FORMER professional track and road cycling champion Jeffery Hartley returns to international competition in April when he dons the green and gold of Team Australia for the first time at the age of 74.
The far north Queenslander will be at the World Masters Games in New Zealand, competing in the men’s 70-75 age group in three cycling events: the criterium, 20km time trial and 55km road race.
Yet, before he even saddles up, Jeffery is a winner, having beaten diabetes. “I’d become sedentary and was living too much of the good life in retirement.”
A circuit court judge in Papua New Guinea for 18 years, he returned to Australia five years ago.
“My weight ballooned to 122kg and I had developed type 2 diabetes. Three years ago, I looked in the mirror and thought I’d better do something before I fell over.”
From a tentative daily 5km ride on a rusting old road bike, Jeffery soon rediscovered the competitiveness that saw him become a successful European track racer in the early 1970s.
A member of the Cairns Cycling Club, a 40kg-lighter Jeffery now pedals 350km a week, including a snappy 70km Saturday morning ride with cyclists half his age and a 100km loop on Sundays known locally as the “cardiac challenge”.
A champion in his teens, Jeffery only missed by half a wheel taking out his age group’s Queensland criterium title in 2016 and rates himself as “in with a good chance” at the World Masters.
- The World Masters Games will be held inAuckland from April 21. It will see 25,000 participants from 100 countries compete in 28 sports and 45 disciplines – worldmastersgames2017.co.nz
