Back in the Day: Racing Bicycles in High School

The photo here shows racers at the start of a one-mile race at Los Angeles Agricultural Park held on 18 May 1902. What makes it unusual, by todays standards, is that the riders are high school students, and the race was one of two bicycle events (the other being a five-mile race) held as part of the Interscholastic Field Day competitions. Yes that is correct, more than one-hundred years ago bicycle racing, whether you call it a road race, a track race, or since it was on dirt, perhaps a cyclocross race [?], was a part of high school athletics. Competing against one another that Field Day of long ago, were teams from Pasadena High School, Ventura High School, Santa Barbara High School, Santa Paula High School, the Los Angeles Normal School, and the Throop Polytechnic Institute of Pasadena. 

This was the second interscholastic Field Day held within a two week period, another taking place on the 8th at the Southern Pacific Track at Santa Monica. Competing at that meeting were Throop, Santa Monica HS, Anaheim HS, and Los Angeles Commercial HS.

After this, it would take the passage of another one-hundred years for bicycle racing to reappear in high school sports. Cycling's governing body(s) dropped the ball, or wheels, long ago on fostering growth through encouraging bicycle racing in interscholastic high school sports programs. Today's decline of the sport (h.s. mountain biking excluded) may not be entirely due to this reason, but it certainly has not helped.

Oh, by the way, and though I can't tell you who is who in the photo below, Applegate, of Throop took victory in the one-mile race, ahead of White of Pasadena, and Orr of Ventura.