Heart of the Nation: Evandale 7212

THERE'S nothing quaint about the National Penny Farthing Championships in Evandale, Tasmania.

cycling

JAMES Fowler is a serious cyclist. He owns a five-grand road bike that you can pick up with one finger, as well as a specialist racer for charging around his local velodrome in Sydney's inner west.

He's got another bike for commuting, and one for touring, and a mountain bike too, naturally. He wears lycra; he trains with a club. Surely his cycling mates must rib him a little bit about his passion for racing penny farthings?

"Actually, they don't," says Fowler, who's pictured in the red shirt, leading the field at the climax of last year's National Penny Farthing Championships in Evandale, Tasmania. They don't rib him because they appreciate the skill and nerve it takes to push the limits on these Victorian-era designs, which have simple fixed pedals, solid rubber tyres and no brakes. The only way to slow down for corners is to ease up on the pedals, gently; too hard and your high centre of gravity will carry forward, resulting in a catastrophic face-plant from 2.5 metres up. Take a corner too fast and the back wheel can lift off and swing around, turning the bike, terrifyingly, into a sort of giant unicycle. In the heat of battle, though, such worries are shelved. Fowler's body language in this photo speaks loudly of his will to win, and in fact he held the lead to the end of the one-mile course, which comprises four laps of the town. He had been making an annual pilgrimage to the championships for seven years; this was the first time he'd won it.

The 28-year-old has been a perennial student in his adult life, but he recently graduated from uni with a masters in physiotherapy, and this month began his career as a physio at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. It's a job that requires him to relieve people's pain and suffering - ironic, perhaps, given that his hobby is dishing it out. That's what competitive cycling's all about, he says. Here he is talking about his tactics for defending his title against 50 competitors at this year's event, to be held next Saturday: "I'll go hard and drop as many people as I can in the first couple of laps, and try to keep some in reserve for the finish. The plan is simple: make the others suffer as much as I can."