An extreme heat wave had closed down the Friedenau Sportpark for several days.104 The temperature finally became bearable by Sunday, August 21. When the gate opened, some forty thousand spectators stampeded in to fill the grandstand and bleacher seats surrounding the five-hundred-meter velodrome. Built in 1897, before motorpacing had come on the scene, the cement track had a rough surface and shallow banking. Winter freezes caused cracks, which were patched into bumps. The track was notorious for causing accidents. A year before, Jimmy Michael was nearly killed on it.105 His face was torn from mouth to ear and he suffered a concussion. His recovery in a Berlin hospital had taken six months.
Champion rode in a four-up 100-kilometer paced race against Thaddhaus Robl of Munich, Germany’s most prolific motorpace winner and twice a world champion, German Bruno Demke, and Englishman Tommy Hall. “Champion and Hall were ill at ease on this track, which had already claimed its share of victims,” according to a French report. “The Germans knew it much better and took greater risks. The race lacked any battles, which eliminated any spectator interest, although Robl covered a blazing forty-six miles in the first hour.”106
Champion returned by train to Paris and discovered the city was mourning Leander’s death.107 About the time Champion had bumped around the Friedenau Sport-park, his protégé had suffered a violent crash on the Parc des Princes. The American had been racing against Walthour and Eugenio Bruni, tearing around a banked turn at 55 mph behind his motorpacer, when he slipped from the slipstream. A wall of dirty air promptly rose up and filled the space between him and his disappearing pacer. Leander’s handlebars all of a sudden wobbled beyond his control and he catapulted sixty feet through the air. Twenty thousand spectators saw him land headfirst. His inert body bounced over the cement before coming to a rest. He died in Beaujon Hospital of brain hemorrhaging without regaining conscious.
Champion and the motorpacer corps attended the fallen hero’s memorial service at the Temple de L’Avenue de la Grande-Armée.108 Leander’s body was taken to a train station for the first leg of its journey to Chicago for burial.
In response to the American’s fatal accident, L’Union Vélocipedique de France barred windshields from pacing motorcycles and required pace drivers to wear tight-fitting jackets.109
Champion and Bobby Walthour decided to break from the code of never wearing helmets. Champion and Walthour donned thick leather headgear styled after American football players.110
Champion’s request to represent France at the London world championships on September 3 was rejected by the French governing body because he had shirked his military duty.111 The organization instead chose César Simar for the 100-kilometer motorpacing event. Simar finished second to Walthour.
The governing body’s sports commission announced the professional fields for France’s annual championships set for September 18 at the Parc des Princes. Champion and six others were selected for the twenty-ninth middle-distance race of 100 kilometers. For the national sprint championship, about two dozen of the swiftest luminaries were picked.
Champion made the cut based on consistent results and his hard-fought victory at the prestigious Grand Prix de Paris on the Parc des Princes.112 He had raced against the aggressive Bruni, national champion Contenet, Louis Darragon, a recent revelation who would win world motorpace titles two years in a row, and Welshman Tom Linton, holder of the world hour record.
First place paid $1,600 ($43,200 in 2014).113 When the starter fired his pistol, Bruni and Linton roared ahead like it would be just a two-man race. After ten kilometers, Darragon, a former auto mechanic, caught them and usurped the lead. The audience jumped to its feet and screamed. Darragon was back in form after breaking an arm the year before. In the final ten kilometers, Champion came from behind to catch Darragon. Lap after lap, the two men battled, to the audience’s delight. With five kilometers left, Champion pulled ahead and extended his lead until he lapped Darragon. Then he kept speeding as insurance in case of mechanical failure. He lapped Darragon a second time, difficult to do on a large track, to win by about a mile. Darragon maintained a margin of thirty meters on Linton. Contenet finished four laps down and fended off Bruni by a hundred meters.
“It was an admirable fight,” Charles Ravaud wrote in Le Vélo. “Champion snatched victory from Darragon.”114
Yet again, Champion received a bouquet of flowers for his victory lap and again the band played “La Marseillaise.”
