Sir Hubert Ferdinand Opperman, OBE (29 May 1904 – 18 April 1996), referred to as Oppy by Australian and French crowds, was an Australian cyclist and politician, whose endurance cycling feats in the 1920s and 1930s earned him international acclaim.
Hubert rode a bicycle from the age of eight until his 90th birthday, when his wife Mavys, fearing for his health and safety, forced him to stop. His stamina and endurance in cycling earned Opperman the status of one of the greatest Australian sportsmen.
Early life Opperman was born on 29 May 1904 in Rochester, Victoria. He was the eldest of five children born to Bertha (née Reddie) and Adolphus Samuel Ferdinand Oppermann. His parents were both born in Victoria, with his father of German descent.
Opperman's father had worked as a butcher, miner, timber-cutter and coach driver. Hubert, the eldest of five children, learned as a child to plough with six horses and to ride bareback. He attended several schools and delivered Post Office telegrams by bicycle.Obituary, Daily Telegraph, UK, 20 April 1996 Some time following Hubert's birth, his parents moved to Western Australia, along with his uncle Albert Oppermann and his father's cousins August, Emil and Hugo Oppermann. (Hubert's grandfather, Otto Friedrich Oppermann, was one of three brothers who migrated to South Australia as miners in the 1850s; two brothers remained in South Australia, while Otto came to Victoria).WA birth, marriage & death records, Bock/Oppermann family records Hubert's sister Winifred was born in Western Australia in 1907; after that the family moved back to Victoria where Hubert's twin siblings Bertha Ellen and Otto Alexander were born in 1910, followed by younger brother Bruce some years later. Bruce also became a competitive cyclist, and won several regional races in Victoria. It is not known when, or why, Hubert anglicised his surname and dropped one 'n' from its end.Victorian birth/death records
Opperman attended schools in Baillieston, Ten Mile and Benalla. His father enlisted in the Australian Army in World War I and he was sent to live with his paternal grandmother in Melbourne, where he completed his education in Glen Iris. He left school at the age of 14.
Cycling career
He came third in a cycling race at 17 in 1921. The prize was a racing bike by Malvern Star Cycles, a cycle shop in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern. The proprietor, Bruce Small, was so impressed he offered Opperman a role in the business, which helped turn both into household names in Australia.
Opperman is the only male rider to have won the Australian national road race title four times, in 1924, 1926, 1927 and 1929. The 1924, 1926 and 1929 titles were awarded for winning the Blue Riband for fastest time in the Warrnambool to Melbourne Classic. In 1927 the Warrnambool to Melbourne was not run and the title was won by Opperman as the winner of the Dunlop Grand Prix, a race over four stages.
In the Goulburn to Sydney Classic Opperman was first and fastest in 1924 and 1929 and was fastest in 1930 setting a new race record.
Opperman was critical of the handicap races then prevalent in Australian cycling Opperman's plea for scratch racing was partially met in 1934 in the Centenary 1000, a one-week road bicycle race over seven stages covering . The championship was based solely on time, although there was also a handicap race with riders divided into 4 grades. The race was run in as part of the celebrations of the Centenary of Victoria. Opperman had injured his knee in a fall in stage 4 near Wangaratta, but despite this he was still well placed at 3rd in the championship. He injured his knee again in a fall whilst descending from Mount Hotham. Opperman also cut his hand requiring stitches, which he refused until after the stage. He battled on to Sale, losing 27 minutes on the stage to Lamb. He attempted to finish the race, but was forced to abandon at Traralgon, said to be the first time Oppy had retired from a race.
1928 Tour de France The Melbourne Herald and The Sporting Globe in Australia and The Sun in New Zealand started a fund in late 1927 to pay for an Australasia team to the Tour de France. Opperman went to Europe in April 1928de Latour, René, This Aussie Was a Bonza, Sporting Cyclist, UK, undated with Harry Watson of New Zealand and Ernie Bainbridge and Percy Osborn of Australia. He went to the six-day race at the Velodrome d'Hiver in Paris, where he met an Australian participant, Reggie McNamara. The Franco-American writer René de Latour, who was working for McNamara at the six-day, wrote:
A marked difference between Oppy and his team-mates was that they did not all regard the journey to Europe in the same light. While the others looked on it more as a trip in which to collect a few souvenirs to take home, to the eager Oppy it was a wonderful chance to reach the top in international competition... His arrival in France had been announced with some scepticism: Un beau mentir qui vient de loin is a French saying. (A good lie comes from a distance.) His outstanding wins in Australia did not mean anything to the French riders, and even less to the Belgians.
'Whom did he beat over there, anyway?' they would say. 'Let's see him on the road, then we'll know. We've yet to see any classy Australian road rider.'
Opperman joined a training camp run by Paul Ruinart, trainer of the Vélo Club Levallois, on the outskirts of Paris. Ruinart and the VC Levallois were at the peak of French cycling and took in Opperman and his team. They rode Paris-Rennes as their first race. A report says:
The 32 riders assembled at a small Parisian café at midnight. On the street outside, torrential rain alternated with freezing hailstorms. When called outside for the 2am start, the riders kept warm by running on the spot and flapping their arms. The Australians amused the others with a game of leapfrog followed by a sparring match between Watson and Bainbridge.
