The Fast Times of Albert Champion

by Peter Joffre Nye

  Champion, looking ahead, sought a way to enter the auto market. The prospect of supplying motor vehicles to America’s 75 million people (less than one-quarter of today’s population), suggested limitless opportunity—and wealth.22 To get in the business, he needed capital. To acquire the needed capital, he would have to win frequently in his ninth and final season as a pro cyclist. He determined to go all out for one last campaign—not in America, but in France.23 The purses were much bigger there, and he could win the money he’d need in order to establish his own business. He made up his mind to crown his career with the French national championship. Albert staked his ambitious future on capturing the title en route to raising the money to create his place in the nascent US auto industry.

  France’s reigning national motorpace champion, Henri Contenet,24 two years older than Champion, had paid his dues toiling in the motorpace ranks. In 1903, Contenet transformed into a winner under the guidance of Marius Thé, a former road-racing star now driving the motors for him.25 Champion knew Marius Thé and wrote a letter to request his skills when he returned to Paris in the early summer. Thé accepted.26 Likely he was persuaded by Champion’s panache and convenient access to Adolph Clément, the Midas of French industry. Thus Champion acquired one of the best drivers in the game at an adversary’s expense—predicated on his making it back to Paris without arrest for evading military service.

  Although the French military had announced a general amnesty for draft dodgers,27 Champion mailed his draft board packets of medical records and X-rays of his broken leg to make sure he could go home to France without arrest at the border. In the meantime, he would race in the United States.

  Rain had cancelled the traditional Memorial Day season opener,28 but on June 5 Champion made his 1904 debut in a twenty-five-mile paced event at the Charles River Park.29 Tucked close to the rear wheel of Billy Saunders’s motorcycle, he skimmed over the board track, back low, elbows pressed against his sides, and seemed to glide while his legs spun almost to a blur. He averaged 40 mph to win by a lap. The Globe’s John J. Donovan praised his remarkable form.

  Four days later, he needed less than thirty minutes to win a twenty-miler in New York at Manhattan Beach Track.30 He rode against his doctor’s advice and ignored muscle soreness. “The Frenchman had abscesses in both legs, reminders of his almost fatal automobile accident last fall,” said Bicycling World.31

  His Paris draft board issued a letter granting amnesty. The Washington Post reported, “Permission having been granted him to return to France, Albert Champion, the French bicycle rider, will sail for Europe on June 23.”32

  Champion encouraged twenty-one-year-old George Leander to go with him. They had formed a friendship in Boston and Champion saw he could mature to succeed Bobby Walthour. The son of a Chicago printer,33 Leander came from a family of nine and had an easy-going personality. He was tall and handsome in a wholesome way, beefier in the arms, chest, and legs than Champion. Stretched across his bicycle, Leander looked intimidating. He had tried to make a living as a pure sprinter. Early in his career he had packed on weight in the off season, inspiring Boston Globe reporter Donovan to dub him “Windy City Fat Boy.”34

  Stung by the nickname, Leander thereafter stayed active over the indoor six-day circuit during the winter. In a run-off contest to determine the outcome of the Boston six-day in the Park Square Coliseum, he was nipped over the final yards by an older, taller veteran. After they dismounted, the victor punched Leander, and Leander fought back, setting off a brawl that escalated to two hundred other riders, mechanics, masseurs, and bystanders.35 Police swinging billy clubs finally broke up the melee. Leander gained the reputation of never backing down. In the December 1902 Madison Square Garden six-day, he won the final pack sprint to clinch victory. The next year he joined the better-paying motorpace circuit. Champion gave him pointers for improvement and put him in touch with his agent Victor Breyer for contracts in Paris.36

  Another accompanying Champion, Elise, and Leander to Paris was Basil De Guichard. The group booked first-class passage on the French liner La Savoie, sailing out of New York for Le Havre. At 580 feet in length, La Savoie was one of the largest ships under the French flag.

  Before sailing, however, Champion went down to Atlanta to compete against Bobby Walthour, recently back as the conquering hero from a spring campaign in Paris and Berlin. A Paris syndicate paid the Georgian an appearance fee of $5,000 ($125,000 in 2014).37 Walthour, as American national motorpace champion, had defeated his counterpart, Henri Contenet, and other continental stars, in matches before standing-room only crowds.38 The French press raved: “Toujours Walthour.”

