Roger Gibbon reckons, and a cursory review of the history supports the view, that he, among Trinidad and Tobago’s athletic champions, has won the most international gold, silver and bronze medals wearing the national colours at international meetings, including the Commonwealth, Pan American, Central American and Caribbean Games and the World Cycling championships. He held, for many decades, the national sprint records.
“My most memorable experience in cycling was when at the end of a 20,000m race at the old grass track at the Oval in which I beat world-class cyclists such as Niels Fredborg of Denmark and Pierre Trentin, France,”—the latter winner of two Olympic Gold Medals. “With 3,000m to go, I said it’s my turn now. At the end, the crowd lifted me off the track; it was a special feeling, I never before and after felt,” says Roger Gibbon as he recounted to me his time on the tracks of the cycling world.
The race was important for the participants from South America and Europe as they had been vanquished in the sprints and other events during the meet, and so they came together to compete against the T&T team, including Roger, the likes of Ron Cassidy and Nathan Hajal, the endurance cyclists of the 1960s, with the intent of collective conquest.
Included among Roger’s great medal-winning victories for T&T, the double sprint title (1,000m Kilometre Time Trial and the Match Sprint at successive CAC, Pan Am and Commonwealth Games. His closest finish to an Olympic Medal was in 5th place at the Mexico Games in the Kilo Time Trial.
Like with boys of his era (1950s-1960s), Roger started on ordinary bikes riding around on back streets in St Augustine at the UWI campus where his family lived: “I always won; I used to ride on ordinary Raleigh and Humber bicycles,” says Roger.
He attended the famed Queen’s Royal College, where he says he was not a great student, as cycling was uppermost in his mind. For such a focus, Roger became one of QRC’s triumvirate, counted among T&T’s greatest international athletes, the two others: Wendell Mottley, Olympian 400-yard Silver medallist, and West Indies wicketkeeper batsman, Deryck Murray.
Roger, notwithstanding the fact that he was from a white Trinidadian family, seen then as being privileged, how then can he contend to not having within easy reach all that was required for him to compete in cycling: “I mean we weren’t poor people but we had no money. I would patch tires, I would straighten wheels, I would straighten a frame that is bent, charge a few dollars for a ticket to enter sports meetings. No, we didn’t have plenty money; but we always had food on the table.”
His father worked at George F Huggins, a major branch store of the period: “You can imagine what that salary was like at that time,” says Roger.
Soon enough, he became a member of the very popular Mario Wheelers club, and that was in the era when club cycling among Madonna Wheelers, Southclaine, Saddle Boys and others was intense. Amongst the big-name cyclists were Ron Cassidy, Nathan Hajal, Fitzroy Hoyte, Dicki Hart, the Farrell bros, Michael Peters, Desmond “Bones” Hackett, Cecil LeGendre, Leslie King and dozens of others.
Roger started from C Class and moved easily into A class and then competed at the national and international levels at the Southern Games and other big cycle meets at the Oval and at major athletic meetings.
It was at the Southern Games that Roger first encountered the world champion cyclists of the period. As mentioned before, Olympic medallists such as the best of Europe, Trentin, Danielle Morelon, Fredborg, Mario Vanegas from Colombia and Martín Emilio Rodríguez “Cochise” from Colombia and Victor Cherinos from “down de main” —Venezuela all participated.
One of Roger’s, and by extension Trinidad and Tobago’s, inductions into international cycling came at the Commonwealth Games in Perth, Australia, in 1962. Racing took place on the banked-velodrome tracks: “Ron Cassidy and I got good licks there. We were accustomed to racing on flat tracks. But the licks I got there was a good learning. Because what we realised is that the top cyclists of the world train every single day. We didn’t believe in that. We thought, if you train every day, you get tired. Well, I came back and started to ride my bike, ride my bike.”
Where Roger stood apart from the internationals he contested against was “I never had a coach, no sponsorship from the Cycling Federation and the Government, I usually had to seek an airline ticket to go to a games; Kirpalani once gave me an airline ticket.” So, how did you develop was the obvious question to ask. “That’s the mystery. How was I able to fight up with them? Just go up the highway and ride, ride, ride, ride, ride.”
He says the cycle meets against Venezuela were sources of learning: “The Cherinos bros, Victor and Arseno destroyed us; and once again we learnt from that lesson.”
