Passage III

The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World

At the turn of the twentieth century, the most popular spectator sport in the United States wasn’t football or baseball: it was bicycle racing. During that golden age of cycling, crowds of over twenty thousand gathered at tracks around the country to watch its’ favorite athletes compete. (31) One cyclist, Marshall “Major” Taylor, a young African American man from Indianapolis, was a popular racer.

[1] His skills attracted the attention of a bicycle shop owner, whom hired Taylor to demonstrate stunts and help around the store. [2] Taylor got his start in cycling when he received a bicycle as a gift from his father’s employer. [3] He soon excelled both at riding and at complicated stunts, such as standing on the handlebars. [4] That same year, 1892, the shop owner encouraged Taylor, then thirteen, to enter his first road race. [5] He won. (36)

At fifteen, Taylor won a seventy-five-mile amateur road race and set a one-mile record at Indianapolis’s Capital City track. After competing in Indiana and Illinois for another two years, when Taylor relocated to Worcester, Massachusetts, with Louis Munger, a bicycle manufacturer and retired cyclist who had seen Taylor compete. Munger, who planned to open a bicycle factory in Worcester, knowing that there would be better racing opportunities on the East Coast for Taylor.

Taylor turned pro at eighteen and began competing all over the United Stales. By 1899, he held seven world records. Taylor often outsmarted his competition by pretending to be tired or discouraged. (41) When his opponents relaxed, Taylor would rocket past them in a dazzling sprint to the finish. No one could beat him in a sprint, which is one reason fans flocked to see him.

Major Taylor, who would write an autobiography, went on to win races in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. (44) In the last decade of his life, he wrote his autobiography, The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World, which describes his career, expresses his views on good sportsmanship, and offers advice to young athletes.