Champion’s season, and his entire career, culminated at the French national championships. More important than capturing la gloire, greater than hearing thousands cheering and applauding, more gratifying than listening to the national anthem performed for the lap of honor, and more rewarding than receiving a check valued at about $1,000, the winners would have their names written into the record books alongside immortals. Such characters had carried around their own weather, commanding all the light and relegating others to dwell in their shadows.
The middle-distance title Champion sought went back to 1885.115 Winning times reflected technology advances.116 Early victor, Baron Frédérick de Civry, on a high-wheeler, had required more than four hours to ride 100 kilometers. Charles Terront on his modern bicycle with both wheels the same size, chopped off almost an hour. Constant Huret, behind human pacers in tandem relays, won in under three hours. Emile Bouhours, following a motor-tandem, needed only an hour and thirty-eight minutes—less than half the time of the early high-wheelers.
The older sprint championships,117 which began in 1881, shimmered with dramatic personalities. Four-time-winner Paul Médinger had his name on Cycles Médinger,118 made on rue Brunel a few doors from where Champion would work for Clément, until Médinger was fatally shot through the heart in a jealous rage by his wife, who then killed herself.119
Hosting the championships at the Parc des Princes, the largest vélodrome on the continent, suited its director and owner Henri Desgrange. French vélodromes then represented churches for racing, and Parc des Princes loomed like a cathedral. For centuries the grounds had been only for monarchs. Louis XIV, who transformed France into a modern nation,120 frolicked there as a prince before he strutted around the palace in Versailles on his beloved red high heels.121 French royalty was honored by the grandeur of the name, Park of Princes. Desgrange had the track surfaced with pink concrete to commemorate the charismatic Sun King and his beloved red high heels. Desgrange’s Tour de France finished there, an annual tradition that survived him by decades. The track’s inside perimeter walls generated revenue from selling ad space hawking wines, chocolates, tires, and autos. The grassy infield abutting the pink cement, riders leaning into a turn, and the signage inspired a thousand posters.
“The wind was terrible, a veritable tempest,” Géorge Lefèvre wrote of that chilly Sunday afternoon.122 The program opened with the sprint championship. Small packs of men battled in a series of five lively heats over two laps, a little more than a mile. For about two minutes, these aristocrats of the wheel sport sparred with their wits and legs to gain the best position as the tempo accelerated until the tight scrum veered around the final turn. Up the finishing straight they dipped their heads down, hair blowing back, and tried to outkick the others until the winner zipped over the finish line. Only the fastest of each heat advanced to semifinals and the final.
A jaunty twenty-one-year-old from Lyon named Emile Friol proved himself as the most brilliant. Tall and wiry, he dethroned the defending champion in the first heat—dealing the old guard a shock. Friol’s mustache spread across his chiseled face when he smiled. Unlike Champion, carrying the character stain for dodging his military duty, Friol had fulfilled his service before he mustered out and turned to pure sprinting.123 His brothers had a business making tires.124 On family tires, Friol won the sprint crown final by a gallant three-length margin—his first victory of any importance.
Friol pulled on his national champion tricolor jersey and accepted his bouquet of flowers. He made his lap of honor with the band playing “La
Marseillaise.” The audience cheered the rising young athlete.
After the silent aristocrats came the loud motorcycles. Champion donned a long-sleeved white jersey with a black brassard bearing the number three on his right arm for those in the grandstand to see at a glance.125 He strapped on a leather helmet and threw a leg over his aero bike.126 An official gripped the frame in both hands. Champion jammed his feet into steel toe clips, bent his back low, and grasped the handlebar drops. He was about to race his longest and most important track event.
He and six others fanned shoulder to shoulder across the black start-finish line on the pink cement before the grandstand. All had a good chance.127 Emile Bouhours had won it three times and owned twenty-four world track records.128 The fair-haired, blue-eyed Norman had received thousands of letters from women. Now thirty-four, he was the oldest contender, the sentimental favorite. Defending champion Henri Contenet was determined to fight to retain his title and the tricolor jersey. Paul Guignard, short with a bushy mustache that ruled his face, was two years older than Champion. Guignard had worked as a cook until he won a major road race that established him as a national-class rider.129 In one season, he had scored eighty-seven wins. He took up motorpacing for bigger purses. Eugenio Bruni had had some excellent results but was inconsistent.130 Louis Darragon, the youngest, at twenty-one, was improving fast.131 Charles Brécy, a thirty-three-year-old Parisian with a waxed handlebar mustache, had given up sprinting for motorpacing to better support his wife and three children.132 He treated the national championship as preparation for his plan to set a new paced-track world hour record.