  For each of his eleven victories in twelve starts, Walthour raked in an average of about $1,000—four times the prize money paid in America.39 Endorsements to ride a French bicycle, a brand of saddle, and tires pushed his earnings from two months on the continent to about $15,000 ($373,000).40

  Champion wanted Walthour to share the latest gossip and tell him how much promoters were paying. Champion and his pacer Saunders climbed aboard a train to Atlanta for the five-mile matches on June 15 around promoter Jack Prince’s outdoor board track in Piedmont Park.

  “The race was the most exciting ever seen in Atlanta,” judged the Atlanta Constitution. “Champion was determined to win from Walthour and pushed the Atlantan from the very start as Bobby had never been pushed before either in America or in Europe. Champion was riding faster and better than he did before he received the serious injury last year.”41

  From the bang of the starter’s pistol, Champion and Saunders bolted away and seized the lead. They reeled off swift 45 mph laps and opened up a half-lap lead, about 150 yards. Through the first four miles, Champion broke stadium records. The sight of both cyclists flying tight behind the roaring motors aroused the throng of a thousand to jump to its feet and cheer.

  Orbiting into the last mile, Walthour perked up. “Lap after lap showed Walthour slowly gaining, though Champion responded to Walthour’s increased speed with a great spurt,” said the Constitution. “The curves were rounded in a reckless manner, but both men followed the big motors with all ease.”

  Walthour followed a French motorcycle with greater horsepower than Champion’s motorpacer. The Georgian’s machine carried a souvenir from his trip, a rectangular windshield over the rear wheel for extra slipstream shelter.

  Champion accelerated to a scorching 51 mph. The crowd screamed louder. Walthour kept narrowing the gap. His driver pulled up snug behind Champion. The men and their machines whirled around the oval like a thundering dragon.

  Off the final turn, Walthour’s driver went wide on the run up to the finish in front of the grandstand and sling-shotted past team Champion. Walthour edged the Frenchman to clinch the first heat by a fraction of a second, what sports writers called a ding-dong finish.

  Just past the line, Champion’s tires slipped. He fell and barrel-rolled down the track to the inside apron. His pedal gouged the pine boards.

  “He was badly shaken up and received a bad cut over the left eye,” reported the Constitution. “Besides this, he picked up a number of splinters as he rolled down the track. One of these penetrated his stomach and an operation was performed at the Grady Hospital last night to remove it.”

  Surgery to remove the splinters delayed his planned departure from Atlanta. The tumble also reinjured his mended leg; he ignored medical advice for surgery.42 Champion strode out of the downtown hospital with a neat row of square-knotted silk stitches that closed the laceration over his eye. The shirt he wore covered another row on his abdomen. A surgeon aboard the ship would remove the stitches at sea.

  Alighting from a train on Thursday, June 30,43 Champion’s first day back in Paris, he headed straight to the office of the sports daily, L’Auto, at 10 rue Faubourg-Montmartre, in the Ninth Arrondissement on the Right Bank of the Seine. Passing along the Ninth’s grand boulevards, adorned with grandiose architecture and chic shops, must have stirred his Gallic pride. He visited
his friend Henri Desgrange, L’Auto’s editor and director.

  Desgrange had shaved off his beard, revealing a rectangular face and a square jaw. Despite pushing forty, he maintained a youthful appearance, encouraged by rigorous daily exercise and thick, jet-black hair. He was basking in credit for pulling off one of the publishing world’s most flamboyant coups—of such magnitude that it still demands global attention every July.

