Great Outdoors - Back on the bike

Five years ago Jack Bauer “didn’t like anything about” his first taste of road cycling. After growing up in the countryside near Takaka, practically attached to his mountain bike and making the New Zealand team for the World Champs, he decided the tough Tour of Southland might be a good training ride in the lead-up. “I didn’t have any idea about riding in a peloton or a group, staying out of the wind and spinning like a roadie does,” he recalls now with a laugh. “I just tried to ride as hard as I could from where the gun went off. It was bad man, real bad.”

The then 20-year-old ended up “cooking himself”; overtraining for the ill fated tour and the World Champs, combined with his Phys Ed studies and student life at the University of Otago. This resulted in Bauer effectively throwing the bike away for “the next year and a half”. It wasn’t until he’d completed his degree and moved back to the Top of the South that Bauer started a cycling comeback that would eventually see him saddling up, perhaps somewhat ironically as a road cyclist, for the New Zealand team at this month’s Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India.

“I just started riding again for the love of it really, in June 2007, and it was good. I enjoyed it and I felt a lot better, a lot stronger after having some time off,” says Bauer. He entered and won the Rainbow Rage, which had been his first mountain bike event as a 13-year old. Not a bad start to the comeback. “It was pretty cool,” he says with a humble chuckle, his voice reverberating down the phone line from Europe, where he’s been racing for the Endura pro team this season. “From there I started taking my road pretty seriously, just because of the Nelson Club, Star & Garter.”

Bauer then spent a year cycle couriering in Wellington - “I thought here’s a job where I can ride my bike fulltime” - before heading to Belgium last year, living on a farm near Gent and racing for Kingsnorth International Wheelers. While cycling is one of many ‘minor sports’ here in New Zealand, the Belgians are barmy for bikes. Crowds pack the circuits for races of all levels and Bauer quickly established a name for himself, racking up eight impressive wins in his debut European season.

On his return home, he grabbed local attention by winning a stage in last year’s Tour of Southland, coming second overall, and then out-sprinting long-time national reps Hayden Roulston and Tour de France competitor Julian Dean to win the national road cycling title in January. “I came back from Belgium like a new man really, just flying,” he says. Now he’s looking forward to pulling on the silver fern in Delhi. “It’s a real dream come true. I still remember to this day sitting in my flat in Dunedin when the 2006 Games were going on in Melbourne, watching the mountain bike race and thinking how cool it would have been to represent NZ at the Games. So this year, to be there and to actually be able to go in as the reigning road champ in New Zealand and be able to bring something to the team, it’s huge. I feel great.”