By Clevon Raphael

Independent

November 19, 1999

Page 23

He has won more medals than any other local sportsman has during his seven-year reign as Trinidad and Tobago's - and the Caribbean's - premier racing cyclist.

Along the way, Roger Patrick Gibbon also dropped the whip on leading international cyclists in a relatively short but exciting time which ended after his younger brother David died in a road accident, and he saw the need to get on with his personal life.

Today, at age 55, he no longer pushes the pedals; but his heart is still in the sport and moreso he is grieving about the lack of proper facilities, sponsorship and the general lack of assistance from officialdom to the sporting fraternity.

At his posh Valsayn home last Thursday evening Gibbon recalled his glorious moments and the not so happy times on the local and the international circuit, with all their attendant problems, including the use of illicit drugs.

Gibbon, who became a grandfather the day before this interview, when his daughter Joanna gave birth to a girl, began his cycling career at age 14, when he won a race for novices 14 years and under at the Queen's Park Oval.

As a boy he recalled doing a lot of road cycling in the St Augustine area in the vicinity of the university. Looking back at those early days, when he was yet to become a sporting hero, he said, "I was among a large group of boys, who did a lot of outdoor things together, one of them cycling in St Augustine. I also raced around the Savannah when I attended Queen's Royal College.

"I often rode from Port of Spain to home in St Augustine. I then joined the Mario Cycling Club and even though my parents were great supporters in all my life's endeavours, Frank Martin, the driving force behind the club, was a very great motivator.

"He was the one who kept us on a straight course and as a junior cyclist I had good success."

His stint with big times began in 1961 when he competed in the intermediate class at an international meet in Trinidad when his native country was experiencing a lean period in winning medals against foreign competitors.

"I was drafted into our team, and as luck would have it, I won my first race."

He never looked back and from there he made headlines, scorching the tracks at home and abroad, competing at prestigious events such as the Pan American Games, Commonwealth Games, Central American and Caribbean Games, All American Cycling Championship, World Championship and the Olympics.

He ranks 1967 as his best year, when he won in 72 out of 75 international starts. His victories earned him the bronze medal at the World Championship, the one and only time he ever competed in the kilometre event.

The son of Patrick and Sybil Gibbon, who are still alive, Roger, who was born in Five Rivers, Arouca, noted his most difficult race was the 25,000 metres, the last race held at the Oval before the track was paved.

"There were cyclists from England, France, Italy, the Caribbean and America for the event which had us making 50 or 60 laps around the track. The rest of the Trinidad and Tobago team left me quite early in the race.

"I guess the whole set of foreign riders got together as a team to destroy me in that race but I still beat them," he said with a big smile.

Roger, who still has some of those youthful looks, manages his own business, Grand Prix, a furniture manufacturing and distribution company. He acknowledges there was strong rivalry between himself and other TT team members, especially Fitzroy Hoyte.

He explained: "Hoyte was my rival. He was my touring partner and because of this we became great friends, but I did not like to lose and neither did he.

"So, you know until the whistle goes you are friends, and you are friends after the race. But during the race it was battle time, and it was as if we were enemies. But that was only during the course of the race.

"You need to understand you don't go to these games so frequently with one person and not get close to him. As a matter of fact I do business with him now. He runs a furniture store and I am a supplier to his store and the closeness that we have developed during cycling has helped our business relationship to grow."

He stopped racing after the Mexico Olympics in 1968 after only seven years on the international circuit. He was 25, and judging from the hundreds of trophies and medals, some of which he gives away as prizes for meets, he could feel justifiably proud of his achievements.

Asked why he decided to quit at that relatively young age, he responded: "I got married shortly after I quit cycling and I also had to plan a business career, so I left while I was on top as I had always promised myself.

"Also I had a great disappointment in not getting a medal at the Mexico Olympics...and I said, there were four more years to get a medal and I had to start to think in terms of a business career in addition to having plans to get married.

"I wasn't prepared to go another four years, and our roads were getting quite dangerous. I had already lost a brother on the road and I considered I was lucky thus far."

Did the death of his brother also influence his decision to quit?

Roger: "Yes. I did say I would carry on until the Olympics, but there was this fear of getting tangled with a car or a truck on the road. I became fearful of the road but I had set myself a goal to get an Olympic medal.

"He and I left home together to go training that afternoon on the Churchill/Roosevelt Highway. I came back home because of flooding just before Piarco, I said I wasn't going through that water and I went back home. He went through and he was killed in Arima."

On some of his experiences while aboard on tour, Roger said he saw cyclists taking illegal drugs even though at that time there was little public talk about that creeping international scourge.

"I was personally offered performance enhancing substances by cyclists who I stumbled upon in their hotel rooms injecting themselves, but of course I did not use any of them," he boasted.

Although he personally has achieved so much given the lack of any special facilities that his foreign competitors enjoyed, Roger is deeply concerned about the fate of today's local athletes.

"I never had a coach one day in my life. Whatever success came my way it was just home grown - Churchill/Roosevelt Highway. Full stop. Churchill/Roosevelt Highway in the morning, in the afternoon and on weekends.

"I have never been in a gym like these guys from Europe who spent winters in a gym building their muscles. I never did that, not once."

A former President of the Trinidad and Tobago Cycling Federation and Vice-President of the Olympic Association, who also served on the government-appointed Commission of Inquiry into Sport, Roger complained about the administration of sports generally.

He elaborated:

"We need officials who are not interested in just a tour. I may be wrong and I am sorry if I offend anybody, but too many of the sporting officials seek election for the main purpose of getting these free tours.

"I don't think too many of them have their hearts in the sport itself. I have been president of the federation, on the executive of the Olympic committee and I was never interested in being selected as a manager or coach.

"I cannot say that for so many others. Their main concern is to make these free trips.

"Know something? Just borrow the passport from some of them and you would see they have more stamps in them than an airline pilot. What have they done for their respective sports?"

If he had it within his power to improve cycling, what would he do?

"One of the main things will be to get a safety code established for cyclists on the road. If you can grant some sort of protection, parents of young boys and girls might feel more comfortable when their children go on the road to train.

"That way more people would enter the discipline and you would get more people to choose your teams from."

Roger, who worked in the private sector before opening his own business about nine years ago, has two other grown children - David, who works with Grand Prix, and Kristine. Both are university graduates.

The proud grandfather said, "My parents never had any big set of money. They were not dirt poor but they struggled to give us good food, they supported us the best they could. But how many others are fortunate enough to have that?

"Government is doing a lot more now than they used to, but if the better performers and those with potential are not properly funded, we are going nowhere. Given what is happening in the developed world, the kind of assistance and facilities that are being made available to coaches and athletes, the Third World is doomed in terms of winning medals."