Major Taylor

by Conrad Kerber

  Even Edmond Jacquelin, known throughout Europe for his feral temper, squirmed in his saddle at the mere presence of MacFarland. At one race scheduled to take place between them, MacFarland decided he didn’t like the weather and simply walked away. When the racing officials told him he had to return, he let loose a retaliatory tongue-lashing that caused even the hardened Jacquelin to cower, earning him another track suspension.

  His language was a peculiar collage of sophisticated speech, unbridled expletives, and racial slurs. In Taylor’s eyes, he was a cancer metastasizing within the peloton. During races in which both men competed, MacFarland committed every foul short of detonating an explosive device inside his bicycle, often pocketing, elbowing, or threatening Taylor with violence. When he wasn’t personally involved in a race against Taylor, MacFarland tutored other riders on how to “trim the nigger,” developing into a sort of racetrack-svengali.

  When he failed to block Taylor from being admitted into the NCA, he set his sights on little old Woody Woodspath, one of the only other black pro cyclists. He tried achieving this by invoking his own “exception rule,” which stated that only one black rider could be allowed in a race at a time.

  Described as an autocrat, MacFarland also had contempt for authority figures. One day, when he came across a particularly rough patch of road during a road race in the Australian outback, he threw his bike to the side and stormed off. When he never arrived at the finish line, race organizers scoured the countryside. They finally gave up, drifting into some outback eatery for dinner. There he was, stabbing his fork into a plate of roast beef, tipping back a glass of beer, telling tall tales to the aborigines. When they asked what in God’s name had happened to him, he stood up, looked down at them, and asked, surely to the repugnance of the waiting reporters, “What do you take me for, a God damn kangaroo?” He was dreaded and beloved for his audacity and back-alley boxing skills. At a champagne reception in Camperdown, Victoria, one summer’s night, he walked up to a horse of a man, some nineteen hands high, and, for no apparent reason deliberately mouthed off at him. Unaccustomed to having nonboxers challenge him, “Bull Williams,” a noted professional boxer, reared back and gave MacFarland his best shot. MacFarland took the punch, laughed it off, slung his six-foot-four frame forward, and knocked Williams senseless. No one messed with Floyd MacFarland. “His word,” recalled one former racer, “was law.”

  On the track, he turned his rage into terminal velocity, winning consistently in short, middle, and long distance races, giving rise to nicknames like “Human Motor,” “Warhorse,” and “Handicap King.”

  Floyd MacFarland was tough as nails, a first-rate rider, and a civic menace all wrapped into one long frame. Mild mannered, deeply religious, and soft-spoken, Taylor was the antithesis of MacFarland. “Floyd MacFarland, my arch enemy of many years standing,” Taylor remembered, “was the kingpin of all the schemes against me.” “Oh,” MacFarland liked to say of Taylor, “that damn nigger . . .”

  Some people claimed Floyd MacFarland had a kinder, gentler side to him. If he did, Major Taylor had rarely seen it.

  Huge Deal McIntosh knew a thing or two about what sports fans wanted to see. Even though Taylor had the grandstand overflowing nearly every day in 1903, McIntosh sensed Australians wanted to see someone who might actually make him crack a sweat. The previous season, excepting Don Walker, Taylor had faced a fairly soft field and, according to one journalist, “had made hacks out of Australia’s best.” So, besides Taylor’s archenemy Floyd MacFarland, McIntosh had also invited MacFarland’s comrade Iver Lawson, with little forewarning to Taylor.

  As a competitive cyclist, Lawson was among the world’s elite; he took second place in the 1902 American Championship and was one of the favorites for the 1904 World Championships. His personality was reportedly a bit more enigmatic. Dubbed “the melancholy Dane” and a “sober-sided athlete,” there appeared to be something incomplete about him, something not quite ripe. While he wasn’t the hellion that MacFarland was on the track, Lawson had been suspended for interfering with Taylor and knocking him down and out of racing for more than a week. “He carries the brand of the track yet,” remarked the Australian Referee, referring to Taylor’s ingrained scars.

