Tino Tabak: a frank, honest biography

OPINION: You might have heard the name Tino Tabak mentioned in association with Southland sport in the past, writes Nathan Burdon in this week's Straight Up.

But you are probably a bit like me and didn't really know just how good a bike rider this guy was.

Tabak won the Tour of Southland three years in a row from 1965, the youngest rider to win New Zealand's top cycling event.

The Cantabrian was a supremely strong bike rider with a ruthless competitive streak.

His life story is superbly chronicled in a new book by cycling historian Jonathan Kennett.

I've rarely read a sports biography as frank and as honest as this one.

Given the generation Tabak was part of, much of his story is intertwined in the seedy world of drug-taking, which continues to plague the sport to this day.

However, it does offer some explanation as to why cycling developed the rampant drug culture it is now trying to rid itself of.

Read Tabak's story and you will get an idea of just what the sport's officials are now fighting against.

But this tale is about a lot more than just drug-taking. Tabak was one of the finest riders New Zealand has produced and he had a burning ambition to ride in the Tour de France.

It was a passion that would become an obsession, one that ultimately consumed him.

While a cycling book is destined to be read by only a niche market, this story blows most of the rugby and cricket biographies I've struggled through out of the water.

I was genuinely surprised and delighted with the story that Kennett has woven over several years of interviews with Tabak.

The keenest readers of this column will be wondering what happened to my own glittering cycling career, which was due to undergo a major test during this weekend's Bannockburn Gutbuster.

Unfortunately for me, cycling and the wider sporting world, life has got in the way of my training during the past month and I've decided that discretion is the better course.

While I was always confident that Southland would win the Ranfurly Shield, I hadn't factored in the associated increased workload and what that would mean for my training schedule.

As a result, my attempts at dominating the cycling world have been postponed. In the meantime I'll leave it up to the likes of Tom Scully.

(Tino Tabak - Dreams and Demons by Jonathan Kennett; published by Kennett Brothers, RRP $20)

» Nathan Burdon has been the Southland Times sports editor since 2003 and has won numerous journalism awards, including provincial sports writer of the year.

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