In the 1890s, America is in love with bicycle racing. It has become more popular than baseball. As many as 20,000 people would go out to watch a cycling event. Indoor cycling is a death-defying spectacle with packs of cyclists whirling around narrow wooden tracks at breakneck speeds. Crashes were very common and fights often broke out. It was a very dangerous and deadly. Some riders used cocaine, strychnine, or nitroglycerine to enhance their performance. It wasn't as safe as it is today. But those who made it became champions and were rewarded with fame and fortune. In the days before motor cars, it was the most exciting thing to happen since the horse and buggy.
In Indianapolis, Indiana there is one teen who dreams of being a champion bicycle racer. His name is Marshall Taylor and he spends all his time on his bike. He earns money delivering papers and in his free time, he tests his speed on back roads. Taylor excels at short one minute sprints. He knew he was fast enough to go up against the best, he just needed the opportunity. There was just tone problem. Taylor was African-American and the races were only open to whites. He had to find a way to the races to show them that he could race faster than then they could.
In August 1896 he learned that the Indianapolis will hold a major racing event for the world's top racers sponsored by the League of American Wheelmen. He decides to sneak into the venue and compete anyway. The seventeen-year-old makes plans to wait until the track is empty between races and then dash out on his bike. Then he'll attempt to break the one-minute speed record for the fastest minute. He'll recruit an accomplice to start the timing clock. He believes that once the crowd sees what he can do he'll be able to race anywhere.
This is a dangerous undertaking as racism is still rampant in America and there could be deadly repercussions. When he started out, though the crowd was confused because there was no one on the schedule to race. But when they see that he has broken the world record by eight seconds they are astonished and break out in applause at the amazing feat they had just witnessed. Taylor's record was not recorded officially, but he the door was opened for him to race. Over the next decade, he took the racing world by storm. He'd won 29 of the 49 races he'd competed in and held seven world records. In 1899 he won the Track Cycling World Championship one-mile sprint. He was given the name during his career as the Black Cyclone due to his speed.
Still, it wasn't easy. He was barred from racing in the South and the races he could race some whites refused to race against him and others would box him in. The spectators would throw ice and nails at him. One racer, W.E. Beck put him in a chokehold and strangled him senseless until he was pulled off. Beck was fined $50, but it took a while for Taylor to recover that day.
Taylor refused to go to Europe to race because they raced on Sunday and he was religious. So in 1902, Europe changed the day just so he could come and race and he dominated the European and Australian circuits. He really did become the greatest cyclist of the world. He was making $30,000 a year and got married and had a daughter. He retired in 1910 just when his body was giving out and the sport was waning in interest with the advent of the motor car. Sadly, he made bad investments and lost it all in the crash of '29. His marriage also fell apart as did his body. He wrote a book about his life and went door-to-door selling it in Chicago but died at the young age of 53 in 1932. His body lay unclaimed in the morgue so he was buried in a pauper's grave. When the Olde Tymer's Athletic Club of the South Wabash YMCA in Chicago found out they persuaded Frank Swchinn of the bicycle fame to have his remains transferred to the Memorial Garden of the Good Shepherd with a plaque that reads: World championship bicycle racer who came up the hard way--Without hatred in his heart--An honest, Courageous, and God-fearing, clean-living gentlemanly athlete. A credit to his race who always gave out his best--Gone but not forgotten.
