The Fast Times of Albert Champion
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12. “Pierrefonds, Un Lieu, Une Histoire….” http://www.members.lycos.fr/decouvrir/Pierrefonds.html (accessed January 27, 2003).
13. Ibid.
14. Hartmann, Clément-Bayard, p. 4.
15. Pierre Terrail Bayard, Dictionnaire de Bibliographie Français (Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ané, 1959), pp. 995–96; The New Encyclopedia Britannica (London: 2005).
16. Ibid., p. 996.
17. Desgrange, “Mort de Clément-Bayard.”
18. Graham Robb, The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), p. 158.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., p. 243.
21. Desgrange, “Mort de Clément-Bayard.”
22. Joan DeJean: The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour (New York: Free Press, 2005), p. 136.
23. Ibid., p. 212.
24. Ibid.
25. Desgrange, “Mort de Clément-Bayard”; Jack Rennert, Poster Ecstasy, vol. 28 (New York: Poster Auctions International, 1998), Clément & Cie., poster of 1886, plate no. 1, p. 3.
26. Desgrange, “Mort de Clément-Bayard.”
27. Ebria Feinblatt and Bruce Davis, eds., Toulouse-Lautrec and His Contemporaries: Posters of the Belle Epoque, from the Wagner Collection (New York: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1985), p. 15; Jules Chéret’s address on posters through 1890 at 18 rue Brunel, including 1879 poster, Les Girard: L’Horloge, Champs-Elysées, 1879, and Théâtrophone, 1890, place no. 33.
28. Desgrange, “Mort de Clément-Bayard.”
29. Dictionnaire de Biographie Français, vol. 8 (Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ané, 1959), pp. 1432–33.
30. “Uniting the Houses of Charron-Clément,” Automobile, March 21, 1907, p. 500.
31. Listed among the medals he won at trade shows in Le Mans, Tours, Nice, Epernay, and Alençon, cited in February 8, 1904, for his Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, ref. L0549039.
32. Desgrange, “Mort de Clément-Bayard.”
33. “Uniting the Houses of Charron-Clément.”
34. Légion d’Honneur file.
35. S. S. Wilson, “Bicycle Technology: This Humane and Efficient Machine Played a Central Role in the Evolution of the Ball Bearing, the Pneumatic Tire, Tubular Construction, and the Automobile and the Airplane,” Scientific American, March 1973, pp. 81–91. J. K. Starley of Coventry, England, is widely recognized for introducing the Rover safety bicycle, with the first chain drive and same-size wheels on the diamond frame, in 1885 at the Stanley Show in London, the bicycle industry’s annual trade show. Geoffrey Williamson, Wheels within Wheels: The Story of the Starleys of Coventry (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1966), pp. 103–105. Prior Dodge, The Bicycle (Paris: Flammarion, 1996), pp. 94–102.
36. Desgrange, “Mort de Clément-Bayard.”
37. Patrice Higonnet, Paris: Capital of the World, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), p. 357.
38. Desgrange, “Mort de Clément-Bayard.”
39. du Cros, Wheels of Fortune, p. 63.
40. Ibid., p. 70.
41. Ibid.
42. “Romance of Business.”
43. du Cros, Wheels of Fortune, p. 31.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid., p. 33.
48. Ibid., p. 41.
49. Ibid., illustration, p. 103.
50. Ibid., pp. 102–103.
51. Ibid., p. 99.
52. Ibid., p. 124.
53. “The French Dunlop Tyre,” p. 331.
54. Jack Rennert, 100 Years of Bicycle Posters (New York: Darien House, 1973), p. 3; Ebria Feinblatt and Bruce Davis, “The Posters of Toulouse-Lautrec: Art for the Pavement Public,” pp. 10–35, and “The Art of Persuasion: Sources of Style and Content in Belle Epoque Posters,” pp. 38–47, in Feinblatt and Davis, eds., Toulouse-Lautrec and His Contemporaries: Posters of the Belle Epoque, from the Wagner Collection (New York: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1985).
CHAPTER 3. A BEAUTIFUL DEVIL
1. “The French Dunlop Tyre,” To-Day (London), July 18, 1896, p. 331.
2. Edouard de Perrodil, Albert Champion: His Triumphs, His Adventures, His Voyage to the United States, brochure published in Paris, 1904, by L’Auto, p. 8, translated by David Herlihy.
