Sailing to the Tape Like a Dutch Farmer

Pretty good of this reporter at the St Louis Republic, in 1898 (reprinted in the Buffalo Evening Times on March 7), to be able to discern different characteristics of racers when in full flight during a sprint. All I have ever tended to notice is absolute focus and single-minded determination to reach the finish line first. Anyway, in Eddie Bald he saw a "puddler in a rolling mill. It is hard work for him. He rips his bicycle to pieces, hammers the crank hanger." L. D. Cabanne "comes in with lowering brow and set face, as if every man in the race was a personal enemy with whom he was settling an old grudge."

Arthur Gardiner "sails along looking as if he wished he could stop and see if his curls were marshaled right and find out if all the girls had their glances focused properly on him."

Earl Kiser "comes in like a bulldog in for a licking, frowning face, knit brow and ends of the mouth drawn down." Willie Sanger "like he was reaching for a stein of beer, easy and comfortable, with absolutely no facial expression." Dr. Brown "like a swallow trying a new wing, as if he did not know where he was going." August Mertens "sails to the tape like a Dutch farmer doing a hard day's plowing; all hard work, but August, like Sanger, never wrinkles his front."

Fred Loughead "twists his face as if a surgical operation was being performed on him, gets out of his saddle and is all nerves and hurry." Willie Cobern "sits down with a startled look on his face and flies like a scared bird. I have seen him go down the line with an awful swoop, swift as an arrow and straight as a die."

Newhouse and Weinig "are both like Sanger - take things easy when all out and flying." Jack Coburn and Dan Dougherty "work harder coming home than any of them. Jack is always short of oxygen, and comes along puffing like a steam engine - hu-hu, hu-hu - while pedaling for dear life." The 'Boy Wonder' has an awful time with himself on the way home from the eighth pole to the tape. It is fearfully hard work for him, as his grunts testify." Fred Hattersley, when in front, "rides with the delighted look of a girl receiving a box of Huyler's. When behind and the band plays 'You Can't Play in My Back Yard' he is disgusted."

Jay Eaton "acts like as if he were shooting craps or playing poker. He furtively watches everyone in the race with a cold calculating eye for fear they might switch the dice or put up the cards on him." Eaton "has an eye on the back of his head." Orlando Stevens "cuts away like a fellow who has been brought up there by the hand, given a clear field and told to get away as fast as he can." Floyd McFarland "rides for all the money. The look on his face as he comes along is like that in the eyes of a man who lives under the sign of the three balls. He is out for the stuff."

Old Charley Murphy "always wore a malicious grin when he was winning, as if he had bumped the heads of every man in the race." Poor Johnnie Johnson "was the most harmless stretch rider I ever saw, a lamb led into the slaughter." Fred Titus came at the judges like a mastif at a plate of beef."

Tom Cooper and Charlie McCarthy "are the prettiest stretch riders in the country. They ride exactly alike. A wild delight in the glory of the conflict is their distinguished characteristic. They get away with a jump, a smash into the pedals, a laughing and dancing of the eyes and a movement of the mouth that suggests a veil of delight and supreme happiness that the moment of their gratitude is at length arrived. Both delight in riding through a bunch with a rush and a whoop and then sitting down and flying... It does not seem like work to them. They come along with much the same expression as a fellow in a toboggan with his best girl behind him."