Champion discussed Paris-Roubaix with Marks, who protested that the pavé would tear them both apart. Marks refused to drive. Champion turned to Broc, a cheerful friend and an intrepid driver. Broc regarded the race as an adventure and agreed to pace him over the pavé with a Clément motor-tricycle. Paris-Roubaix demanded as much physical training as careful planning. Champion, puffed about his chances, prepared to win.
The first Paris-Roubaix in April 1896 had taken place in the same week as the revival of the modern Olympics. Josef Fischer, a big-boned man from Munich, remembered as Germany’s first great road rider, had triumphed in the debut Paris-Roubaix. He finished in 9 hours and 17 minutes, astounding everyone by pedaling an average of 19 mph.41 Fisher’s stature on the continent stamped the race with cachet. Marius Garin, operator of a cycle shop in central Roubaix, had worn the city’s colors and finished third, which made him a national hero.42
The 1899 event was scheduled for April 2, 1899.43 The night before the race, the Brasserie de l’Espérance on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne stayed opened late for everyone wanting the latest rumors. Champion and Broc—swanning in his unbuttoned duster coat—mingled in the hubbub. They had devised a two-part strategy.44 First, because Paris-Roubaix went so much farther than Champion’s range, he determined to ride as though it ended in Amiens, the midpoint at eighty-six miles. If he signed in at the control table at the Café Odelin in Amiens ahead of the others, he figured he could make it unchallenged to Roubaix. In a contest so punishing, the first half wore everybody down. Just to finish, they relied on reserve energy and sheer willpower. Champion would be just as fatigued, but he would have a big psychological advantage and rivals would concentrate on surviving rather than catching him.
Second, race organizers had announced that pace vehicles would stage in front of the cyclists.45 Champion and Broc expected a traffic jam of heavy, smelly autos belching smoke exhaust for miles before the caravan thinned out in the countryside. They agreed Broc should wait nineteen miles up the road near the village of Hérouville.46 Champion would dash away at the starter’s gun and weave, courier-style on his one-speed Gladiator, through traffic to meet Broc.
Opening the event to motorpacing also drew other fortune-hunting vélodrome stars. Among them Bouhours, eight years older than Champion and more experienced, and the durable pro Paul Bor, a Parigot Champion’s age. Could these track specialists go the distance? Could they survive northern France’s diabolical cobblestone sections against toughened road racers? Bookies thought not and favored the previous winners: Garin and Fischer.
“The local favorite is always Garin,” wrote Le Vélo reporter Victor Breyer.47 Breyer’s recent book on France’s top racers made him a national authority; he devoted a section to Huret, including the Huret-Champion matches. Garin, born an underdog, came from a large Italian family. The story that followed Garin as close as the hair on the back of his neck was that his father had traded him as a child to a chimney sweep for a wheel of cheese.48 Racing bicycles had enabled Garin to give up toiling inside sooty chimneys. Even fully grown, he remained small. But he was physically nimble and mentally hard as steel. He won twenty-four hour tests on tracks in Paris and Liège, Belgium.49 Victories polished his reputation for stubbornness. Desgrange had designated him, “the little chimney sweep.” Garin had settled in Roubaix and become a naturalized French citizen. He had won the 1897 Paris-Roubaix by two meters.50 The next year he triumphed by twenty minutes.51 Roubaixians proudly called themselves Garinistes.52
The bookmaker at the Brasserie de l’Espérance offered Garin and Fischer odds of two to one to win, acknowledging that, as previous winners, they knew the course best.53 Wagers on Bouhours went for three to one. The bookie rated Champion at five to one. Paul Bor had odds of eight to one.
Paris’s police chief decreed the city had too much traffic already and moved the start to the western suburb of Chatou.54 On race morning, a photographer near the sign-in table on the sidewalk of a Chatou café, serving as race headquarters, captured Champion sporting a fresh haircut and a new wool cap as he bent at the waist to pen his name at seven o’clock on the start sheet.55 On Champion’s upper left arm he wore a white cloth brassard bearing his competitive number, eleven. An official in a trimmed beard and mustache seated at the table opposite gazed through his pince-nez at the camera. Broc fixed his brassard over the bulky sleeve of his long coat, worn to offer Champion a tad more shield from the wind. Then Broc drove his motor-tricycle off to their rendezvous.