3. Pierre Chany, La Fabuleuse Histoire du Cyclisme: Des Origines à 1955 (Paris: Nathan, 1988), p. 94.
4. Graham Robb, The Discovery of France (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), p. 226.
5. Chany, La Fabuleuse Histoire du Cyclisme.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 97.
9. Sir Arthur du Cros, Wheels of Fortune: A Salute to Pioneers (London: Chapman and Hall, 1938), p. 41.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. “The Brothers Who Seized an Opportunity,” European Automotive Hall of Fame, http://www.autonews.com/files/euroauto/inductees/michelin2002.htm (accessed February 27, 2003).
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid. Edouard Michelin studied under Adolphe William Bouguereau (1825–1905), famous for his iconic cherubic angels reproduced on note cards, key chains, and umbrellas. He was an influential member of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and he prevented avant-garde works from showing at the academy’s official exhibitions.
18. Chany, La Fabuleuse Histoire du Cyclisme, p. 47.
19. Sylvane de Saint-Seine, “Angellis, Fords, Toyodas…Armand Peugeot Beat Them All,” European Automotive Hall of Fame, 2003 induction, http://www.autonews.com/files/euroauto/inductees/apeugeot2003.htm (accessed February 3, 2003).
20. Chany, La Fabuleuse Histoire du Cyclisme, p. 99.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., p. 95.
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23. Ibid., p. 98.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., p. 100.
27. Perrodil, Albert Champion, p. 11.
28. The Clément catalogue of 1888, p. 20, lists the basic price as 450 francs, plus assorted equipment upgrades that raise the price to a total of 725 francs.
29. Perrodil, Albert Champion, p. 11.
30. Ibid.
31. The Man in the Street (likely Charles Ravaud of L’Auto, a journalist who had covered Champion’s progress while writing for other publications, including Vélo), “Cycling Gossip,” La Pédale (Paris), October 8, 1924, p. 12, translated by David Herlihy.
32. Edouard Moussett, “Les Miettes du Cyclisme: Brique Pilée” (The Crumbs of Cycling, Wiping the Floor), Le Véloce-Sport (Bordeaux), November 11, 1897, p. 18.
33. Perrodil, Albert Champion, p. 11.
34. Ibid.
35. Moussett, “Miettes du Cyclisme.”
36. Perrodil, Albert Champion, p. 11.
37. Ibid.
38. Advice offered unsolicited in the early 1960s from James Armando, member of the US Olympic Cycling team that competed in the 1924 Paris Olympics, and subsequent interviews in the 1980s with other veterans for Peter Nye’s Hearts of Lions: The History of American Bicycle Racing (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988).
39. “French Dunlop Tire,” p. 331.
40. Ibid.
41. Citation in Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, file archived at the Centre Historique Archives de Paris, ref. L0549039.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Perrodil, Albert Champion, p. 11.
CHAPTER 4. THE “HUMAN CATAPULT”
1. “Cycling in France,” Westminster Budget (London), October 9, 1896, p. 28.
2. Robert Kanigel, The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), pp. 132–33.
3. Edouard de Perrodil, Albert Champion: His Triumphs, His Adven
tures, His Voyage to the United States,” brochure published in Paris, 1904, by L’Auto, p. 12, translated by David Herlihy.
4. Ibid.
5. “Albert Champion, Head of AC, Dies in Paris Hotel,” Flint Journal; 6 francs also cited in an Associated Press wire story carried in more than a hundred US dailies, including the Boston Globe, “Champion, Who Rose to Wealth, Dead: From Six Francs a Week, He Became a Millionaire,” October 28, 1927.
6. “This and That,” Le Rappel (The Reminder), May 21, 1921, cites Tournier’s managing world-class riders, including Floyd McFarland of San Jose, CA, when he raced in Paris in 1900. Tournier became a father figure for Champion as well as a trusted colleague and director of Champion’s AC Titan factory in suburban Levallois-Perret.
7. Ibid.
8. Perrodil, Albert Champion, p. 12.
9. Ibid.; The Man in the Street (likely Charles Ravaud of L’Auto), “Cycling Gossip,” La Pédale (Paris), October 8, 1924, p. 12.
