CQ22-Digital

to Swart’s woes, his Waikato support van was up covering the break.
After waiting for a neutral wheel and then attempting to chase an
attacking bunch Swart called it a day – a decision he still regrets.
“I mentally cracked when I saw that they all decided to take off. As
it happened the whole race exploded, and if I look back on it now, if
I’d just ridden at my tempo I would have grabbed them all back one
by one. But that’s all history.”
Despite being one of the strongest road men in New Zealand, by
not finishing the selection race he had not met the tough criteria set
by the Olympic panel. Jack’s L.A. start was now on hold.
Eager to turn this around, Swart went out and duly won the Tour of
Southland. Riding again from the front he attacked into the wind
on stage 5, distancing the field. He went to win the Dulux tour once
more, again sealing his win on the 175 km New Plymouth queen
stage. “I wanted to show them I could ride,” says Swart referring
to the Olympic selectors. “I knew before I rode Southland and the
Dulux that I wasn’t going to the Olympics as I wasn’t selected, so
that’s why those races were so important to me – to do well and to
show them.”
Still not getting the nod, Swart was asking himself just how much
more he would need to do. Regardless, Cheatley still trained Swart
with the squad, in the hope that the Olympic selectors would
see sense and find him a place. “In those days,” explains Cheatley,
“you nominated your athletes to the Olympic committee and they
handed that on to the cycling selectors for final ratification. Jack
Swart got turned down on the basis that he was supposedly just a
tour rider, which was an absolute joke!”
“Enough of this Sunday stroll”
Like the Milk Race in the previous Olympic campaign, the
Colorado-based Coors Classic was used by many teams for pre-
Games tuning. The high-altitude, tough American stage race even
modified some of its stages to replicate the Californian Mission
Viejo Olympic course. Cheatley asked Swart to join the New
Zealand team, the coach still praying for a last-minute reprieve.
Swart, forced to pay his own way, did so in the hope his Olympic
dream would still come true.
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