Hubert rode a bicycle from the age of eight until his 90th birthday, when his wife Mavys, fearing for his health and safety, forced him to stop.

His father enlisted in the Australian Army in World War I and he was sent to live with his paternal grandmother in Melbourne, where he completed his education in Glen Iris.

The proprietor, Bruce Small, was so impressed he offered Opperman a role in the business, which helped turn both into household names in Australia.

In 1927 the Warrnambool to Melbourne was not run and the title was won by Opperman as the winner of the Dunlop Grand Prix, a 690.5 miles (1,111.3 km) race over four stages.

[19] The Melbourne Herald and The Sporting Globe in Australia and The Sun in New Zealand started a fund in late 1927 to pay for an Australasia team to the Tour de France.

The Franco-American writer René de Latour, who was working for McNamara at the six-day, wrote: Opperman joined a training camp run by Paul Ruinart, trainer of the Vélo Club Levallois, on the outskirts of Paris.

Their position was worsened by Henri Desgrange's plan to run most of the race as a team time trial, as he had the previous year.

He said of the long stages and the hours of darkness that riders endured: In 1928 Opperman won the Bol d'Or 24-hour classic, paced by tandems on a 500m velodrome in Paris.

He was 17 laps of the track behind the leader but after 10 hours rose to second place to Achille Souchard, who had twice been national road champion.

He became enough of a hero in France that "a gendarme in Montmartre held up the traffic and waved him through in solitary splendour with the cry: "Bonjour, bonne chance, Oppy!

In 1937 Opperman set a record fastest time of 13 days, 10 hours and 11 minutes for the 2,875 miles transcontinental crossing from Fremantle to Sydney, over long stretches of rutted tracks and through soft sand where he had to carry his bicycle in searing heat.

"[35] Opperman was widely known for his vocal opposition to doping and illegal drugs being used by athletes attempting to gain a competitive advantage, a practice he labelled as “vicious”.

As an advocate for natural athleticism over artificial enhancement, Opperman often cited the benefits of healthy diet, physical training, rest and preparedness in maximising a cyclist's endurance and competitive edge.

When referencing that some cyclists’ trainers might have secretly added dope to a riders’ intake, Gill noted that Opperman would never participate.

Mockridge states that caring for and feeding a cyclist’s body with proper food and providing it sufficient rest from the rigours of professional cycling was the key to these men becoming great champions with longevity in their sport.

[43] Mockridge, a fellow Australian and Victorian champion cyclist, said of Opperman and the great drug-free champions:Men who treat themselves this way are the champions whose reign will be a long one — Bartali, Coppi, Volpi, Bini and Magni of Italy; Geminiani Bobet, Gerardin and Vietto of France; Van Vliet, Derksen, Van Kempen and Schulte of Holland; Scherens, Van Steenbergen and, until he was killed, Ockers, of Belgium; Harris of England, Opperman and Strom of Australia.

On the topic of athletes potentially doping to cheat at the upcoming 1992 Olympic Games, he told the members and inductees:The use of drugs is a vicious practice [...] personally I would circulate expert medical opinions concerning its adverse effects to every competitor, demand they sign it as read and understood and then if they are tested positive, suspend them for life.

In 1995 Griffith University awarded my father an Honorary Doctorate in Health and Psychology and in 2014 he was named Australian Tour de France Team Captain of the Century.

[44]Daniel Oakman, a Senior Curator at the National Museum of Australia and historian was clear when describing Opperman’s healthy habits.

Oakman said Opperman was viewed admirably for his ‘athletic virtue’ and that his ‘performance enhancement’ beverage of choice was simply coffee and a herbal brew as potent as a cup of tea or piece of chocolate.

His sports beverage of choice was coffee and the South American herbal brew called Yerba maté, which had the same stimulating effect as tea and chocolate.Opperman's career ended with World War II when he joined the Royal Australian Air Force.

He beat a senior Labor minister, J. J. Dedman and held the seat for 17 years before appointment to High Commissioner for Malta.

One assessment said: "He was the perfect party man: unswervingly loyal, safe with secrets, an honest adviser and a shoulder for fellow ministers to cry on, sometimes literally.

[45][46] Sir Hubert and Lady (Mavys) Opperman resided at Edgewater Towers, St Kilda, Victoria, from the day it opened in 1961 until their move to a Wantirna retirement village in the late 1980s.

"They left the 'glorious' views of their St Kilda home for the smog free air at the foot of the Dandenongs"[47] The Edgewater Towers project was the brain child of Opperman's friend and sponsor Bruce Small.

The Oppermans had two flats on the 6th floor facing the bay and he was often seen bicycling along the foreshore wearing his signature black beret.

[48] Opperman was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1953,[49] and made a Knight Bachelor in 1968 for his services as High Commissioner to Malta.

He was voted Europe's most popular sportsman of 1928 by 500,000 readers of the French sporting journal L'Auto, ahead of national tennis champion Henri Cochet.

An obituary said he "ranked alongside Don Bradman and the race horse Phar Lap as an Australian sporting idol, but his fame at home proved less durable than theirs, perhaps because he went on to become a politician.

Oppy's racing bicycle, used in his epic crossing from Fremantle to Sydney, was included in a travelling exhibit put on by the national museum.