About fifty yards behind waited the motors.133
Thirty thousand spectators packed the grandstand seats, standing ten deep around the perimeter fence and spilling into the spacious infield.
Under a new rule, the cyclists were pushed off by handlers to ride a neutral lap.134 All seven stood over their pedals and muscled big gears up to speed for the next minute and a half. Motorcycle pacers pulled around to shelter their charges. Once the phalanx of teams sped over the line, a pistol fired.
Bruni, in a long-sleeved jersey with thick vertical stripes, dashed ahead.135 He led through ten kilometers, followed by Contenet, Brécy, Champion, and Darragon in single file. Guignard trailed by 150 meters. Bouhours, who had set the standard for years and scored a silver medal for France at the 1902 Berlin World Championships in motorpace, lagged and had already been lapped a few times.136
Whipping along the finishing straight after about fifteen kilometers, Champion’s chain snapped apart.137 All of a sudden, he found he was coasting on a disabled bike. His pacer zoomed away, but Champion refused to accept his fate. Recently, his leg wound had flared up again with an abscess; his only concession had been to schedule an appointment for surgery at Boucicaut Hospital after the race. He had anticipated mechanical failures and stationed a spare aero bike and a replacement motorcycle with a support crew waiting on the infield facing the grandstand—just in case.
Momentum carried him to his crew. They saw he was in trouble and ran out to catch him, since he had no brake to halt. He popped off his broken bike, grabbed a replacement, hopped on, and jumped back in the game. By the time he caught Marius Thé’s draft, he had lost two laps on everyone but Bouhours.138 Champion, down to sixth place, pursued the others scattered around the pink road. In this, the 150-lap race, he had time to make up lost ground.
The bullying wind intruded. Blustery air battered him around every turn. Champion kept adjusting his front wheel placement for drafting. He followed a pace faster than race-leader Bruni. Kilometer after kilometer, Champion reeled in those ahead, lapping them one by one. He drew encouragement—la gloire—from the wind-blown slurry of cheers and applause. At fifty kilometers (thirty-one miles), he lapped Bruni for the second time—now the score was even. Then Champion surged ahead, the new leader at sixty kilometers.
Relentless wind and high speed wore down the field. Bouhours lost so many laps that officials stopped counting, but they allowed the old lion to keep going. The first ever to win the French motorpacing title in under two hours, four years previous, Bouhours now persisted as an also-ran. Brécy had over-trained. His body taxed, he dropped off the pace and lost so many laps that he hung his head low in humility, pulled off to the side, and quit as Champion took over. Bruni, despite his splendid start, struggled with a stomachache and leg cramps and lost places.
At the one-hour mark, an official’s pistol fired.139 The announcer bellowed through his megaphone that Champion had covered sixty-six kilometers, forty-one miles, at an average speed of 41 mph. The race belonged to him. He went on to lap Guignard four times, a distance of more than two miles.140 Defending champion Contenet lost five laps, with Darragon nine laps in arrears. Bruni abandoned at eighty kilometers.
Champion had annihilated the competition. He won in 1 hour, 31 minutes, 10 seconds, with an average speed of 41 mph.
L’Auto’s front page screamed, “Two True Champions of France—Friol and Champion.” On the front page the paper featured the Champion portrait by Elmer Chickering. Friol lacked such sophistication with the press. An artist sketched him in a rakish broad-brimmed hat like D’Artagnan.
