The 500 Club - The Stealth
Norman, or Grand Duke Stealth I should call you, thanks a lot for your time today. You must be quite tired after the long trip here to the top of Mount Olympus. The King instructed me to conduct the interview in appropriate surrounds, so here we are.
Tired? On the contrary, I’ve travelled light as you can see. It’s great to be here! Many of my ancestors hailed from this place and I like to respect them by dressing appropriately in my roman sandals and g-string.
It’s not often one can recall the second man to stand on the moon. Your thoughts?
Well when you roll at the start, the middle and the end, you get noticed. Buzz never did a roll - he was always in the autobus!
All jokes aside, joining The Postie as only the second Grand Duke in TKM is an exceptional achievement – you must be proud
Indeed! However I will forever walk in the footsteps of the great one there! But I have the privilege of being the one to do it first. It’s a great feeling knowing that you will always receive your coffee first, before all the peasants amongst the kingdom.
To give some perspective and context to those that are not familiar with the early days of TKM (like myself), talk us through how you come to be inside the walls of the Kingdom?
Interestingly I happened to know Teh King from a former life. Back then he was called Fairyweather, and acted accordingly , still does. We shared the same interest in a girl and the same friend in Sammy Patterson. That’s who Doughnut is on the spready. Doughtnuts and I shared the same girlfriend, Doughnuts and I lived together, then Doughnuts and Teh King shared a girlfriend and well anyway I think you get the idea. Anyway, all good things come to an end and we went our separate ways. Late in 2006 however, I was doing work thing and the Teh King walked back into my life and reignited the fire! We got straight back into the swing of things when we found out we were both into cycling. Me with Moonie and him with a midget called Reece and few other undesirable looking blokes. He invited me and moons to come down to cut some laps at Albert Park. At about 35 kph we thought we were smoking it! When Woody joined in it was moved to Racer and down beach road. The pace lifted about 1kph. The sprint back then was hotly contested as much as it is now. I used to come from nowhere and cross the line first. So when I got the Bianchi Carbon it was just natural to be named the STEALTH!
To keep coming back to the same stretch of road, 500 times no less, you must enjoy it – what are some of the highlights of the 500 trips down to Club Clinger?
The day that Teh King opened up with “Righty O you pack of Latvian lap laps…” oh yes and
Spanking it down the DSC!
RETRO METRO was pretty good too - we gotta do more of that shit.
Amongst the many podiums and the Road Race win of 2012, you’ve taken out one of the most coveted awards in TKM – The Rare Award – tell me, what does it mean to ‘be rare’?
Being rare is like a good suit. If it fits, you wear it all the time. I guess you have to be pretty rare to get on with all the strange cats in TKM.
What is next in store as you head towards the lofty heights of the 1000th ride (assuming you do not have an accident on the swing, preventing you from attending any further)?
There has to be a nude noize. Absolutely. When I get to 1000, that is how we are going to celebrate. At least if we haven’t already done it by then.
I assume there are some people you would like to thank?
Sure is. I’d like to thank all the people that came over for last night’s swing party. Smashing good time!