In June 1932, a man was buried at public expense in an unmarked grave outside Chicago, because nobody came to claim the body.
Thirty-three years earlier, he had been the fastest bicycle rider in the world.
Marshall Walter Taylor got the nickname "Major" as a teenager in Indianapolis, doing trick riding outside a bike shop in a military-style uniform to pull in customers. The name stuck longer than anyone expected.
By 1898 he held the American records at seven different distances, from the quarter mile up to two miles. In August of that year, at Manhattan Beach in New York, he lowered the paced mile twice in one afternoon and left it at 1 minute 41 seconds. That mark stood for nearly three decades.
Then Montreal, August 10th, 1899. Taylor beat Tom Butler in the final of the one-mile sprint and became the professional world champion. He was 20 years old and the second Black athlete ever to win a world title in any sport, after the boxer George Dixon.
What that sentence leaves out is the cost.
Southern promoters simply refused his entries. In 1897 he was turned away at Louisville and across the whole Southern circuit, which ended his run at the national points title before it really started. Hotels threw him out, or quoted him a rate they knew he couldn't pay. Riders formed combinations on the track to box him against the rail, and in 1901 he wrote that essentially the entire American field was riding against him rather than for themselves.
At a race in Taunton, Massachusetts in September 1897, a rider named W.E. Becker finished third behind him, rode up, dragged him off his bike, and choked him until the police pulled him off. Taylor was unconscious for about a quarter of an hour. The officials ordered the race rerun, but he was in no condition to start it.
Becker was fined 50 dollars. Other white riders chipped in to help him pay it.
Taylor was a devout Baptist and wouldn't race on Sundays, which cost him real money and contributed to losing a disputed national championship in 1898. He held the line anyway.
He went to France in 1901 and found crowds that treated him like the star he was. He raced there again in 1902 and 1903, toured Australia and New Zealand, came back for a second European run in 1907, 1908 and 1909. Even that had limits. In a Paris hotel in 1907 he was asked to move rooms after American tourists complained about sharing the building with him.
After he retired the money went. Bad investments, illness, a marriage that ended. He self-published his autobiography in 1928 and sold copies door to door. He died on June 21st, 1932, in the charity ward of Cook County Hospital. He was 53.
In 1948, a group of former racing cyclists from the Olde Tymers Athletic Club decided that grave wasn't good enough. Frank Schwinn, of the bicycle company, paid for a proper plot and a bronze marker. On May 23rd they moved him to a better part of the same cemetery and put his name on him.
Near the end of his book, Taylor wrote that life is too short for a man to hold bitterness in his heart, and that is why he had no feeling against anybody.
He was quicker than all of them, and kinder than most.
#MajorTaylor #CyclingHistory #TrackCycling #BikeRacing
- BikePush
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