SPORT LEGENDS - Laurie Byers - Born to thunder on a bike

Three Northland sporting icons were admitted to the Northland Legends of Sport at the annual Northland Sports Awards function in Whangarei last night. Long-serving Northland rugby coach Ted Griffin, cyclist Laurie Byers and cricketer Brian Dunning joined a distinguished list of Northland sports heroes.
" LAURIE BYERS:
When it comes to merciless sports there are a few that stand out for sheer brutality.
Rowing is one, a sport that places excessive demands on the human body. The 800-metre track race is another, and the 400-metres too. The marathon and the 1500-metre swim - they can all be added to the list.
But when it comes to physical endeavour, most sports doff their caps to cycling.
It follows then, that when it comes to honouring Northland's elite sports achievers a cyclist gets a mention, especially a cyclist with a list of achievements that staggers belief like those of Laurence John Byers.
In case you didn't know, and sadly a whole generation of Northlanders are probably unaware, the Byers' cycling CV reads thus:
Two Dulux North Island Tour wins, successive Commonwealth Games medals (1962 and 1966), 10th at the Tokyo Olympics road race in 1964, second in the Paris-Nantes 100-miler, a top 40 placing in the Tour de L'Avenir (the amateur Tour de France) and too many national and provincial titles to list here.
His first prominent placing on a bike came at the tender age of 15, when he won the Auckland provincial 50-mile title and placed third in the national championships.
But he was just 19 when he rode his first major tour, the Dulux six-day tour of the North Island in 1960.
By this time Byers was no longer the butt of any jibes about his back country roots - jibes that earned him the nickname "Huck" - because he had won four national road and track titles, nine provincial titles, three club championships, three Northland junior road titles and four Northland junior grass track championship titles as well.
His cycling career was starting to hurtle along at breathtaking speed.
It was two years later that his first big year at national and international level came.
In 1962 Laurie Byers won the national road championship, the Dulux tour for the first time, and was picked to represent New Zealand at the Commonwealth Games in Perth, Australia.
In Perth Byers scored a bronze medal in a dramatic road race dubbed "The Battle of Kings Park".
Byers was one of four New Zealanders in the field, and when the critical part of the race arrived he was there, in a lead bunch of seven sprinting for the medals.
In a dogged finish Byers just held on to third for a bronze medal and became part of cycling history.
There were two Kiwis in black on the medal dais that day, Laurie Byers and Tony Walsh. That had never happened before.
But the race itself was testament to the rugged athlete in Byers for another reason altogether.
Just six months before, Byers had been lying in a hospital bed after crashing into a turning car on a training ride. He had all his teeth removed, lay for three days and nights without eating and vowed never to ride again.
That vow lasted three weeks.
He made his "comeback" with a top 10 placing in the Auckland 100-mile race. Two weeks after that he won the New Zealand 100-mile title ... again.
This is just one of many anecdotes that litter Byers' racing career.
In 1963 Byers courted controversy by initially opting out of the reckoning for the Tokyo Olympics the next year. He wanted to ride in Europe instead.
In the midst of public debate that eventually saw him included in the Olympic team, Byers rode the Tour of Southland, which is now New Zealand's most prestigious tour race.
In the leader's yellow jersey on day three, Byers was deliberately ridden off the road by an Australian rival but still rode back to the main peleton to finish second. That feat resulted in this newspaper headline: "Johnstone won tour, Byers took honours."
Shortly after Byers lined up for the Dulux Tour as the defending champion and pulled off a feat that is still talked about with considerable awe in cycling circles.
In the yellow jersey again, Byers was poised to win a seventh stage (he had won four of the six before that) when he punctured just before the last climb of the day, about 10km from the finish.
Handed a new wheel, Byers mounted his bike 35 seconds behind the lead group, then powered his way to win the stage. That ride was reported in these words:
"His huge back arched, he rode that bicycle as if he was in a rage. He went up the hill using a 98 gear, a high gearing resorted to only for sprinting and downhill riding.
"As he kept on over the top he began passing like a cannonball the riders who were strewn in the wake of the stampeding field. None of them could attempt to get in his slipstream."
On retiring from competitive cycling, Byers turned to golf and is now a life member of the Kaikohe Golf and Squash Club. Of course, he helped build the clubrooms. He has also played hockey for Northland.
These days Byers is a long-serving member of the Far North District Council, serves on the board of Sport Northland and is still active in the community in many other ways. But even today Byers is known in cycling circles as "Huck", the man who was not just born to ride a bike, but born to thunder on a bike.