Fast Digs: Fifteen Women Racers

It is not that they were unheard of, but when the 1800s turned into the 1900s women's racing was, by any measure, a pretty rare thing - I can't recall any in Los Angeles having taken place before the turn of the century.

 With the advent of the so-called Saucer Track, indoor races had become "the thing" for bicycle racing in the city, but they were not the only racing action taking place over New Years 1899-1900. On the same weekend an eight mile road race took place in Glendale. Though details of the course are lacking, such contests in the city of Glendale were generally run as out and back races along San Fernando Road. What made this contest different, and unique, was the inclusion of a women's race. By today's standards, eight miles is little more than a round trip to the market; while the fifteen women who entered would only get to race one-sixteenth of the eight-mile distance, it was still far more then they had been previously offered. 

Results of the race are yet to be discovered (and I still hold out hope they will be), but we do know that the winner would have come from among this list of entrants: Louise Peck, Emma Bercaw, Ora Jones, Edna Lyman, Nola Lyman, Ada Haines, Mary Doyle, Fay Goode, Mabel Myers, Lena Frackelton, Jessie Patterson, Ruth Field, Edith Parker, Nona Borthick, and Sala West. To these fifteen racing pioneers extend the roots of todays women's racing in the region of the City of Angels.

women racers were not unheard of - though not from the Los Angeles area, Tillie Anderson

was World Champion between 1897 and 1902