Grim and Pitiable Wrecks
It began on a Monday as "a wonderful test of endurance," but as "dreary hours" passed, the "Suicide Club" became locked in "a desperate duel," fighting hallucinations and "weird fancies" that haunted the "enfeebled minds" of the remaining riders, each left "struggling against all the dictates of outraged nature." By the following Saturday, "wonderful" had become "barbarous," with the "awful brutality" of the competition shocking spectators into the belief that such things should be outlawed. The "brutal contest" ended with the "riders on the verge of dementia," most of them, "mental and physical wrecks," their minds "disordered," their bodies "grim and pitiable."
The brutal contest was the February 1899 Six-Day bicycle race at Mechanic's Pavilion in San Francisco. The starting competitors were:
Burns W. Pierce of Canada,
Louis Gimm of Pittsburg,
John Lawson,
Teddy Hale of Ireland,
Charles W. Ashinger from Oklahoma,
Frank Waller from Alameda,
Earl D. Stevens of Buffalo,
Oscar Aronson of Sweden,
Charles Turville of Philadelphia,
Henry Pilkington of Ireland,
Thomas Barnaby of Boston,
Michael Frederick of Switzerland,
Oscar Julius of Sweden,
J. W. Nawn of Ireland,
Charles W. Miller of Chicago,
Frank Albert of New York,
George Hannant
John M. Chapman
Events of this kind are necessarily full of incidents great and small - among some of those documented for history are:
On the 2nd day Frank Waller was forced to withdraw when he went blind, his eyes strained beyond their endurance. He had been circling the track "by a sense of feeling rather than seeing" for some laps, before the "light faded out" completely. Fortunately, his loss of sight was temporary.
After 72 hours the young Irishman, Nawn, suffering with hallucinations, dismounted at one point, shouting at the gallery where, he thought his friend Frederick was concealed. "His talk was incoherent, rambling off on all sorts of odd fancies."
On the fifth day, a spectator by the name of Sam Marx "strutted across the track," and straight into the path of John Lawson who fell in an unconscious heap and had to be carried from the track. Frank Waller, recovered now from his earlier blindness was first to catch Marx, giving him a "sound thrashing." He was joined by Tim Hurst, who took a hand in the proceedings, before escorting Marx from the building. "Had he thrown [race leader] Miller it is a question if he would have escaped with his life."
On the penultimate day, Fredericks went missing from the track; his trainers searched high and low before discovering that he had dismounted without being seen, made his way through the training quarters and out the other side. When found, the rider said, in broken English, that he thought there was a tandem race taking place and that he should wait until they were finished. Fredericks' handlers finally convinced him to continue. Later, track employee Fred Carter walked across the track, just as Marx had done the night before, and became an easy target for the unlucky Fredericks who was thrown high in the air, landing headfirst in a pile of bottles. Again, after a delay, he remounted his bike and continued on.
Frank Albert "demanded a pair of kid gloves;" when he got them he continued on his way, just as happy as could be.
Thomas Barnaby, rode down onto the floor and dismounted before he decided to "unwind himself," and rode back onto the track, circling, but in reverse direction.
At the end of six days, Miller proved most resolute of the twelve finishers from the eighteen racers who started. Over the six days, Miller rode 2,192 miles, fifty-one miles more than 2nd placed finisher, Aronson. His total distance smashed the previous six day record of 2,007 miles.
Contrary to common belief that the race, "the most brutal that human ingenuity has up to the present time been able to devise," the contest did not "go down in history as the last of its kind."
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