john

This past winter I was at library and decided to take a look at the bicycle
section. Two books caught my eye. “The Wheelmen” and “Seven Deadly
Sins”. If you have only read about those sins online, you only know
about 10% of it, these books really delineate how much of an
anti-hero-fraud this guy is/was. Walsh’s book is really good and nicely
written. As a journalist who never stopped doing his job, imho, his book
deserves to be read.
When I finished reading those books, another book caught my eye and lifted
my spirits. I own/have read Andrew Ritchie 1996 book about Taylor, but
didn’t realize that another book had been written. “ Major: A Black
Athlete, a White Era, and the Fight to Be the World's Fastest Human Being”
2009 by Todd Balf
.
[I also now see, on amazon, another book, Kerber 2014. As most will say,
enough can’t be written about Major / Marshall Taylor. There are some quite
critical reviews of Balf’s book on Amazon. I can’t disagree with the
reviews, however it’s still a good read, written in different style than
Ritchie’ and thus relaying stories in a different light putting things in a
different perspective that help show how great of an athlete Taylor really
was.... ]

So recalling a few of the stories out of Balf’s book. (recalling, don’t
quote me !)

-Bike racing was big money and quite dangerous, and the sort that got into
it would be the same type in modern times that do extreme sports like say
base jumping, etc.. . Furthermore, in some American cities at the time,
50% of the population was on bicycles, thus there was a large pool of
cyclists for the racers to develop from. The point that I took from Balf’
book is that the bicycle racers at that time were probably the best
athlete’s in the world. Taylors’s competitors were probably relatively
better than today’s bike racers. These guys were bad asses, the toughest
meanest strongest craziest most daring athletes of the time.

-Early in his racing career, When Taylor was attempting to set a minute and
half mile record (45 mph average) , being paced behind a multi person
tandem. The tandem wasn’t cutting it and he could actually pull out and
accelerate past the tandem at 45+ mph ! (can you imagine?, single speed,
box section rims?, no aero helmet, etc. etc. : ).

-President Teddy Roosevelt was big fan and met with him congratulating him
for representing America throughout the world.

-He had long racing career. IIRC almost 20 years. He seemed to win most of
the time. He had a lot of power, but also he was extremely intelligent and
skillful (e.g he could ride bicycle backwards), his tactics were always
spot on, and evidently had an innate sense of how to train.

-Balf describes a big race in Australia. (Which was cabled throughout the
world.)

-So imagine you are in a race and get purposely hooked un-expectedly and
you go down hard, really hard. You’re out cold. Your scalp is split open,
in places most of the skin has been take off your leg. You’re whole side
is bruised up. You’re really messed up; so much you can’t leave the
hospital bed for weeks. Doctors are saying you need a lot more time to
heal and an absolute “no” to physical activity. But this is the race, so
you get out of bed and get on the night train to the big race. You are
going up against the best athletes in the world at their primes, who have
continued to race while you’ve been in bed. You find out there is plan for
most of the ~ 20 man field to attempt to block you. Then when you try to
get on your bicycle, you find out that you can’t even complete a pedal
stroke. So you pull out a knife and start slicing your leg (re-open the
scab), until you can, leaving a pool of blood. The pack, knowing you’ve
been off the bike for weeks and still quite injured, starts out fast trying
to blow you off the back. Against these odds, how the hell does one still
manage to win? Taylor did.

-Lest we forget ! Yes Greg was great also, but Marshall Taylor was our
greatest.