  Like Champion, the newspaper had survived hard blows. Since its founding on October 16, 1900, as L’Auto-Vélo,44 it had battled a nemesis, Le Vélo, the city’s older sports journal. Le Vélo was edited by Pierre Giffard, the visionary who had created Paris-Brest-Paris as the ultimate cycling endurance contest. He had ignited the circulation war when France teetered on the lip of civil war over the guilt or innocence of an army captain named Alfred Dreyfus, falsely alleged to have given military secrets to the Germans. Most in France were paranoid about the prospect of another German invasion. Dreyfus, a Jew in a country dominated by the Roman Catholic Church, was sentenced to Devil’s Island off the coast of French Guiana near northeastern South America. Between his imprisonment in 1894 and the retrial five years later that exonerated him, all of France had boiled. Giffard had mixed sports coverage with political commentary and had defended Dreyfus.45 The editor had used his paper to denounce Clément, André and Edouard Michelin, and Jules-Albert de Dion as anti-Dreyfus industrialists.

  Another protesting Dreyfus’s innocence was the literary lion Emile Zola. He had written an open letter to the French president published on the front page of a Paris daily with the audacious headline, “J’accuse.” Zola had accused military leaders of obstructing justice and of anti-Semitism. His bold charges and literary prominence had made him the most reviled of Dreyfus’s defenders.

  Clément and associates fumed.46 They pulled their ads from Giffard’s paper and founded L’Auto-Vélo with a considerable investment. L’Auto-Vélo marked the only time autos and bicycles shared equality in a masthead. Clément appointed Desgrange as editor.47

  In the first issue, Desgrange had pledged that under his direction the paper would never mention politics. (He kept his word until the eve of World War I.) He picked yellow newsprint for L’Auto-Vélo to stand out on newsstands and kiosks against Le Vélo’s green pages.48 Only one color and one newspaper would survive. Giffard had further angered Desgrange and his backers when Giffard won a legal decision over the similarity of their names. On January 16, 1903, Desgrange and Clément complied with the court order and renamed the paper. They called it L’Auto to reflect their enthusiasm for car racing as the sport of the future.

  By then the legal fees and steady hemorrhaging of money since the first issue had pushed the paper’s co-owners to the point where they were ready to cut their losses and close down the operation. In a desperate scheme, L’Auto had announced on January 19, 1903, in a front-page headline, that it had created a three-week bicycle road race around the inside perimeter of the nation, about the size of Texas.49 The event would transform France into a huge vélodrome, the athletic equivalent of the Eiffel Tower. The founders opened their wallets to put up lavish prizes and bonuses guaranteed to draw two-wheeled fortune hunters. Desgrange named his event after the traditional tradesmen’s journey-manship, the Tour de France.

  On July 2, 1903, L’Auto’s inaugural Tour de France began on a road on the edge of Paris with seventy-three swashbucklers from four countries. They took off in a cloud of dust for Lyon, 291 miles away. The gambit paid off. L’Auto’s presses rolled off one special edition after another. Readers wanted to learn more about this unprecedented and extraordinary event. The circulation jumped from a money-losing 25,000 copies sold daily to a profitable 65,000—robbing a big chunk of sales from Le Vélo. The Tour de France finished 1,518 miles later on July 23 on the Parc des Princes. The winner was Champion’s former adversary Marius Garin, the Little Chimneysweep. When Champion sauntered into L’Auto’s offices, Desgrange was bracing for the second annual tour, destined to deal his nemesis a knock-down punch.

  Champion needed publicity. He had come to offer an exclusive on his adventures in America. Desgrange also directed the Parc des Princes in western Paris and organized Sunday race programs. He assigned nicknames to people so readers could conveniently identify them, like theater props. A tall man, he dubbed anyone shorter as petit. He introduced Champion to L’Auto’s staff on the first floor as Le Petit Prodige, “The Little Wonder.”50 Desgrange, mindful of his duties, left Le Petit Prodige with a reporter assigned to do the interview. Desgrange jogged upstairs to his office. His heart was more writer than political diehard. Under his hand, L’Auto read in the passionate style of his literary hero, Emile Zola.51

  Champion also went to see Victor Breyer,52 now director of the Buffalo Vélodrome, a going concern relocated from Porte Maillot at the city’s northwest end to suburban Neuilly. Breyer had a grand prix scheduled for Sunday, July 10. He signed Champion to a match against national motorpace champion Henri Contenet. The bout would challenge both men, guarantee ticket sales, and entertain Breyer’s audience.