10. The Man in the Street’s 1924 “Cycling Gossip.”
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Norman Beasley, “Albert Champion: The Office Boy Who Was Taught That a Race Is Won before the Race and There Is No Such Thing as ‘Good Enough,’” MoTor, September 1926, reprinted as Biography of Albert Champion, President, AC Spark Plug Company, Flint, Michigan.
14. “Story of Champion’s Life: Narrative of French Errand Boy Who Became a $20,000-a-Year Cycle Race Winner, and Later a Leading Figure in Automotive Industry,” Motor West, November 15, 1927, pp. 32–34. This article by an anonymous writer describes Champion’s early days under Adolphe Clément with details (including sweeping and dusting, attending the hearth fires, and washing windows) also appeared in other publications over the years. Motor West had offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Henri Desgrange, “Mort de Clément-Bayard,” L’Auto, May 11, 1928, p. 1.
18. “Story of Champion’s Life.”
19. Dennis Renault, “Book Press Ink and Paper: The History of the Nineteenth Century Letter-Copying Book Process,” excerpted from W. B. Proudfoot, The Origin of Stencil Duplicating (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1972), reprinted with permission and illustrated as a folio keep-sake for the Sacramento Book Collectors Club (Sacramento, CA: Mockingbird Press, 1996).
20. Ibid.
21. Author interview with Dennis Renault in Carmel, CA, May 15, 1998.
22. Ibid.
23. Pierre Terrail de Bayard, Dictionnaire de Bibliographie Français (Paris: 1959), Librairie Letouzey et Ané, pp. 994–96; The New Encyclopedia Britannica (London: 2005).
24. Ibid.
25. Légion d’Honneur file, archived at the Centre Historique Archives de Paris, ref. L0549039, http://www.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/leonore/pres.htm (accessed March 3, 2006).
26. Desgrange, “Mort de Clément-Bayard.”
27. “Réne Panhard,” The New Encyclopedia Britannica (London: 2005).
28. “Émile Levassor,” The New Encyclopedia Britannica (London: 2005).
29. John B. Rae, The American Automobile: A Brief History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 7.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.; Arthur Pound, The Turning Wheel: The Story of General Motors through Twenty-Five Years, 1908–1933 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1934), p. 36.
33. Ibid.
34. David V. Herlihy, The Bicycle: The History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 86–87. Herlihy discusses Lallement’s US patent, in 1866, and the patent’s sale and resale, pp. 208–209.
35. Kanigel, One Best Way, p. 156.
36. Geoffrey Williamson, Wheels within Wheels: The Story of the Starleys of Coventry (London: Geoffrey Bles Publishers, 1966), pp. 48–49.
37. Desgrange, “Mort de Clément-Bayard.”
38. Ibid.
39. Roger Bastide, Robert Chapatte, and Dominique Grimault, Les Légendaires: Des Temps Héroïques (Paris: La Maison du Sport, 1988), sidebar bylined Roger Bastide, “L’Empereur du Tour, Henri Desgrange Avait le Culte de Napoléon,” p. 79.
40. Ibid., p. 246.
41. Birth certificate of Julie Elisa Delpuech, December 4, 1876, Archives de Paris, 18 Boulevard Sérurier, 75019 Paris, on microfilm #950 (accessed September 10, 2004). Also available from http://canadp-archivesenligne.paris.fr.
42. Ibid.
43. Bastide et. al., Les Légendaires, discuss Desgrange organizing weekend races in the 1890s, serving him well when he would introduce the Tour de France in 1903, p. 246.
44. Spectator of the Third Arrondissement (pen name for Desgrange), Le Cycle (Paris), April 12, 1896, page unnumbered.
45. Ibid.
46. The Man in the Street (possibly Charles Ravaud), La Pédale, October 8, 1924, p. 12; Perrodil, Albert Champion, p. 14. Champion’s performance generated more than a dozen recollections over the years. All accounts are consistent and indicate that the event marked his career debut.
47. The Man in the Street’s 1924 recollection.
48. Ibid.
49. Perrodil, Albert Champion, p. 12.
50. Ibid.
51. Spectator of the Third Arrondissement, Le Cycle.
52. Perrodil, Albert Champion.
53. Les Woodland, Paris-Roubaix: All the Bumps of Cycling’s Cobbled Classic (Cherokee Village, AR: McGann Publishing, 2013), p. 14.
