appeared untroubled.

Dalton, who also holds the five-mile motor-paced Australian and New Zealand record, said later that he did not think he could lower the three-mile record much more on Kew Bowl.

“I don’t think I could better here my five-mile record which 1 set at Western Springs. The trouble is that in cornering you face the danger of the crank catching the ground. You really need a motor-cyclist’s ‘wall of death’ to go faster,” Dalton said.

Dalton’s performance took some of the limelight off the Australian riders, M. Powell and M. Clark, who were making their farewell rides at the Bowl after competing in the two-week carnival. But in the last event of the night—the 10 mile—Clark lowered the New Zealand record set by T. Walsh in 1960 by more than 12 seconds.