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Julian Drew: Cycling
Ask any South African sports fan to make a list of the success stories from last year’s Olympic Games in Atlanta and you can bet your bottom dollar that the name of JP (Jean-Pierre but nobody calls him that) van Zyl will not feature on many of them.
True, he didn’t win a medal but in a sport where all the odds are stacked against him in South Africa, Van Zyl’s fifth place in the one kilometre time trial was a truly amazing feat.
Van Zyl is one of South Africa’s few world- class sports stars and a genuine medal contender for the next Olympic Games in Sydney but such is the profile of track cycling in South Africa that he is a virtual unknown in his own country. Not surprisingly he has also failed to attract a sponsor and is struggling to keep his head above water in one of the most costly sports around.
“The expenses are enormous. Just the air tickets alone can cost R100 000 a year if you have to go to America, Europe and South America and then you must also pay overweight for your equipment,” says Van Zyl.
Most national federations pay for their cyclists to travel to international competitions but the South African Cycling Federation simply doesn’t have that kind of money.
In the early part of his career his parents supported him but now he has reached a level where he can more or less scrape by on his own. “I’m basically an amateur training like a professional. My parents paid for everything up until the start of last year and then I started to make a bit of money winning races in the States and since then I’ve been supporting myself,” says Van Zyl.
After starting cycling at 15 with a group of friends “because we wanted nice legs for the girls”, Van Zyl became a useful junior road racer before being invited to the South African junior track championships in 1992. He won every event and was selected for the junior world championships in Athens.
An invitation to America followed in 1993 where he was based at Lehigh Valley near Philadelphia. He eventually linked up in 1995 with US Olympic coach Gibby Hatton but that only lasted one year. “He was very good but unfortunately money was an issue and we had to pay him $25 000 a year and my dad just couldn’t afford it.”
Now he is coached by Dave Street, a former Zimbabwean and South African 1km champion, who Van Zyl believes is just as good as Hatton. “I pay Dave but just for petrol and that leaves me with no money at the end of the month. But I’ll give whatever it takes because if I can win the Olympics it will all be worthwhile.”
Most sportsmen can’t even contemplate winning the Olympics but such is Van Zyl’s incredible potential that a gold medal in Sydney is a very realistic goal. In fact had it not been for the lack of infrastructure in local cycling Van Zyl may have won a medal in Atlanta when he was still just 20. South Africa didn’t have any of the new starting clamps which were used in the Olympics and when Van Zyl competed in Atlanta he had not developed a technique for the new system and it cost him valuable time at the start.
The clamps – which hold the back wheel – are pneumatically controlled to release at the gun but unless you sit back in the saddle and apply pressure to the rear of the bike they can throw you off balance. “I didn’t realise that and when I started I was thrown to the left and off onto the apron on the inside of the track.”
Although Van Zyl himself doesn’t want to speculate on what might have been his coach believes that error cost him the silver medal. “I’ve studied the video very carefully and it’s 1.3 seconds before you can see him collect himself and get back on the track. Every time I watch it I want to cry,” says Street.
Van Zyl’s time of 1 minute 4.214 seconds was just 1.274 seconds behind America’s Erin Hartwell in second place. South Africa finally got two of the new-style clamps for the world junior championships last month in Cape Town.
This year Van Zyl has had his best training ever and everything was pointing towards some great performances on the track and a possible world title in Perth, Australia next week. Fate determined otherwise, however.
He went to two world cup races in May in Cali, Colombia and Trexel Town in America but went down with a strange flu-like virus and didn’t perform well in Colombia and then had to withdraw in America. “We all picked up some sort of bug in Cali. The feeling was like motion sickness. I think it was the water. We were all drinking bottled water but you don’t think when you brush your teeth,” says Street.
Van Zyl remained in America to train and race and was back on track for the world championships when disaster struck in Australia two weeks ago when he was preparing for last weekend’s world cup race in Adelaide. “He was doing weights in the gym on his own and I think one of the weights slipped and he tried to grab it and pulled a muscle in his back,” says Street.
He has now withdrawn from the time trial and will only contest the match sprint and keirin. “The kilometre will put too much strain on his back because he would be racing flat out for 63 or 64 seconds. In the sprint he will only crank it up for about 11 seconds and in the keirin its a similar thing,” says Street.
The match sprint is a tactical race in which two riders manoeuvre for position for two laps and then sprint over 200m while the keirin is also a very strategic race involving eight riders who are paced by a motorcycle for three laps before sprinting for 500m.
It is a cruel blow indeed for Van Zyl for not only has he been denied a shot at a medal but with it the chance of perhaps securing a sponsor. His talents have at least been acknowledged by the National Olympic Committee of South Africa who have bought a new bike for him this year through their Operation Excellence support programme which saved Van Zyl a cool R81 000 for the frame and two wheels.
“The assistance from Nocsa is fantastic but we are still a long way behind the top cycling nations. Their riders have full- time coaches and comprehensive support so that they don’t have to worry about tyres, accommodation, transport and the like. If JP was an American or an Australian you wouldn’t be able to stop him,” claims Street.
There are many who believe that nothing is going to stop Van Zyl anyway and if his singular self-belief is anything to go by that could well be true. “I wake up every morning thinking I want to be the world champion, I want to be the fastest man in the world in the kilo. You could say I’m almost obsessed with it but I guess you have to be obsessed to do that.”
It’s not a bad obsession though. You just
have to realise what you want in life,” declares Van Zyl.