Old Times: A Six Day Race

Yeah, so I was doing some Fast Digs research as usual, scanning through several days' worth of newspaper and continuing to run across references to a Six Day Race that was taking place. It was clear that the race was not being run in Los Angeles, and so not relevant but still, my interest was piqued - I mean it was a Six Day race, and an early one at that. Not that such races at this early time period were unheard of, but they certainly were uniquely rare. And so after about three days of racing, three references quickly scanned but not followed up on, I went to check things out.

As it turned out that Six Day race was not quite what I had been expecting it to be. Yes, as the illustration documenting the Weston v. O'Leary match race of 1877 (not related to the race I was reading about) shows, this was a walking Six Day. Whaaaaaaat? Alright, well you may have, but I had never heard of such a thing; this was new news to me. I guess I should not have been too surprised to find out that bicycling Six Days had precedent in an ever more basic endeavor - walking. I found it hard to believe that people would pay good money to watch people walk lap after lap around an oval. Yet if bicycle Six Day races are any means of comparison, the social aspect, the mixing and mingling was likely as big a draw for spectators as the actual racing itself. Six Day walking races date back to the 1870s and were big spectator attractions, drawing audiences of up to 70,000 but, by the 1890s they had been eclipsed in popularity by bicycling Six Day Races.