Roger told me two interesting stories that say something about our social behaviours. One in which the fans of young Leslie King, from Belmont, engaged him: “Leslie beat me in a sprint at Southern Games at Guaracara Park, fair and square, no excuses. I am leaving the track: ‘white man yuh dead, a new King is born,’ “shouted a group of Leslie’s fans from the sidelines. I made a commitment then, never in my life again I will allow that to happen,” says Roger, and he kept his promise.
The other is a story of a very different kind involving one of his major opponents, his friend and rival in the sprints, Fitzroy Hoyte. “Fitzroy invited me to his home in Barataria. And he took me upstairs. On the wall of his living room was a massive picture of the race in which Fitzroy beat me to the finish line. We laughed heartily. He was my great friend and we were both in the furniture business,” said a laughing Roger as he related the story of a fellow competitor doing a number on him in good-natured Trini picong style.
As to what were his sources of inspiration to become the world-class cyclist that he was in the 1960s, notwithstanding the limitations of lack of coaching, sponsorship to compete, Roger singled out the writings of two major sports journalists, Horace Gordon of the Trinidad Guardian and Mervyn Wells of the Trinidad Express. “This is how it went. I am beating everybody down here. And the way Horace Gordon and Mervyn Wells put it, the way they project me in the newspapers as if I am the greatest in the world. Every day I am in the newspapers. Also, I had a tremendous will to win. I did not like to lose. And if you love to win, you hate to lose.”
The world-class amateur that was Roger came to realise what his T&T colleague, track sprinter of the 50s/60s, Colin Agostini, called “shamateurism” in sports in Europe. After a season of riding on the continent, the manager who invited Roger to the meet, took him to his office to “sort out business; I wonder what business?
“When I get there, this man is telling me, well, your appearance fees for every race, your prize money for every race. And at the end of it, it’s a lot of money. So I’m telling him, I say, ‘Sir, I can’t accept that, I’m an amateur.’ And he tells me, ‘I will be the only amateur in the world that is not racing for a living.’ “I say, well, if it’s so, give me the money.”
The innocent Trini amateur also learnt another lesson related to international cycling: “Everybody was doping. So what I found out was that all of these guys that I race against, race for a living. And that is why they dope. Because if they don’t dope, they can’t win. And if they can’t win, they can’t get money. I was the only top cyclist not doping, never,” says Roger.
He says his best chance at a gold medal in the Olympics was at the Mexico Games in 1968. “There were issues and also I don’t think the timing of my arrival before my event was correct.” He arrived eight days before and by the time the events came, the effects of the altitude took hold. “If I had been there just a couple days before, it would have been better,” he says.
At the age of 24, having not yet reached his prime, Roger retired after the Mexico Olympics 1968. He felt “having had Commonwealth gold, I had Pan Am gold, I had CAC gold, I had Pan American Championships gold. I had a World Championship medal. The next Olympics is four years away. You know, you could work for four years and there’s no guarantee that you will win.
“So after Mexico, I realized there was no future in cycling for me, no financial gain. And I had already had the satisfaction of causing the national anthem of T&T to be played at major international games.
Further, says Roger, marriage and family life were beckoning, “we (Donna, his wife) wanted to get married and I had to progress with work. I had a very successful business career; I was an executive in Neal & Massy. And then 20 years ago, I left and formed my own company—it’s called ‘Grand Prix,’ most appropriately, the importation and sale of furniture.
“In retrospect, if I had to do it all over again, I would urge the Trinidad and Tobago Olympic Association to take me to Mexico the day before my event. So I will compete before the altitude had time to take effect,” says Roger in a very relaxed mood at his home, but still having the competitor’s intensity and edge about him. He is proud of having been awarded the Humming Bird Medal Silver and won Sportsman of the Year on three occasions.
Roger thinks highly of one of his successors in the immediate, Nicholas Paul and his progress at the international level.
We, in this small place, often have shallow memories of those who have excelled for our country. Subsequent to this interview, I asked a small group of persons at senior levels if they knew of Roger Gibbon. To my consternation, one person did not. I did not ask the others what they knew of him, perhaps afraid of what I might hear. Above is a snippet of one of the country’s great achievers internationally; no one will now have an excuse not to know something of Roger Gibbon.
