Don’t worry about my age, says fit prof ahead of 1,500km Eyabantwana pedal

Every cyclist and supporter on the mammoth 1,500km pedal home for the Eyabantwana for the Children Trust ride has a story to tell — except for the elder statesman in the group.

Professor Colin Lazarus stops on his red bike near the Daily Dispatch offices on Wednesday on the last Grandad’s Army team training session for the second Eyabantwana Heritage Ride.

He starts his interview by saying crisply: “Being 80 (years old) may be a story for you, but it’s not a story for me!”

The legendary paediatrician surgeon, together with Prof Milind Chitnis, started the paediatric surgery unit in East London and Mdantsane in 1995, and it has gained wide respect over 27 years. Chitnis is now running the unit.

Lazarus said: “There are a lot more important things to think about.

“I happen to be lucky to be alive and well and strong, and enjoying my outside life and all the other things that I do.

“This ride should be about feeling fit and strong — and I’m feeling fit and strong, and I reckon I’ll be fitter and stronger by the end of the ride. That is the way it is.”

His teammate, Gerald Berlyn, 68, also a key organiser of the fundraiser where riders pay a minimum of R10,000 to the trust which supports shortages and training in the Frere and Cecilia Makiwane hospitals’ paediatric surgery unit, says of Lazarus: “I struggle to catch up to him on a hill.”

 Lazarus said: “It is all about the team. We end up by having a group of people, who often don’t know each other, really getting together.”

He has been on numerous rides organised by the “army” to raise money for the trust which have taken him to Cape Town and Mpungubwe on the northern border of SA.

But while the team of nine will be going all the way, and three more doing a few days at the end, to support the trust, one rider will be riding with a slightly different story.

In a poignant moment, Randall Leendertz, the road captain, teared up as he spoke of his wife Wendy, an internationally trained paediatrician nursing sister at Frere and Beacon Bay Life hospital.

She died from cancer on September 3.

He said: “She would tell me how they used to put the kids who were burnt in the bath and just hold them.

“It was tough. Especially if you heard about the children and people who would come from far, just to come to hospital. And about the delays in getting them there.

“She was actually going to come with us on this ride. She was my biggest supporter in whatever I did.”

As she lay getting sicker, he said he would not be riding, but she said: “No, you must go. You have trained for this thing. I’ll be there in spirit.”

He said: “On the ride I am just going to ask her to be with me and give me the strength.”

Lazarus said there was a patchwork of reasons motivating for the riders, most of them 60 and older.

He said the riders and support crew linked their athletic efforts to the work of the trust, and he felt that without this cause, most riders would not have come out individually.

“We are a group of cyclists all from different spheres of life who have formed with these objectives and we have a whole lot of fun together.”

He said the age profile of the group was testimony that people never gave up on life.

“I think all of us like a purpose in life and as you get older there is not less of a desire for that.

“It’s good that we have a group like this and that there is an opportunity which has come along.”

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