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OUR FAR FLUNG CORRESPONDENT
Tour de Timor: Peace begins with me

By Silas Everett

The Ultimate Sports Guide's globe-trotting correspondent, Silas Everett, recently competed a grueling 6-day cycling marathon in the Southeast Asian country of Timor-Leste. Newly independent, the country is striving to enhance its national pride and their annual cycling marathon, attracting riders from around the globe, has been enormously successful.

The Tour de Timor (TDT) has been touted at times as the world's toughest mountain bike race. From Sept. 11 to 16, 370 cyclists from around the globe pitted themselves against one another and Timor-Leste's awesome terrain, which promised an even more grueling, difficult track than in the past two years, since the race's inception.

The route stretches 620 kilometers up 8,200-foot-tall mountains and rattlesnake-like switchbacks, through rice paddies and dry scrub plains that descend into the sea, and down paved roads and dirt trails into remote villages and jungle. The six-day race is as aesthetically inspiring as it is physically exhausting. However, the Tour de Timor is much more than an opportunity for athletic masochism or the promotion of tourism in a country badly seeking economic development.

After three and a half years living in Timor-Leste in Southeast Asia, riding in the Tour de Timor for the first time in 2010 and spending a year preparing myself to compete in the 2011 tour with the national team, I began to understand a more profound message as the days unfolded, revealing what is hidden behind this annual mega-event.

Day 1: After completing the 120-km track, on the shaded deck of a newly built retreat center for the mentally ill, I realized I was in the perfect spot for pondering the description of the stage in my course booklet as I looked back down the valley I had ridden up:

"The roads are in a dire state of repair, making for some difficult technical climbing. The town of Ciutuila and steep climbs on increasingly bad roads take the riders over the 100-km mark for the day; 25-30 degree inclines across contorted, baked clay and rock make for tough going. At 108 km there is a fantastic view back across the valley riders have come from, while the road ahead offers the first glimpse of the large church at Laclubar and the promise of the finish line."

Timor-Leste suffered 450 years of Portuguese colonial rule, followed by a national resistance struggle against the Indonesian military beginning in 1975 and ending in 1999. The Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor, aka CAVR, estimates that at least 102,800 were killed as a result of the Indonesian military occupation. Eighty percent of the national infrastructure was destroyed during the withdrawal of the Indonesian military and pro-Indonesian militia in 1999. Woven through this narrative are the foreign players, chiefly from the United States and Australia, who largely turned a blind eye to the Indonesian invasion and gave military hardware to Suharto, which he used to subdue the Timorese.

Day 2: A quick 10-km climb separated the front group and I spent the next four and a half hours alone, tootling along behind the group, up and down, over foothills offering 1,800 meters of elevation gain. I arrived at the stage finish in Baceau to learn that I had finished second in the 40-plus masters category. As I looked around the encampment for the tour, at the townspeople themselves, with children looking for handouts from the riders and the riot police circled in the middle of the field where the tents stood, it dawned on me that gels and sports drinks were far away from meeting the needs of these people; rather, what they needed was interaction, breaking down the barriers of our shared social and economic isolation.

It's a fact that sports schemes litter development projects around the globe — some less than successful. Sports are used as a means to promote reconciliation among former fighters, combat HIV awareness and establish dialogue between police and at-risk groups. From cricket in southern Sudan to football in Kashmir, the aim is to break down walls of stigma, grievance and fear through a shared positive experience brought out by competition.

As an observer and participant, I have found that Timor's tour has grown to encompass much more, arguably because of where the country has started from. Through the tour, President Jose Ramos Horta has created something different. I realized he has helped the nation express its depthless optimism and unconditional hope for freedom and peace.