  Working in tandem, MacFarland, with his oversized wind-breaking figure, and Lawson, with his potent closing sprint, were nearly unbeatable in handicap races. According to some observers, together they formed a two-headed monster. And neither of them was fond of Taylor. Beyond the obvious racial element, MacFarland and Lawson found further reason for resentment. Taylor was the only rider who had received a large down payment to come to Australia as well as appearance fees at many tracks. Win, lose, or draw, Taylor was guaranteed a highly profitable voyage. “His legs and riding capabilities,” joked the Australian Cyclist, “have been sold to a syndicate that negotiates for him.” MacFarland and Lawson, on the other hand, had to win to profit.

  On a quiet antipodean morning, two men and two bicycles materialized from under the morning haze, filleting across the Sydney Cricket grounds before coasting to a stop near the ladies’ pavilion. It was MacFarland and Lawson on their super-light Cleveland and Columbia bicycles, riding tall. When Taylor first saw the famous tandem, he must have nearly fallen off his bicycle; escaping racism was, after all, one of the main reasons he ventured overseas. From the grandstand, Daisy surely shivered as she ran her eyes down the list of wheelmen. Clearly, this wasn’t going to be another honeymoon.

  The tension would become palpable. Australia’s rabid cycling fans braced for the internecine warfare to follow. They would not be disappointed. “The visiting Americans,” race writer Wheeler wrote of MacFarland and Lawson, “have brought their prejudice with them, and they also want to atone for past defeats by Taylor.”

  McIntosh had been busy. He had set up a series of handicap races for January and early February, wedging the three American powerhouses in with the top Australians. Right out of the gate, his tactics worked. Fans poured into the Sydney and Melbourne tracks by the tens of thousands, snarling traffic at nearly every meet. The three men exchanged victories; one night MacFarland, the next Taylor, then Lawson. Each night there was the usual jabbing, elbowing, and all-around roughhousing, sometimes just part of normal track racing, and other times degenerating into verbal backstretch brawls. Either way the fans ate it up.

  At one race in mid-January that Taylor won by a nose, twenty thousand fans attended on a rainy, frigid Monday evening—a day that normally drew only a few thousand. The following Monday, twenty-five thousand fans showed up in similar weather and watched Lawson, who had the night of his life, win three out of four events. Taylor won only one, the five-mile. “No man in the world can have a chance against Iver Lawson,” claimed one writer, “when he has MacFarland working in his interest.”

  With each passing night, the teamwork and the tactics of Lawson and MacFarland became harsher and more obvious. “It was as plain as a pike-staff even to the palest-faced laymen,” railed one reporter.

  In early February, Lawson and MacFarland, who appeared to be joined at the hip, went too far. At the starting line of a half-mile handicap race, MacFarland rolled his six-foot-four-inch frame alongside Taylor’s five-foot-seven-inches, glaring at him through his steely eyes. As the field straightened up for the backstretch, Lawson and MacFarland, with all the synchronicity of a school of sharks, bulled down the track and swung inward, bashing Taylor into the infield. For a dreadful moment, Taylor and his Massey-Harris bicycle staggered sideways, teetering on the brink of falling. In the grandstand, Daisy gasped. For forty circuitous yards, Taylor went on a death-defying mission, swerving in and out of fans, racing officials, and band members. Miraculously, somehow he righted himself and rejoined the race, finishing second to last. The crowd booed and hissed as MacFarland crossed the line ahead of him.

  MacFarland was hauled before the board of inquiry and slapped with a one-month suspension. For days, he had an existential meltdown, cussing and fretting in the r
ichest tones. Taylor, he hollered, rode onto the grass of his own accord. Not wanting to be on his own, Lawson threatened to pull out of several races if MacFarland’s suspension was upheld. Eventually he got his wish; after an appeal, MacFarland’s suspension was abridged to a small $125 fine for “abusive language.”

  The tandem of Lawson and MacFarland felt emboldened by the board’s leniency. The public and the press felt the tension between the two camps heating up. “There is no love lost between the two factions here just now,” wrote the Australian Cyclist and Motorcar, “and every time Taylor meets his compatriots, the curry is very hot.”