Garin flouted the rules by wrapping his brassard around his left thigh. Younger brother Ambrose Garin also signed in. Frenchmen dominated the field. Only two Belgians entered. The lone German, Fischer, sought to reclaim victory—including the bonus basket holding a dozen bottles of champagne. “Asked what special motor would pace him, Fischer refused to answer so as not to give his opponents any helpful information,” noted the Journal de Roubaix.56
Champion lined up with thirty-one other pros spanning Route 47 de St. German, in front of the Chatou café, for the start.57 Three-quarters of them would give their all for nothing but sore muscles and ravenous appetites. Every entrant was highly regarded, noted Breyer, adding that vélodrome stars Champion, Bouhours, and Bor heightened the public’s fascination. Patches of blue sky poked through the clouds on a day in the low fifties (Fahrenheit). At 8 a.m. the official starter in a silk top hat stood before the contestants. Ahead of them awaited a cavalcade of cars, motor-tandems, and motor-tricycles suitable to any modern-city rush hour.
At the starter’s pistol shot, Garin, Fisher, and others rushed to their waiting cars and disappeared in a swirl of dust. Champion dashed away clean ahead of everyone and slalomed through traffic-clogged roads, fleeing like a fox before the hounds.
“Paris-Roubaix provoked a tremendous enthusiasm in the villages the race went through,” the Journal declared.58 “People filled the crossroads and almost interfered with the race.” In the era before officials cleared the path with their motorcade and prior to barriers protecting racers from crowds of spectators, Paris-Roubaix racers and their pacers fended for themselves—even from cattle, sheep, and goats that farmers herded across roads between barns and grazing fields.
Officials at eight designated villages along the route set up tables with ink stands outside cafés in central squares for racers to sign control sheets.59 The first came at four miles, the Café François on rue de la Surintendance in Saint-Germain. When Champion pulled up as the leader, a mass of spectators let him squeeze through. He scratched his signature and galloped away.
Champion sped past folks standing two and three deep and shouting encouragement along the undulating dirt roads at the villages of Conflans, Pontoise, and Ennery, which led to Hérouville, where he joined Broc. Together they sped to the lyrically named village of Vallangoujard, at twenty-three miles. Breyer traveled by train and stopped to scamper off at the Vallangoujard station long enough to telegraph his first dispatch: “Ten o’clock. A springy, light vehicle torpedoed along, topped by a man who looked like a diver with big goggles. It was Broc, sweeping the little Champion, his white jersey and pants coated in dust.”60
Two minutes later came Paul Bor, Fischer, and Bouhours drafting behind automobiles. At Vallangoujard, Garin’s car coughed to a halt.61 Two riding mechanics, his insurance against mechanical failures, endeavored to revive the engine. “Finally, he felt he had waited too long and announced he had quit,” the Journal reported. “Despite pleas of his mechanics and automobile pacers, he pedaled off to the train station.”62 (Garin would score immortality four years later by winning the first Tour de France.) Meanwhile, Ambrose Garin and Fischer tried, and failed, to catch Champion by the second control point in Beauvais, at forty-seven miles. After Beauvais, Bouhours tucked behind his car and overtook Fischer and Ambrose Garin so fast that he looked sure to do the same to Champion. By the third control, in the Village of Breteuil, sixty-six miles, Bouhours chased Champion like a cop after a fugitive.63
The roads were bor
dered by multitudes. They cheered Broc and Champion, flying through villages at short distances from one another, the villages like stepping stones leading to their mid-race goal of Amiens. In one village, Broc had to turn his motor-tricycle sharply to avoid striking pedestrians. The sudden move knocked Champion over.64 He promptly remounted and kept going. Shortly before 11:30, Broc and Champion pulled into Amiens, its cathedral spires looming over the treetops. Champion zoomed to the esplanade Saint-Roch, where a pair of officials sat outside the Café Odelin with the fourth control sheet. He signed in to a rousing reception. Then to perilous sections of pavé.
