Cyclopedia (44 page)

(b. Italy, 1891, d. 1959)

 

The only woman to compete in any of the three major men's Tours, Strada was born Alfonsina Morin. She won numerous races and was invited to pre-Revolutionary Russia to meet Czar Nicholas II before riding the men's Tour of Lombardy in 1917 and 1918. She entered the 1924 Giro as “Strada, Alfonsin”—deliberately deleting the
a
from her first name to keep the organizers in the dark regarding her gender—and remained in the race for four days. On day five she broke her handlebars and finished outside the time limit, with the end of a broomstick where part of her bars should have been. She was eliminated but invited to continue by the organizers because the public had gotten wind that a woman was in the race and she had novelty value. Strada started each morning with the race and was timed in in the evening but did not figure on the official listings. She finished 28 hours behind the winner, Giuseppe Enrici, after the 3,613 km and went home with 50,000 lire.

 

(SEE
WOMEN
FOR MORE ON WOMEN'S RACING;
BERYL BURTON
,
NICOLE COOKE
, AND
JEANNIE LONGO
FOR GREAT WOMEN RACERS)

Born:
Indianapolis, Indiana, November 8, 1878

 

Died:
Chicago, Illinois, June 20, 1932

 

Major wins:
World sprint champion 1899; 8 world records including paced flying start mile 1 minute 32 seconds (Philadelphia, November 15, 1898), and standing start paced mile 1 minute 33.4 seconds (Paris, 1908)

 

Nickname:
Major

 

Further reading:
Major Taylor:The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World
, Andrew Ritchie, Van der Plas/Cycle Publishing, 2009

 

 

“The earliest, most extraordinary, pioneering black athlete in the history of American sports,” runs part of the introduction to Andrew Ritchie's biography of the lightning-fast sprinter from the turn of the
last century. Taylor overcame racial prejudice to rise to the top of his profession, yet died in poverty and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Born into rural poverty just outside Indianapolis, Taylor was enlisted as a companion to the son of the white family who employed his father as a coachman, learning early on that color need not be a barrier. He earned his nickname when a teenager because, to earn money, he performed stunts on a bike while wearing a soldier's uniform outside the cycle shop where he worked. By the age of 16 he was winning local races and was adopted by a trainer, “Birdie” Munger.

As cycling expanded in the US, however, color became an issue: white amateurs, particularly from the South, were against blacks racing with them. In 1894, blacks were excluded from the League of American Wheelmen, reflecting the power of segregation; they were still permitted to race but their status was ambiguous and open to individual interpretation. Fearing that Taylor's success would lead to trouble, Munger persuaded him to move to Worcester, Massachussetts, where racism was less of an issue, and where he worked in Munger's bike factory. Late in 1896, Taylor managed to break—unofficially—the world fifth of a mile record and turned professional to race at the legendary Madison Square Garden track (see SIX-DAY RACING). He became a star of the American professional track circuit, arousing constant curiosity—and some animosity—as a black athlete earning big money at a time when, as Ritchie writes, “his brothers were expected to doff their hats and step aside for any white man in the street.”

Taylor began receiving threats against his life as he raced, and at one meeting was pulled off his bike and strangled into unconsciousness. On other occasions he received threatening letters and had nails scattered in front of him. Racial politics continued to dog Taylor's career. He was a massive draw for promoters and sponsors, but as the only black professional at the time he faced resentment from, for example, hoteliers who refused him accommodation, as well as judges
at races, and other competitors. “The uncompromising deviousness of his white rivals deprived him for two consecutive years of the possibility of becoming champion of America,” wrote Ritchie. Even so, by the end of 1898 he was beating world records on a regular basis—he held seven including the paced mile, which denoted the “fastest man in the world.” In 1899 he took the world paced mile close to 44 mph with the help of a steam-powered pacing engine, and later that year he took the world one-mile championship, becoming only the second African American world champion. But at first he was unable to buy a house because of his color, and when he did so, in Worcester, Massachusetts, without revealing his identity, he was not made welcome.

In 1901 his career reached its zenith with a three-month trip to Europe in which he defeated the leading European sprinter, Edmond Jacquelin of France, and won over crowds and media across the continent, the first African American athlete to do so. Between 1902 and 1904 he traveled and raced continuously in Europe, the US, and Australia. But at home, he still faced constant hostility, even in cities such as San Francisco, where the color line was drawn in restaurants and hotels.

Taylor spent 1904 and 1905 out of racing due to physical and mental exhaustion and finally retired in 1910. Afterward his fortunes declined, the wealth he had earned on the velodromes dissipated—despite the publication of his MEMOIRS in 1929—and he died in Chicago in 1932. The body was unclaimed, and he was buried in a pauper's grave.