Day 3: The first 50 km was flat, with sweeping vistas of a turquoise, aquamarine sea and bumpy BMX-style fire trail riding. Leaving the humidity of the coast, the next 20 km was a climb up jungled slopes requiring stamina and technical skill to inch past the grapefruit-size rocks on a dirt road, thankfully newly graded. I arrived at the stage finish in Illiomar with no cramps, thinking I was well preserved for the next day's climb out of the area. The town itself was nestled into a hilltop among splendidly leafy "Gorillas in the Mist" flora. Later we were all officially welcomed by dancing adolescents dressed in intricately woven robes and feathered headdresses. That day the tour felt to me as if it were as much of an adventure as a race. Catching a glimpse of the leader boards, I was surprised to learn I was only two minutes off from taking second place and 30 second from third place in my category.

The tour has produced professional-class Timorese riders like the Da Costa brothers and Antonio Martins, who came in well before I did. The 70 Timorese riders participating in the event are by day mechanics, laborers and students. By the twilight hours of morning and evening, the riders train, many knowing their families have sacrificed additional income. In a country where an estimated 40 percent live on less than $1.25 a day, they balance the basics of livelihood against their ambitions to compete.

Day 4: Not good. After a relatively short 8-km climb the rest of the ride was downhill or flat. Unfortunately I got a flat tire at 19 km. Since I had been running tubeless tires during my training and had not fixed a flat in over a year, I was lost. Cursing, ranting and damning myself, I went through two tubes until I was assisted by a fellow rider from Dili who played the combined role of mechanic and trauma medic. Pondering the fact I lost a whopping 45 minutes to the tire gods, I finally finished the stage at the Com resort, a Cabo-esque villa with palm trees, trimmed grass and several rows of tidy bungalows.

Day 5: Putting Day 4 behind me, I awoke to a gorgeous dull-orange sunrise and eventually got myself into the bunch of listless racers at the start line. For 80 km of flat road, the peleton held at least 40 riders. Then at Baucau a 10-km climb split the pack into two groups. I caught neither and peddled the rest of the 50 km to Manatuto by myself. Like a "man in a tutu" as the name of the town suggests, the site chosen for camping was probably the least attractive of the others on the tour, which was balanced out by the exceptionally spirited welcome at the finish line from its many youth.

The colorful images of the national team riders on larger-than-life posters hang on district centers and fill websites and national TV. These are the nation's newest symbols of Timorese greatness, not for their role in the national resistance struggle, but because they are felt to embody a piece of every Timorese person within them.

In the grand view, the tour epitomizes Timor-Leste's rise from the ashes. Like Clint Eastwood's film "Invictus," telling the story of Nelson Mandela's post-apartheid vision of reconciliation, where blacks and whites successfully compete as one team for the 1995 Rugby World Cup, I could hear the tour ringing of comeback and triumph.

Day 6: The last day, and back to Dili. That morning at breakfast I learned that the day before an Australian soldier in the forward convoy had been killed in a freak accident when his vehicle overturned. In the darkness of the early morning, in the dusty encampment, we stood in a moment of silence. The mood stuck through the first 50 km of the race. The peleton slowed, gathering at least 100 riders, while several teams put racers up the road. With 40 km to go, a 4-km climb then splintered the group. Through the streets of the capital, I passed my house, family and work in a pack of riders doing 40 km per hr. With a sprint finish from our pack of eight at the presidential palace, it was over. Was this all that I had woken up at 5:30 a.m. for over the last year?

In sporting events we are often drawn to the punctuations: the start, the crash or the sprint finish. The Tour de Timor-Leste has grown to epitomize the importance of what happens in between. The tour and the president's other international initiatives, such as the Dili Marathon, have sparked a culture of fitness among Timorese as well as foreigners in Dili, where joggers and cyclists of all origins can be seen enjoying the capital's coconut-lined waterfront and newly constructed boardwalk. The tour is said to bring more than $1 million into the region with sponsorship from multinational beverage, telecommunication, oil and airline companies.

No doubt that during the six days of sweat, blood and tears, I, like all the other riders in this year's Tour De Timor, felt renewed, showered with greetings from throngs of children, men and women who lined the roads and tracks. Perhaps Timor-Leste's spirit is best expressed not by the punctuated moments of glory, but in the expressions of joy that can be seen as we all emerge beyond our barriers of isolation. Invictus!