  Breyer’s passions for sports and journalism united his professional and private lives. The gentleman scribe with a soft smile worked a day job as editor of the sports weekly La Vie au Grand Air, popular for generous photo layouts. Breyer wrote about the American exodus to Europe. He had cited the gossip about Champion’s military desertion and present mentoring of young George Leander. A photo of Champion in a pin-striped suit, cuffs showing discretely, ran with the subhead, “Long Time No See.” The article touted his debut at the Buffalo Vélodrome.53

  The French auto industry’s patron, too much of a workaholic to make the grade for sainthood, was Adolphe Clément.54 French autos were exported all over the world, supported by France’s colonial empire. For his role as a force behind the auto industry, he was invited by President Émile Loubet to the presidential palace for a promotion from Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur to Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.55

  Réne Panhard, the Renault brothers, the Peugeots, and other captains of industry in France’s National Automobile Syndicate had re-elected Adolphe Clément to the organization’s presidency.56 The former locksmith, now portly, employed approximately twenty-five hundred workers in factories making bicycles, motorcycles, automobiles, and dirigibles. Clément still served as board president of Panhard Motor Company (Émile Levassor had died in 1897 in a car race), was president of the board of the French Textile Manufacturers, and carried the title of honorary president of France’s Bicycle and Automobile Insurance Industry. He even performed a stint as juror for the Alcohol Exhibition in Vienna.

  Clément’s eminence led to a novel Anglo-French collaboration.57 For a year, he had a term as vice president on the board at the Clément-Talbot Motor Works in London. He recently had left the English company, renamed Talbot Motor Works, to launch his own auto business in France. He had legally changed his surname to Clément-Bayard, after the medieval knight Pierre Bayard, and he christened the company as Clément-Bayard Automobiles. Like the old knight, he wore a beard shot through with gray. His vehicles were manufactured in a pair of sprawling plants in Mézièrs, to the north in the Ardennes. It was natural that a statute of the knight stood sentry on the factory grounds.

  When Champion returned to Paris, Clément-Bayard was abroad at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Champion would have dealt with Pierre Tournier, manager of operations. Tournier signed him up for contracts to ride Gladiator Cycles equipped with Dunlop tires, and for Marius Thé to drive Gladiator motorcycles with Dunlops. Both Champion and Marius Thé received an inventory of bikes, tires, and motorcycles—enough to leave two or three extra two-wheelers in storage at the Buffalo Vélodrome and Parc des Princes. Before every race, Champion hired a support crew to have a replacement bike and back-up motorcycle at the ready on the track infield across from the grandstand. In keeping with the trend in motorpacing on the continent, the Gladiator motorcycles were equipped with a rectangular windscreen over
the rear wheel for a little extra shelter.

  On Champion’s second day in Paris, L’Auto proclaimed, “Le Retour de Champion.” Staff writer François Mercier noted that the twenty-six-year-old Little Wonder had returned after five years in America, thanks to his amnesty. The article mentioned that he was a married man and that he had trained with Choppy Warburton. Mercier noted that Champion’s adventures abroad were marked by horrific falls that “put him on his road to Damascus.”58

  Mercier told readers that Champion had come back to Paris to embark on a new métier in autos—that Champion intended to settle in Boston to take advantage of his business connections in America. His idea was to link up with a French auto company looking to sell cars in the growing US market. To raise money, Champion intended to compete on tracks behind a motorcycle driven by Marius Thé. When he wasn’t on the track, he planned to relax with old friends.

  French historian Pierre Chany in his 1975 La Fabuleuse Histoire du Cyclisme, a French-centric tour d’horizon of the sport’s first century, conceded that the draft board would have granted Champion amnesty for his limp to avoid disgracing the military uniform. Competing against French pros to raise capital, however, evoked skepticism, if not outright scorn. Back in 1904, memories were still fresh about what had happened in September 1902 to the admired Constant Huret after he broke an ankle in a collision with Jimmy Michael in a motor-pace race at Parc des Princes. Chany cites old-timers recalling Champion’s declaration:

  “I’m back in France to get the dough I’ll need back there,” he told friends.

  “Not a chance, Albert. Banks aren’t very generous right now.”