Cycling and Motoring.

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 220, 17 September 1904, Page 16

Cycling and Motoring.

Owing to the number of mere boys who competed in the recent Dunlop road race fiom Warrnambool to Melbourne, the Dunlop Tyre Company will next year limit the nomination to riders who are eighteen years of age or over. According to the London "Daily Express," the lot of the Continental road racer is not always a happy one, it being said tnat some exciting incidents occurred' in the course of the cycling race between Lyons and Marseilles, forming the second stage of the long-distance ride round France. Near the town of St. Etienne some persons, bearing spite against the competitors, had strewn the road with nails and broken bottles. At another point of the road the leading competitors wei c fired at with revolvers, but luckily none of the shots took effect. An attempt was made at St. Etienne control station to mob Maurice Garin, one of the liders, but he was rescued by three or four of his friends armed with revolvers. Cycle stealing by Kaffirs in Pretoria (South Africa) has become so frequent of late that the Government has authorised a municipal bill making it compulsory that all natives' bikes must be enamelled yellow. Any Kaffir seen handling a cycle not coloured yellow

will be liable to immediate arrest. The colour ife suggestive ! It is the favourite tint in Johannesburg, too 1 Mr. H. B. James, acting secretary of the Automobile Club of Victoria, has received a communication from the manager of Barney Oldfield, the crack lacing motorist of America, in reference to the American craok making a racing visit to Australia at an early date. Oldfield haa some wonderful records' to his credit, mostly established on mile cmder tracks, the best being a mile in fifty-four and four-fifth second©; five miles, in four minutes forty-four seconds : ten miles, in nine minutes thirty-two and one-fifth seconds; and fifteen miles in fourteen minutes twenty-one' seconds. The principal classic events to be decided 1 at the world's cycle championships for 1904 are Two kilometres (one mile 428 yds) amateur world's championship ; a similar event for professional riders ; a hundred kilometres (sixty-two miles) paecd amateur event, and a professional event over the same distance*. A match will also be held' between the winners of the short distance championships. The sratherinsr is being organised by the English National Cyclists' Union.