“Champion rode with his usual courage and all the while he rode as a man of class, a man of quality, a man of great heart in the grand French tradition,” Géorge Lefèvre wrote. “He is a man whose name preceded him well as a true champion of France.”141
Le Vélo’s Charles Ravaud added: “Champion, always marvelous to watch pacing behind the motors, will add his name to the glorious list of others he follows.”142
Victor Breyer in La Vie au Grand Air declared, “Champion confirmed once again his excellent energy and endurance that we already knew he had.”143
London’s Cycling Weekly noted that Champion had raced at the Royal Aquarium. Champion told the correspondent: “This was the race of my life. I have been close on ten years and have at last gained my ambition, viz, to be champion of my own country. I can tell you I trained hard for one month, riding twice a day, and left the pleasures of life to others, Hence, my victory. Personally, I do not think I shall do much more bicycle racing. I have had such long innings, and my principal object to returning to Paris was to fix up with some big automobile firm to represent them in the United States of America where I have good connections.”144
The correspondent brought up Champion’s broken thigh bone. “This left him with one leg shorter than the other, while even at the present time he is suffering from a leg wound which would keep many plucky athletes in bed.”
Champion pulled on his new national champion tricolor jersey for his lap of honor. The infield band once again played “La Marseillaise,” this time the triumphant strains celebrating that Champion had accomplished his goal.
Afterward, there was champagne with Elise and friends.
“The next day he calmly took himself to Boucicaut [Hospital] as if he were going to mass,” reported a journalist who had known him from their youth.145
The hospital, in the Fifteenth Arrondissement on the Left Bank, offered medicine’s state-of-the-art natural ventilation with high vaulted ceilings, central steam heating, and modern plumbing with flush toilets. There a surgeon removed six bone chips from Champion’s thigh, finally taking out the source of his painful abscess.146 That night, however, Champion experienced yet another calamity. He woke in the middle of the night with his wound hemorrhaging.147
“But Champion did not panic,” the account continued. “He calmly sprang from his bed and went to fetch the intern, who was able, in time, to beat back any serious repercussions. The next day, Champion recounted the episode laughing, while showing off the half-dozen bone chips that had been skillfully removed from his body.”148
As he recovered, he received lucrative offers. Desgrange hired him to race on the Parc des Princes against Bruni, Walthour, and others through the end of October.
An offer—an appearance fee likely around $1,000—to race cam
e from Dresden, one of Germany’s most beautiful cities,149 and Champion accepted. On a frosty and blustery October 9, Champion bundled up in wool tights, leather gloves, and his tricolor for 100 kilometers against German wunderkind Thaddeus Robl, Englishman Tommy Hall, and French compatriot César Simar. He lapped Robl seventeen times to even the score from their Berlin contest, and he buried the others even deeper. Champion crushed them.
Back in France on the last Sunday in October, Champion entered his final race at the Parc des Princes.150 He paced behind Franz Hoffmann. Trained in Germany as a mechanical engineer, Hoffmann loved the motors and had gained a reputation in Germany, France, and America as a master in the art of pace driving. He had fine facial features and a small chin. In his cloth cap and leather jacket, he sat ensconced squarely upright over the rear wheel. He had led Robl to dozens of victories and Walthour to triumph at the London world championships. Hoffmann had paced Basil De Guichard to win thirty-nine races and Harry Elkes to win his last ten rides. In Elkes’s fatal race, his last words to Hoff-mann had been to speed up.
Champion won. Thousands of Parisians and a contingent of American expats surrounding the Parc des Princes oval gave him a rousing valedictory victory lap. He waved his clutch of flowers at everyone. “La Marseillaise” filled the air for his benefit for the umpteenth time.
Soon came an invitation to leave Paris for New York to ride an exhibition race against Tommy Hall at the next Madison Square Garden six-day.151 However enticing, he had seen former idol Bouhours downgraded to a no-hoper. Champion’s own receding hairline reminded him every day that his physical powers were on the wane. He opted to retire at the crest of la gloire!
It was time to disengage from his skein of a thousand races and exhibitions, to make a fresh career shift. The wised up were gravitating to autos. Des-grange’s nemesis, Le Vélo, ten years old, surrendered in the circulation war and became Le Journal de l’Automobile.152
The Fast Times of Albert Champion Page 25