  The clock had hardly struck midnight before MacFarland caused trouble again. At one race attended by the prime minister and several other high-ranking Australians, he and Taylor stormed down the homestretch neck and neck. It was a drag race to the line. When they crossed the tape, most fans thought MacFarland had won and cheered him on as he looped the track, waving his hands triumphantly. But a judge inserted “dead heat” up on the tote board. Rigid with rage, MacFarland stopped his bike in its tracks. He rolled over to the stewards’ stand and looked down at them, unleashing a profanity-laced tirade that scared the hell out of everyone within earshot. The stewards waited for him to calm down and shut his mouth, but he kept right on bellowing.

  The Australian press corps had never met anyone quite like Floyd MacFarland. “How would a jockey get on,” one sportswriter wondered aloud, “if he thought he had won and abused the judge and stewards that way?” The stewards held their ground. According to them, MacFarland’s giraffe-like neck stretched out ahead of Taylor’s shorter frame, but his front wheel, the only thing that matters, had not. The race, they said, had to be run over.

  Perhaps they were unaware of the fact that no one told Floyd MacFarland what to do. Instead of lining up for the rematch, he simply slammed his bike down, donned his street clothes and left the racetrack—leaving over twenty thousand fans stirring in their seats for a half hour, unaware of his disappearing act. Fearing the crowd stampeding the track en masse, racing officials called for a veritable battalion of additional police to line the oval. They had valid reason for concern. When a gentlemanly umpire had the audacity to delay a recent cricket match because of light rain, over ten thousand raucous fans showered him with watermelon bits, apples, and beer bottles—“Ready your coffin,” they warned. The head referee then issued an order for MacFarland to return at once and answer to the charge of disobedience. Having seen MacFarland’s antics before, Taylor could retreat to his locker room in the member’s pavilion and devour Biblical passages. Hugh McIntosh was in no mood for theology. Agitated, he set off on a wild goose chase, combing local streets trying to find MacFarland’s scalp. He came up headless. An intrepid reporter finally tracked MacFarland down the next day, sprawled out on an easy chair. Thankfully, his mood had simmered. “It was a big event in my life to defeat Major Taylor,” he said, perhaps wanting to savor the moment, real or imagined.

  Following the handicap races, Australians began demanding to know the truth: Who among the Americans really was the fastest man? McIntosh seized the moment. He set up match races for February 17 in Melbourne. The first was to be a two-mile race between Taylor and Lawson, followed by a one-mile match between Taylor and MacFarland.

  In the days leading up to the match races, Australia was a cauldron of nervous anticipation.

  Nearly every afternoon Major and Daisy listened to raindrops tapping off their hotel window. In the mornings they heard the same tranquil sound. Wiping the sleep from her eyes, Daisy looked solemnly outside, blinking at the cold rain as it turned into sleet. They waited for the weather to turn. It refused. Several training sessions and a few prep races had to be delayed or postponed. Australians secreted away in their homes. “Instead of watching the struggles of the World’s Champions,” moaned one reporter, “cycling enthusiasts sat before a cozy fire, listening to the howling of the wind and the pattering of sleety rain on the roof; fires in February!”

  After losing three handicap races to Lawson with MacFarland’s aid, Taylor was jumping out of his skin for the opportunity to show Australians who the faster man was in a clean, one-on-one match race. Unable to remain idle any longer, he taxied to the track and slopped around in the cold rain. “If this is your summer,” he grumbled to a reporter, “I guess I would not like to have one of your winters . . . you have to be a gypsy fortune teller to get square with the weather.” From the sidelines, trainer Sid Melville, the rain tapping off his crocodile cowboy hat, pressed down on his stopwatch as Taylor hummed by. Underneath his rain-soaked hat, he actually smiled. Again and again, the press hounded him. “He’s as fit as a fiddle,” he muttered.

  Meanwhile, Australian papers were swamped with inquiries about the status of the match races. Fans had already begun pouring into Melbourne from all quarters of Australia. On trams and trains impassioned debates between diehard Taylor fans and MacFarland-Lawson fans carried the day.

