"The biggest growth we see in bikes at the moment is women aged 55-70 years old. We've got women coming in that haven't ridden since school."
Tucker began his own cycling career with road racing at age 16, while still at Wanganui Boys' College.
A couple of years later he rode his first season at the velodrome on a club bike, going "surprisingly well".
So well, in fact, his parents helped him to get his first proper racing bike at a cost of around $2000 - "a lot of money back then".
Initially coached by John McDonnell, Tucker's road times were spotted by Ron Cheatley, who coached him to the track nationals in Auckland with a qualifying time which was the fastest in New Zealand for the time.
"That was a shock to me, I didn't think I was that fast."
He was selected to ride in a six-man NZ team against the Australian juniors (under-20) in Auckland during the 1990 Commonwealth Games.
In an Italian Pursuit race (now called an Olympic Sprint) he accomplished a personal highlight by beating Australian Shane Kelly, who later went on to become a five-time world champion.
Tucker competed at the Junior World Championships in England.
With the travelling and time invested in his sport, he acknowledges the early support of his parents, especially father Brian, "for putting up with me".
Tell us about your cycling habits?
I still compete at club level here. I competed in the vets series down in Masterton a couple of months ago, we won in the over-50 class. In that team there's different riders of different age groups - we helped them to win their division.
I'm sort of taking a more administrative role now, I'm the vice-president of the Wanganui Cycling Club.
I organised the NZ Masters Games time trial with a lot of other club members. Three events over three days. It went really well. We had more than 120 entries in the road race.
What sort of bike do you ride, and what is special about it?
The bike I spend most of my time on is a Madone 6.5, which is a hand-built carbon bike made in Wisconsin.
The way it's 'laid up' (the carbon in the mould) makes it very comfortable to ride for a long period of time. After a 4 to 5-hour ride on the wrong bike, you can become very sore.
What is the best thing about cycling around Wanganui?
There's just so many places to ride. The countryside is two minutes away and you can get out of town. If you lived in Auckland, you'd have to drive out of town to go for a ride.
We were up there for a demo day with bikes recently - we had to drive 40 minutes to get somewhere to ride a mountain bike.
Here, you can jump on your bike and ride. Every time we have the NZ Masters Games we have people telling us, "it's so great to ride here, it's so easy".
Why do you think people should cycle?
Relaxation. There's nothing like riding with a group of friends, or even by yourself, and just going out there and forgetting about everything else.
What is the biggest challenge you face when cycling?
The drivers in Wanganui are a wee bit hard to deal with at times. The biggest challenge is cars.
We've had a couple of generations now of people that haven't ridden to school, those people are in their 30s now.
There's one college that used to have three bike sheds, now it's a carpark.
The bike sheds used to be chocka, and that was only 20-something years ago when I was riding to school.
They're gone now, and they've been gone for ages, all the schools are the same.
It's not that the population in Wanganui has changed, it's not that there are more cars because there are more people, there's just more people in cars.
If cycling in Wanganui was to change, how would it look?
The council is starting to do some good work with the roads and the cycle lanes, but there still needs to be more though, and the attitude of drivers has got to change. Driver awareness is the biggest one.
When I learnt to cycle, you could hear cars coming, because they were noisier, they were less aerodynamic so they used to make more noise.
Drivers have got a horn on their steering wheel, if they are approaching a bunch of cyclists they could toot and we would know they were coming.
What's your advice to anyone who's thinking about taking up cycling?
Just start. Don't put it off, just start.
It doesn't matter what you've got, just get out there.
You can spend a lot of time thinking about what you want do. Don't think about it, just hop on a bike and ride around the bridges, just get out there.
