Paul Jesson's tale well worth telling

'Oh, THAT Tour!' – The Paul Jesson Story by Des Williams. Last Side Publishing, 2019.

As New Zealand cyclists start popping up among the results lists of major European events, especially, in more recent times, it is timely that the autobiography of one of the trailblazers for Kiwis competing in Europe has been published.

 

Paul Jesson, an outstanding talent from Christchurch, wasn't one of the earliest pioneers, they were a generation or two ahead of him, but because it was so hard for Kiwis to break into the European scene, the gestation of more permanent opportunities was a long time coming.

But when they did Jesson was to the forefont of that happening. The reviewer was privy to the earliest days of Jesson's development as a competitor in the Tour of Southland and the less forgotten annual Queenstown tours that used to be raced over Queen's Birthday Weekends. If the Tour of Southland was notable for weather variations, the Queens Birthday weekend had one consistent quality – the cold.

Jesson had two wins and two second placings in the Tour of Southland, and in the season after his second win, the flood-plagued tour of 1978, he was racing professionally in Europe achieving 10^thand 13^thplacings in stage finishes on the Tour de France.

A year later he was the first New Zealander to win a stage in a major European tour, La Vuelta a Espana, where he won the 10^thstage. 

However, it was soon after that success in which he finished 29^thoverall that Jesson's career ended. Riding the criterium of the famed warm-up event for the Tour de France, the Dauphine Libere and impressing with how well he was doing, tragedy struck Jesson, around the eight-minute mark.

As Jesson said: "Our reconnaissance rides earlier in the day would have given me some idea of the road ahead, but about 800 metres from the end of the race itself I came around a corner, hell for leather, eyes down on the road and crashed into the back of a stationary Lancia car. The course had supposedly been cleared of all vehicles prior to the start of the prologue."

That was bad enough in itself, but what followed was worse. Having badly damaged his knee and suffering other injuries, he was taken to hospital but arrived during a shift change. That resulted in delays to his treatment and control of blood circulation.

It was then found the hospital staff lacked the expertise to treat his injuries and he had to be taken 700km by ambulance to Belgium. The surgeon there had a reputation for dealing with similar types of sports injuries but then he realised he couldn't handle the task and Jesson had to be transferred to another hospital.

He had 12 major operations over three weeks, three of them to deal with a gangrenous leg which eventually resulted in amputation.

Jesson spent another four years in Belgium where he had been based. But when he returned to New Zealand he became involved in support work for New Zealand cycling teams and became a masseur for sportspeople.

But as it turned out Jesson would resume racing. In 1995 after cycling experiences, while travelling through Europe, he returned to riding and became involved in competing in 'differently-abled' events. Those reached their peak, after any number of trials and tribulations, when he won a bronze medal in the 2004 Olympic Games time trial/road race at the Athens Paralympics. That followed an 11^that Sydney's Paralympics four years earlier and a fourth in the 3000m individual pursuit.  Back in 1998, he had won two world championships in the 4000m individual pursuit and 18km road time trial.

Jesson's story has not been as well known in New Zealand sports history as it should have been but Des Williams' effort in putting the story together is a worthy tribute to one of cycling's trailblazers. The resulting story reveals just how much of an impact Jesson had made in the hard world of European cycling and how bright his future looked.

While he was denied that as a result of his accident, his story is nevertheless a fulsome reminder of the triumph of the will and deserves its place in New Zealand's sporting literature.