54. Charles Ravaud, “The Death of Albert Champion: His Career—From Cycling Champion to Industrialist,” L’Auto, October 28, 1927, p. 2.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. The Man in the Street’s 1924 recollection.
58. Ibid.
59. Légion d’Honneur file.
60. Pierre Terrail de Bayard, Dictionnaire de Biographie Français (Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ané), p. 996.
61. Desgrange, “Mort de Clément-Bayard.”
62. “The French Dunlop Tyre,” To-Day (London), July 18, 1896, p. 331.
63. Jack Rennert, Prima Posters (New York: Poster Auctions International, 1994), vol. 14, no. 45, by artist Paul Dupont, advertising Clément Cycles, including the company’s capital of 4 million francs.
64. Desgrange, “Mort de Clément-Bayard.”
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid.
67. David Herlihy, “Bicycle Story,” Invention and Technology (New York) (Spring 1992): 59; Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 278.
68. Ibid.
69. “Men of Mark in the Cycling World: M. Albert Champion,” Hub (London), February 20, 1897, p. 101.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid.
72. “Work Is Albert Champion’s Main Pastime,” Detroit News, August 21, 1927.
73. W. A. Pritchard, “Albert Champion a Cycle Marvel: Wonderful Records Made by Manufacturer in his Younger Days Are Recalled,” New York Sun, January 7, 1917.
74. “Men of Mark in the Cycling World.”
75. Pierre Chany, La Fabuleuse Histoire du Cyclisme: Des Origines à 1955 (Paris: Nathan, 1988), pp. 186–88. Warburton has long been the subject of articles, many repeating earlier accounts accusing him of drugging his stars. One notorious account goes back to Welshman Arthur Linton winning the 1896 endurance grind of some 370 miles from Bordeaux to Paris, earning a prize three thousand francs, sufficient to live on comfortably for a year. Weeks later, however, Linton died in a hospital of cholera. Warburton was blamed for giving him a fatal drug, possibly cocaine, although nothing was proved and drug testing was decades in the future.
76. “Men of Mark in the Cycling World.”
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid.
79. Ibid.
80. Ibid.
81. Major Halstead, “‘Choppy’ Warburton and the Old Athletic Club,” Haslingden Observer (Haslingden, England), January 22, 1898.
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid.
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid.
88. Ibid.
89. Major Halstead, “Choppy ‘Beats Hazael,’” Haslingden Observer, January 29, 1898.
90. Halstead, “‘Choppy’ Warburton.”
91. Ibid.
92. David Wallechinsky, Complete Book of the Olympics (New York: Little, Brown, 1991), p. 51.
93. Ibid., p. 54.
94. Halstead, “‘Choppy’ Warburton.”
95. Manchester Athletic Club Magazine (England), January 1894, p. 2.
96. H. O. Duncan, Vingt Ans de Cyclisme Pratique: Étude Complète du Cyclist de 1876 a Ce Jour (Paris: F. Juven, 1896), pp. 64–66. Duncan, an Englishman and one of cycling’s first generation of professionals, describes Warburton’s regimen for Champion, which had earlier worked wonders for world champion Jimmy Michael of Wales.
97. Ibid.
98. “Men of Mark in the Cycling World.”
99. Beasley, “Albert Champion.”
100. Ibid.
101. Graham Robb, The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), p. 162.
102. Ibid., p. 161.
103. Ibid., p. 162.
104. “Work Is Albert Champion’s Main Pastime.”
105. Ibid.
106. Beasley, “Albert Champion.”
107. “Work Is Albert Champion’s Main Pastime.”
108. Ibid.
109. Clément, Légion d’Honneur file, archived at the Centre Historique Archives de Paris, ref. L0549039, http://www.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/leonore/pres.htm (accessed March 3, 2006).
110. “Men of Mark in the Cycling World.”
111. Ibid.
112. Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 278; author interview with Colonel Pope’s great-grandson, Albert Pope of Millbrook, New York, on March 1, 2002.
113. Stephen B. Goddard, Colonel Albert Pope and His American Dream Machines: The Life and Times of a Bicycle Tycoon Turned Automotive Pioneer (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2000), pp. 17, 145, 157.
114. Ibid., p. 10.
115. Jack Rennert, 100 Years of Bicycle Posters (New York: Darien House, 1973), p. 4.
116. Goddard, Colonel Albert Pope, p. 163.
117. David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 189.
118. Ibid.
119. Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 278.