The rescheduling of the Mumbai-Pune cycle race, set originally for February 17 and now postponed till after the Class 10 board exams end in March, has disappointed the small group of bicycle buffs who still look forward to their annual cycling-social.

The race, a prestigious event until the early 1990s, is now a stuttering date on the cycling-calendar, tossed around to suit timings and purse-strings of sponsors besides over-worked traffic cops allergic to Sunday-shifts. Last heard, SSC students had demanded peaceful, empty roads, heading into the examination season.

Kamlakar Zhende knows better, having seen happier days when his long-lasting affair with the cycle yielded him a hat-trick of Mumbai-Pune titles, 1980 onwards.

Flanked by fellow cyclists who carried forward the baton of the proud winners from Pune, he reminds his peers how Café Diamond Queen — their hangout in Pune of many years — was forced to build a cycle-stand to tackle the parking-woes of hordes of riders who would drop in routinely before pedalling away for pre-dawn practices.

This year, Zhende and his buddies decided to meet up at dawn and started setting the pace of life on Pune’s burgeoning two-wheeler roads.

“We never let the outsiders win. Ever,” snapped Zhende. Mumbai and Pune had been taut with nerves the previous day, roads empty with fear after another rumoured flare-up on linguistic rhetoric, as ‘outsider’ became a volatile word.

Zhende, a sportsman into his late 50s, was of course not interested in issues politically intrepid. His old flame was bicycles and he spoke of the pride with which Pune and Mumbai’s cyclists guarded their home bastion, never letting any cyclist not from these two cities take a crack at the title.

Cut to the race, and Zhende recalls how the cycling bunch that once sought a high from climbing the exacting Rajmachi Ghat at Khandala to win the ‘Ghatacha Raja’ (King of the Mountain Pass) is now cursed to witness the sport go downhill.

In those days, Pune found ready converts to the back-hunching sport of cycling from the left-bank of the Lakdipool bridge, hundreds hooked after watching brave cyclists complete a trumpeted finish at Sambhaji Park square.

A wooden-stand once collapsed under the weight of hundred-odd spectators. In Mumbai, the Parsees ruled: their pristine, well-oiled race-cycle ogled at shamelessly by lesser riders.

Very few from Mumbai even bother to train now.

“No one gives us even a lane to ride on roads now,” sighs Pramod Waghmare, a Mumbai-Pune winner in 1984. “There’s no value for a cyclist now. On the road it turns into an ego battle if a motorist is overtaken by a cyclist and it is painful to watch them try go one-up.”

Pune, a cantonment city which was accustomed to 25-30 thousand workers pedalling in disciplined files out of Ammunition factories is now beset by smoke-spewing two-wheelers.

The cyclists’ annihilation is complete with motorists throwing around their weight. Twenty-two cyclists and coaches have died in road accidents over the years due to rash driving by motorists.

Some cyclists recall how the cult Hindi film ‘Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander’ wasn’t off the mark, its climax filled with fisticuffs. Aamir Khan’s final sequence incidentally was shot during a major triathlon in Mumbai — the last of cycling’s big events to be fussed over in this part of the world.

Real cycling has its own brat-pack too. Punniya Vinod, now 49, ran away from home in Rajasthan, after his rich family thought he was no good since he flunked the same class. Watching Zhende complete his hat-trick at Pune, Punniya bought himself a cycle for Rs 400 from money earned as a photocopy-operator.

Riding an imported cycle from Bangkok, Vinod sped at the pace of the Mumbai-Pune Deccan Queen train, and even beat her to it. He would leave his anxious wife every practice-morning with the words: “I’m going, but can’t assure I’ll come back,” since accidents were not uncommon.