  The rain kept falling—on one day for twelve hours straight.

  Amid the downpour, newspapers continued singing of the races. In the days preceding the matches, entire pages in bold print were devoted to the events: TONIGHT—TONIGHT CYCLING CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE WORLD, boasted one paper, MEETING OF THE WORLD’S CYCLING GIANTS!! Beneath the banner headlines and advertisements were sketches of the three men followed by a heavy dose of prerace saber rattling. Publicly, MacFarland and Lawson expressed confidence. “Major Taylor is not invincible,” they reminded everyone. Privately, they must have questioned their own words. Underneath the headline, Taylor’s record in match races was posted: 200 wins, only 12 losses.

  As race day neared, Daisy emerged from her hotel room in the middle of the afternoon, looking up at pitch-black skies. A clap of thunder crackled throughout the city. Melbourne braced for fireworks.

  February 17, 1904, race day, rolled in under azure skies and a warm penetrating sun. Before noon, as they had at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1896, Philadelphia in ’97, Manhattan in ’98, Montreal in ’99, Paris in 1901–1902, and all over Australia in 1903—thousands upon thousands emptied out of restaurants, stood in long lines at turnstiles, and then wedged into every bleacher, booth, grandstand, and press box seat to watch Major Taylor race. Trams, omnibuses, horse-carriages, ferries, bicycles, and special “Major Taylor Carnival” trains scurried all over Melbourne. Tramway authorities had made special arrangements to handle the extra traffic. Extra turnstiles and entrance gates had been installed. The most “influential” people in the country were turning up. Around seventy-five bookmakers trolled the place. By dinnertime, the Melbourne Exhibition Track was an endless sea of colorfully dressed racegoers. In the members stand near the finish line, Daisy slid in alongside Don Walker.

  Taylor’s first match race was against Lawson in a best two out of three.

  In the first heat, before the throng even had a chance to settle in, Taylor jackrabbitted out of the gate. He got rammed twice by Lawson before ripping down the homestretch, winning by a convincing two lengths. The crowd roared. The newsmen wasted little time getting on Lawson’s case. “With MacFarland out of it,” one of them wrote, “Lawson’s feeding bottle was dry . . . he seems to be useless without him.”

  Given a clean trip around the track, there was little doubt in Taylor’s mind that he had Lawson’s measure. He felt confidence bulging in him. “I felt doubly sure I could defeat Lawson on even terms every time we started.” But Lawson, being the type of rider who got stronger as the night stretched on, surely didn’t see it that way. No one left their seat.

  Before the second heat, Daisy could glance out and see MacFarland, who had placed a fat bet on Lawson’s legs, privately conferring with Lawson. “Whatever you do,” Sid Melville overheard him saying, “do not let Taylor win.” A man named Toe-clip, Australia’s preeminent track writer, tracked down MacFarland and asked his opinion of Taylor and who he thought would win. “He’s a fine, game nigger,” he scoffed, “he won’t come out in th
is race.”

  Daisy and Major had become all too familiar with the anxiety that surfaced on race days, but this day had a gloomy, more sinister feel to it. The tension was tangible; they were stewing in it. Don Walker tried distracting Daisy from her trepidation with light humor. She pushed out a forced smile. The crowd, sensing the tension between the two camps, stirred in their seats. Lawson slipped out of his pink racing gown and cinched into his toe-clips at the starting line. A loud crack echoed over the city. Lawson, still fuming over his loss in the first heat, broke from the gate with a massive forward assault. Taylor immediately found himself trailing by several lengths, looking forward as red jersey number 65 pulled away. He mashed down on his pedals with his forward leg while pulling up with his rear leg, the light poles lining the track flickered by, spinning out of sight. A quarter mile in, the pace was already frightening. Lawson peeked back under his armpit and saw a black, heaving mass charging full-tilt toward him. After a huge outlay of energy, Taylor finally drew even at the one-mile mark. For the next half mile, the two men exchanged leads, neither willing to give up any ground. Lawson rammed against him a couple of times, bullying him, practically undressing him. Taylor felt uneasy, too close for comfort.