Minutes later, Bouhours sped into Amiens. A seasoned pro with more world records to his credit than he could remember, Bouhours had the potential to vanquish Champion. When Bouhours left the city, his driver swerved to avoid hitting a pedestrian crossing the road, but he bowled him over anyway. Bouhours smacked into the vehicle and fell to the road.65 An injured elbow forced him to abandon the race and seek medical help. Fischer endured a similar accident that ended his bid. (Bouhours returned the next year to win, when the race dropped motorpacing.)
Champion and Broc received applause and cheers through villages that led to the fifth control at Doullens, 104 miles. On the grimy road to the sixth control at Arras, 128 miles, Champion confronted his first section of pavé. His wheels dropped into the fissures at the end of every stone, rounded like the top of a skull, and smacked into the next. Bumping over the cobbles beat up his arms, back, and legs. Witnesses watched the world record holder of the flying kilometer straining over each cobble at a pedestrian pace.
After Arras, he and Broc reached the craggiest pavé, en route to the ancient Gaulic-Roman town of Séclin. The cobblestones had shifted willy-nilly over two centuries since Louis XIV’s order to upgrade dirt roads for farmers to take their harvest to markets. Champion battled to keep his balance as tires slipped on the rounded edges. Again and again he toppled over and smacked onto the stones.66
“The struggle took everything Champion had,” Breyer asserted.67 Champion labored two hours to cover the twenty-three miles from Arras to Séclin.
In Séclin, some thirty-one miles from Roubaix, an enormous population greeted Champion as he signed the seventh control sheet. From Séclin to the vélodrome, there were two hedgerows of spectators lining both sides of the roads.68 “Police had a difficult time holding back the crowds,” the Journal noted. “They confirmed the race’s popularity.”69
As the first to reach Roubaix and write his signature on the final control sheet at the Café Leon on the Boulevard de Paris, Champion earned a bonus of fifty francs from the Roubaix cycling club.70 He continued pacing behind Broc across town to the Roubaix Vélodrome, where Broc peeled off to the track’s infield and left Champion to finish alone.
“There was not an empty space anywhere,” the Journal stated.71 When the Union of the Trumpets of Roubaix blared Champion’s arrival, some twelve thousand people packed into the stadium and infield let out a roar. “Everyone expected to greet Garin winning his third Paris-Roubaix,” observed the Journal. “But it was Champion who dashed onto the track. The crowd was disillusioned.”72
Yet the partisan audience quickly recalled his earlier races as a young pro on the track. “When he appeared at the entrance to the vélodrome, they gave him an ovation,” said the Journal. “He was covered with dust and mud. His jersey looked like he had several falls. He had fallen seven times! But he still pedaled like he was fresh.”73
As winner of the 1899 edition of Paris-Roubaix, the spring classic of bicycle road racing, which ranks in prestige with the Boston Marathon in running and Wimbledon in tennis, Champion was honored on the cover of Vélo as one of the kings of cycling. His victory led to a contract to race in America. From Le Vélo, April 1899.
On the infield, the Musical Society of the Vélodrome performed lively tunes urging him on his ceremonial six laps to complete the distance. Champion won in 8 hours, 22 minutes, 53 seconds. Eighteen minutes passed before Paul Bor took second place for 500 francs. Champion received a bouquet of flowers for his deserved lap of honor. Then he steered onto the infield. Roubaixians created a narrow path for him to squeeze through to join Broc. A photographer waited with his camera on a tripod. Officials surrounded Champion. Held by the smiling Broc, he set his flowers across his handlebars. To the lens, he turned a weary face.
News of his feat flashed around the continent, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Le Vélo published his portrait in a jacket and cravat. Text proclaimed him “Les Roi du Cycle,” asserting he had joined the sport’s pantheon. (The honor represented a grace note from the publisher, Giffard, who had sued L’Auto-Vélo over its name and won, forcing Desgrange to rename his publication L’Auto.) Chicago-based Cycle Age and Trade Review (successor to Bearings) reported, “Champion surprises everybody by winning great event on his debut.”74
“He had entered Paris-Roubaix as a youngster,”75 Breyer wrote. “Now he is a man.”
