The Big Ring Ride of George Kraemer

When the big ring is all you've got: 

You're probably not going to do a lot of climbing. When George H. Kraemer posed with his racing bicycle and (probably) Harold Stone, climbing was the last thing on his mind. No, his thoughts would have been about flat out speed. On 3 June 1910 Kraemer, riding the circular Los Angeles Motordrome behind a Great Western racing car driven by Stone, set a new world's record, covering one mile in fifty-eight seconds flat. In the process he also established a new half mile record, riding that distance in thirty seconds. The previous record for the mile was fifty-eight and four-fifths seconds. When the pair - Kraemer and Stone crossed the tape, the Great Western was traveling at sixty-seven miles per hour.

In a classic example of yin / yang, the car dropped its magneto just after the finish and Kraemer, in attempting to avoid it crashed, "sliding at least 400 feet on the boards," and collecting a body-full of splinters, requiring the services of a doctor to cut many of them out.

Kraemer is just one of many racers you will read about in the second volume of Fast Digs. For now, you can still catch up on Los Angeles' earliest racers, races and racing venues by purchasing your own copy of Fast Digs, volume one, covering the years 1880-1899.