At the back of a mini-bus carrying New Zealand cyclists back to the 1970 Commonwealth Games village in Edinburgh Harry Kent, who has just won a gold medal in the 1000 metres track time trial, waits until it's completely quiet.
In the seats in front of him are the otherthree Kiwi track riders, who haven't won a medal between them. In the macho, hard bitten, often sarcastic, world that cycling was then, Kent, a gently spoken, quietly eccentric nurseryman, hadn't been spared in the lead-up to the finals.
Now it is his turn. "So," he says. "Who's the dickhead now?" The silence deepens.
Harry, who died this week aged 74, was always one of my favourite sportspeople. In 1970 he was the country's sporting hero too. After the gold in Edinburgh and finishing second in the world championships a few weeks later in England, his selection as the sportsperson of the year, the forerunner to the Halbergs, was universally applauded.
We first met in 1966, when he was racing in the brutal Dulux Auckland to Wellington road race. How different was he?
Race organiser Alwyn Pennington told me how, when Harry made a brave solo break on the leg from Otorohanga to New Plymouth, Pennington had been greeted with sensationally filthy suggestions when he asked the chasing bunch if he could bring them anything.
Up the road he found Harry, who was near exhaustion. Anything he needed? "If I could have a couple of bananas Mr Pennington that would be nice thank you."
Harry Kent. Photo / File.
Harry had copped it pretty hard and strong from more worldly riders, going back to the days when his support crew consisted of his Mum and Dad in a big red truck from the family's plant nursery in Trentham, but his passion for the sport never wavered.
He was a big man for a cyclist, and always extremely strong. He found his mojo in the time trial, an event where, as one cycling writer noted "the riders start a bit faster than they're really capable of sustaining, and hold on grimly as oxygen debt piles up."
In Edinburgh he set a new Games record of 1m 8.6s for his time trial gold, and at the 1970 world championships in Leicester he finished just 0.39s behind the winner, Denmark's Niels Fredborg.
The following year Kent might have won a world championship in Varese in Italy. Instead, thanks to a series of sad misfortunes, he finished 22nd in a field of 24 riders
In 1977 he told me the story of Varese, one that reads like a black, cruel, comedy. "I'd expected the national cycling association to send me. I was going like a rocket (in '71)." But then he was told he'd have to pay for the trip himself.
He arrived in Italy with all his funds in American dollars. The United States announced it was going to devalue the dollar, but not when. Nobody would take his cash. Restaurant owners across the road from the velodrome in Varese took pity on him, and let him stay in an upstairs room for free. "I was very grateful for their kindness, but really it was hopeless. There were parties downstairs every night, and I couldn't get proper sleep."
Exhausted anyway, he was told his time trial had been delayed 24 hours because of heavy rain. But at midnight, having just fallen into a deep sleep, he was woken by New Zealand journalist Peter Bidwell shouting, "Harry, wake up. You've got to get to the track." Kent rode at 1.30am. "It was like a nightmare, where you're trying to run in waist deep water." He could only manage 1m 12.65s.
Harry Kent. Photo / File.
In 1972 he went to the Munich Olympics, but the fire had burned down. He finished 16th and never competed internationally again.
On a personal note, my affection and admiration for Harry Kent was cemented during the 1966 Auckland to Wellington race. Near the end of a stage into Palmerston North a driver had been waved on to cross an intersection safely, but then panicked at the sight of the peloton and stopped, almost completely blocking the intersection.
Harry, his eyes glued on the wheel of the rider in front of him, crashed across the bonnet of the car, and thumped into the road. He gathered himself, stripped off his cleated bike shoes, put the wrecked bike over his shoulder and ran two kilometres to the finish.
Whey faced, and smeared in his own blood, as he lay on the grass beside the finish line I asked him how he was. He managed to smile. "It could have been worse. I could have been killed."