TEAMS
Cycling has always been among the most commercial of sports: when JAMES MOORE won the first road race in 1869 he was supported by a bike maker while major races were all run by newspapers in order to increase sales.

The earliest serious sponsors were the cycle companies La Française—who supported MAURICE GARIN, the first Tour winner—and PEUGEOT, who were the longest-standing sponsors in the sport. The cycle maker Alcyon backed the most powerful team in the HEROIC ERA, claiming the first five places in the 1909 Tour and taking overall victory four years running. This led to a problem: the biggest manufacturers wanted victory so much that they would buy every star they could. The budgets to run a team became so large that only a few teams had enough money to be competitive, which made the racing dull.

The domination of teams such as Alcyon—or the “sky-blues” as they were known—and La Sportive in the 1920s prompted the Tour organizer HENRI DESGRANGE to bring in national teams starting in 1930, to make the racing more open and more exciting. In an attempt to counter the power of the manufacturers, the Tour organizers issued standard bikes to the riders.

That began a conflict between the national and trade team concepts that lasted until the 1960s, by which time the bike industry was struggling and an Italian named Fiorenzo Magni had brought in the first proper “extra-sportif” sponsor, the face-cream makers Nivea. “I rode for a team named ‘Ganna,' and at the end of 1953 they told me they were pulling out,” he recalled. “I said ‘Why should I ride for a bike maker? Who has said it has to be like that?'”

Magni's team was GS Nivea-Fuchs, with the bike-maker's name on the jersey as per the rules. Other early sponsors included chewing-gum makers Brooklyn, the Quinquina aperitif company—who marketed their St. Raphael drink through
JACQUES ANQUETIL and his appropriately named teammate Raphael Geminiani—and Italian fridge makers Ignis. Initially extra-sportifs were banned in France, but eventually they persuaded the Tour organizers to include trade teams in the race; national teams last figured in 1968.

Initially, sponsorship was a flexible concept: riders might race for different sponsors in different countries. The better teams were highly organized, though, with the Bianchi squad of FAUSTO COPPI leading the way in the 1940s and 1950s. By then the principles were long-established: a team would have one or more leaders, and the rest would organize themselves in his support, assisting in chasing down threatening rivals, making the pace before the time came for the leader to attack, and helping the number-one get back to the bunch if he had mechanical problems.

Cycling took a long time to become fully professional, however. In the 1950s even the better riders had contracts only for eight or nine months of the year; teams were sometimes simply cobbled together for major races on an ad-hoc basis. In the 1960s there were plenty of cases of hopeful amateurs turning “professional” for a jersey and a bike, often losing money in the process. There was also an intermediate category: “independents,” who could ride certain pro races and top amateur events. That served as a stepping stone and a fallback if things went wrong, until the category was abolished in the 1960s.

Although most pros gradually became full-time, salaries remained relatively small for all apart from the most senior riders until the 1990s. By then, the hierarchy had begun to change, with teams like TI-Raleigh showing that strong groups of talented riders could be more potent than squads with just one star. The arrival in the sport of new blood with the FOREIGN LEGION changed the structure in another way as GREG LEMOND,
PHIL ANDERSON, and STEPHEN ROCHE in particular took salaries to a new level, dragging up the base level.

The advent of a world ranking system in the mid-1980s (see HEIN VERBRUGGEN to read about the man who brought this in) and qualifying for major races decided through team standings led to a massive hike in the value of middle-ranking cyclists who didn't necessarily win much but had earned points by riding consistently. That at least raised salaries and there was an all-around increase in budgets—tens of thousands of dollars in the 1970s, many millions for teams such as Sky three decades later—as the TOUR DE FRANCE captured an increasingly large worldwide audience through the 1990s.

At the same time, teams remained poorly organized in many cases—although there were notable exceptions such as Bjarne Riis's CSC—and there was insufficient regulation. Smaller teams went bust at a rate of almost one a year, because there were no strict checks to see if they had any financial stability. The advent of another Verbruggen baby, the ProTour in 2005, resulted in tighter financial scrutiny, while the early years of the 21st century saw teams become increasingly concerned about the impact of DRUGS. Several major sponsors—most notably T-Mobile in Germany—pulled out because of negative publicity after drug scandals while some of those who stayed in the sport brought in their own internal antidoping programs. Standards were pushed higher, however, by the arrival of new backers such as Columbia Sportswear and Team Sky, run by outsiders who worked on business principles rather than on tradition.