Champion impressed Breyer because he had moved up in class to claim victory in a major road race, enduring the worst roads in northern France and beating established road racers at their game. Winning Paris-Roubaix put Champion into France’s pantheon of Les Grands.
Indeed, Champion’s draft board in Batignolles treated him like a man. All able-bodied young Frenchmen were required under the law to serve two years in the military. France’s empire ranked second only to England’s, with colonies in Africa, the Pacific, South America, and Southeast Asia. A few weeks later, after he had turned twenty-one on April 5, he received orders to report in November for compulsory boot camp. This threatened to upend his life. He was headed into the ranks of les poilus, foot soldiers, for wages notoriously beggarly. He would no longer be able to support his brothers and mother. She would go back to work hauling water buckets from a well and doing laundry. In an army uniform, he would lose his individuality. Two years of duty would disrupt the career he had built. How could he win the hand of Elise? Worst of all, would he forfeit la gloire?
A solution arrived in a trans-Atlantic cable from Charles Herman Metz, manufacturer of Orient Cycles in the Boston suburb of Waltham. The American offered a one-year contract to race, with a salary of $25 a week,76 a solid middle-class income or better when the average Yank earned $9. Motor-pace races paid winners $250,77 and the prize money would be all his.
Such a sparkling opportunity tempted Champion, yet it forced him into a dilemma. Ignoring his draft summons meant arrest and imprisonment, possibly on Devil’s Island off the coast of French Guiana in South America, whether he remained in France or fled to Boston and later attempted to return home. How could he even get to America? Trying to leave France by taking a ship from any French port required eluding gendarmes with hawk eyes for spotting draft-eligible men attempting to shirk their duty. If he avoided detection and sailed to Boston, he would live alone there, and he spoke hardly any English. The specter of a bad crash—an occupational hazard—could leave him stranded, drained of income, cursed. He felt overwhelmed and turned to Dudley Marks, who had visited America, for advice. Marks, a bachelor, loved to travel. He agreed to accompany him. They could make their way to England without raising suspicion and ship out of Liverpool.
That strategy tipped the scales for Champion. But he needed more assistance. He asked Breyer, fluent in French and English, to act as his agent dealing with Metz. Breyer understood that what Champion requested could get him into trouble. Breyer had performed his duty at Champion’s age, as a rifleman in a cycling regiment.78 He sympathized with Champion’s plight. He reflected that Metz’s offer was extraordinary, the deus ex machina from a Greek play. Breyer brokered the deal with Metz for Champion and Marks to sail from Liverpool.79 Champion seized Metz’s offer and chose a backdoor scarper. It was the biggest decision of his life.
Champion packed several of the latest De Dion-Bouton engines, prized in America. De Dion-Bouton Motorette Company ruled as the world’s biggest carmaker, with annual production of 400 a
utos and 3,200 engines.80 Champion also took his unicycle and other accoutrements in wooden crates. Everything was sent by rail freight from Paris to the White Star Line office in Liverpool. He promised his mother and Prosper, Henri, and Louis that he would mail money home. To Elise, he vowed that he would send for her to join him in Boston.
He boarded HMS Majestic of the White Star Line to escape conscription.81 Instead of reporting for duty in the French Army on November 15, he sailed to America. Seven days later, the Majestic steamed into New York harbor. At the dock he and Marks were met by Metz.
Charles Herman Metz was Clément’s American counterpart in creativity and enterprise. He made bicycles designated Orient to reflect the vogue of the Far East’s ancient mystery and perfect porcelain vases.82 Metz’s business, the Waltham Manufacturing Company, was near the Waltham Bicycle Park. The park had a track with long straights and tight turns, famous for world records. Its bleachers and grandstand accommodated ten thousand spectators, more than double what the Boston Red Sox considered a profitable turnout. Journalists filed race accounts over a state-of-the-art telegraph. Telegraph poles, including one near turn three, took the lines over the track into Waltham—and the rest of the world. Metz retailed Orients through John Wanamaker,83 who had introduced the United States to department stores in Philadelphia and New York City. Metz also advertised widely. He commissioned posters from the artist Edward Penfield,84 whose introspective figures were compared to those of Toulouse-Lautrec.
The Fast Times of Albert Champion Page 10