Nicolas Frantz of Luxembourg won and Opperman came eighth. Opperman then came third to Georges Ronsse of Belgium and to Frantz in Paris-Brussels.
The Tour de France started one month later. The shortest day was 119 km and the longest 387 km. Other teams had 10 riders but the Australasia squad had four, plans to increase the team with Europeans having failed. Their position was worsened by Henri Desgrange's plan to run most of the race as a team time trial, as he had the previous year. Teams started at intervals and shared the pace until the end. Desgrange wanted to stop riders racing casually for all but the last hour. The American historian Bill McGann wrote:
Desgrange... wanted the Tour de France to be a contest where unrelenting individual effort in the cauldron of intense competition resulted in the supreme test of both the body and will of the athlete. Desgrange was convinced that the teams were combining to fix the outcome of the race. At the very best, even if they were honest, they helped a weaker rider do well. He also felt that on the flat stages the riders did not push themselves, saving their energy for the mountains.McGann, Bill and Carol (2006), The Story of the Tour de France, Dog Ear, USA, p. 84
With four rather than 10 riders to share the pace, Opperman and his team were handicapped. De Latour wrote:
Even if I live to be 150 years old, there is one picture I am sure I shall never forget. It is the sight of the poor lonely Opperman being caught day after day by the various teams of 10 super-athletes, swopping their pace beautifully. The four Australians would start together. Bainbridge would do his best to hang on, but even though he may have been a good rider in the past, the passing years had taken most of his speed, and he would generally go off the back after 50 miles or so... That left three Aussies against the trade teams' 10. Then, inevitably, if it was not Osborn it was Watson who would have to quit at the 100 miles mark.
Opperman was often swept up by the French Alcyon team. Its manager, Ludo Feuillet, adopted him and helped with advice and tyres. Opperman finished the Tour 18th. He said of the long stages and the hours of darkness that riders endured:
As the bicycle banged and jolted over uneven ground, one yearned for company, for another human whose conversation would share the anxious misery of those uncertain hours. Yes, there it was, a vague outline of a hunched figure swinging and swaying in an effort to find a smooth track. French is the Esperanto of the cycling fraternity, so I ventured some words in that tongue. C'est dur ("It is hard"), but only a grunt came back. For a mile we plugged in silence, then again in French, I tried: 'This Tour – it is very difficult – all are weary.' Once more only a snarling noise returned. 'The boorish oaf,' I thought, 'I'll make the blighter answer.'
'It is very dark, and you are too tired to talk,' I inferred, sarcastically. The tone touched a verbal gusher as a totally unexpected voice bawled, 'Shut up, you Froggie gasbag – I can't understand a flaming word you've been jabbering,' and then I realised that I had been unwittingly riding with Bainbridge.
After the 1928 Tour In 1928 Opperman won the Bol d'Or 24-hour classic, paced by tandems on a 500m velodrome in Paris. Both his bikes had been sabotaged by the chains being filed so they failed. His manager had to find a replacement, his interpreter's bicycle which had heavy mudguards and wheels and upturned handlebars. Opperman rode the bike for 17 hours without dismounting. He was 17 laps of the track behind the leader but after 10 hours rose to second place to Achille Souchard, who had twice been national road champion.
Opperman punctured after 23½ hours and got off his bike for the first time since the broken chain. "He had met Nature's lesser calls as he pedalled, to the roar of the indelicate crowd", said a report. Opperman won by 30 minutes to the cheers of 50,000 yelling "Allez Oppy". His manager suggested he continue to beat the 1000 km record. Opperman declined but his trainer and the crowd persuaded. He cycled 1h 19m more alone to beat the record.
He became enough of a hero in France that "a gendarme in Montmartre held up the traffic and waved him through in solitary splendour with the cry: "Bonjour, bonne chance, Oppy!" Opperman had a hero's welcome when he returned to Melbourne.
1931 Tour de France Opperman rode again in 1931 in a combined Australia/Switzerland team including Fatty Lamb, Ossie Nicholson and Frankie Thomas. Thomas had stomach trouble and did not finish stage 3 while Nicholson broke a crank and was eliminated in stage 4. Opperman finished 12th, suffering from several accidents and dysentery after having occupied sixth place, while Lamb finished in 35th place and was the last finisher.
After the 1931 Tour
In 1931 Opperman won Paris–Brest–Paris (726 miles, 1166 km) in a record 49 hours 23 minutes despite rain and wind.Obituary, Cycling, UK, 27 April 1996 Paris–Brest–Paris, which became a challenge ride for amateurs, was then the longest race in the world. Opperman said: "In 1931 it had a class field, with two Tour winners, Frantz and Maurice De Waele, as well as Classics winners. We started in the dark and rode into the howling wind and driving rain all the way to Brest. It took us more than 25 hours. Once we had turned there, riders were all over the road with fatigue. Once I had to fend off Frantz when he fell asleep."Cycling, UK, 4 May 1996, p. 29
Opperman was patron of Audax Australia and Audax UK, organisations encouraging long-distance riding, until his death in 1996. He attended the centenary celebrations of Paris–Brest–Paris in 1991 and received the Gold Medal of the City of Paris. Opperman considered Paris–Brest–Paris his greatest win.
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