History - American

The Tour de France summertime is near. It's a solidly familiar, unchanging time of the year for me and probably for you. I started watching the Tour de France on television in the early 1990s - the English-speaking coverage was of course much more abbreviated, and the race much more mysterious back then. My parents just flipped it on because they liked to see the scenery and reminisce about times that they had lived there in the 1980s (and my dad as a kid in the 1960s too). I remember Indurain as a deity, even when he was no more - even Lance wasn't so God-like, albeit invincible.

Anyway, Phil and Paul are always there for that month in the summer (a much awaited reprieve from Sporza, though with the cost of Saab commercials every ten minutes). And the greens and blues and the yellows. And the hooligans with campers. And now Bob Roll (and my obligatory mention that Stephen Roche should be teamed with Bob Roll to make a most entertaining sport announcing duo).

And of course the histories of these famous climbs and these famous riders in grainy footage, mainly of Bernard Hinault growling and LeMond smiling and Merckx's butt. They're all interesting, but I've heard them all already. And read them all already. Tom Simpson died on the thirteenth stage on the thirteenth of July. Etc.

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Of course I'm a geek for sport history. I know more than most should about 1880s baseball and Roger Bannister's daily routines.

The explosion of competitive cycling in the US and most all of the English-speaking world during my lifetime demands, at least in my opinion, that greater attention be placed on this sport's history here.

The ECCC, and the New England cycling scene overall, had and have a rich awareness and respect for this sport's history here. It is too exhausting to give all of the examples.

A sport team, and a sport league, is about competition, about an enjoyable lifestyle, about personal development, and about being a part of a (hopefully) meaningful social network. Actually, I think that's what being a part of a college or university is largely about. But it's also about being a part of a tradition, a part of a history, and being a link in a certain continuous strain of time.

What I know is: Brown's cycling club was first officially organized in 1896, probably upon Columbia's founding of a collegiate competitive cycling league to organize existing teams (mainly in the NYC/NJ area) and potential ones. I have a picture of the Brown cycling club from about 1905 - posing with their singlespeeds, working-class/laborer's clothes (presumably the exercise attire of their time), and large mustaches, they basically look like the Brown fixie hipsters of today. Providence once had a stadium-sized velodrome - the mysterious Providence Cyclodrome - which is now a Whole Foods, a bank, a Boston Market, and a parking lot.

Oh - the Madison track events are named after Madison Square Gardens. It comes back to NYC always, no?

Back to Brown: I've met or corresponded with former Brown cycling racers who date back to the 1960s - gaps in between some years, unfortunately. It was a sparse affair, usually involving nerdy counterculturists and Volkswagen vans - the same narrative Princeton, Dartmouth, etc give, except that their programs were not as sparce as poor Brown's (we've never won the Ivy League in cycling, ever - and in a rare bitter explosion of a past 2007 grievance with a small few who probably aren't reading this anyway, and who I truly don't wish ill-will between us all: this fact IS F*%$ing RELEVANT!).

I'm looping my thoughts now. My ultimate point is probably:

Let's dig deeper, before the '70s or the '60s or the '50s, while of course giving those more recent 'nascent' eras the greater attention that they deserve of our appreciation, outreach, and historical appreciation. We're doing ourselves a disfavor, often counterproductive, with everyone young and old today in our sport thinking that we're the pioneers. A Holiday Inn is much more pleasant than a Conestoga wagon

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This is the cool part: facts that will make you smile.

These come from Greg LeMond's Complete Book of Bicycling 2nd ed. (Lemond and Kent Gordis; New York: Perigree Books, 1990). I think it's out of print, but can be picked up online used for a dollar or so anymore, as I did when I first bought it right at the moment I said "I want to race bikes." Seriously, it's a good read and a good buy - I lend it out like crazy. The equipment sections are mostly antiquated, and the nutrition section to a much smaller extent as well, but the info on tactics is textbook-perfect and very clear, and the training info is shockingly just like the Friel/Carmichael/etc conglomerate - except without powertaps and other expensive (and redundant) quantification devices, and the bullshit sugarcoating to attract those many who'll spend $40,000 on crap to do two (...you complete the sentence). The last chapter is on the sport's history - it's not sourced/footnoted, but anyway:

-The first known bicycle race, in Paris in 1868 of 1200 meters, was won by an Englishman: James Moore. He perhaps employed drafting, and was the first ever sprinter, as he followed the French favorites to lead until he passed the leader just meters from the line (319).
-The first known bicycle 'road-race', in 1868 from Paris to Rouen over about 83 miles, was won by an Englishman: the same James Moore. He was amongst the racers required to wait at the start 30 minutes after the rest of the field started - presumably as a sort of 'handicapping' (320).
-The first "recognized" road-race in Italy, in 1870 from Florence to Pistoia, was won by an American: Rynner van Neste (320).
-The British dominance, and subsequent popular boom, of competitive cycling in GB from the very start, probably led to the comprehensive outlawing of bicycle racing there in the late-Victorian orderly histeria of the 1890s - the bans which continued very far into the 20th century (321). As is well-known, both legal and strict-'informal' bans of bicycle riding of any sort, anywhere, by anyone in many British counties persisted into the 1950s.


I'll let that all settle-in. Oh, and, go Wiggo!