The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1912-09-07
100 MILES HOUR
This Is the Ambition of Every
POp-Pep Racer.
The Maddest of Speed Fiends
Bake and Freeze.
NO KNOWN CURE FOR RACING
After Third Contest He Begins
to Split Seconds.
Some Way to Abolish SpOkes
Is Sought.
NO KNOWN CURE FOR RACING

New York, Sept. 7-Imagine a
sport in which the devotee burns his
legs to a blister. freezes his forearms
three-fourths blinded, maintains a
semi-inverted position, and runs fas-
cinating risk of broken bones, writes
Herbert Corey
That sounds like the cree for all
event in the violent ward in the COM
petition for the madhouse trophy. But
1t is only motor cycle racing. 1t caters
to the American love for r gh speed,
and to that primordial instinct to
which we all react-a desire to see
another man try to break his neck.
Motor cycling is already within a sec
ond and a half of one hundred miles
an hour, and fifty mile events are
being won in better than 80 minutes.
Like the moving picture craze, 1T
was begot in Paris and became rabid
in America. Huge board bowls have
been built in half dozen cities AID
there are dirt tracks in hundred
towns. Practitioners NAV be told
upon the street by the ratio of their
broken bones, for they ri lie parallel
to the earth's surface on track
banked to SO degrees That's about
the angle at which you lean a dinner
plate against the wall with some as
surance that it will not slip If they
hour they fall off the track. afford
ing their watchers a coy chill
Three Rides and You're Lost.
Perhaps there are one hundred pro-
fessionaI riders N America. They do
not precisely enjoy the sport They
suffer from a sort of dopy delirium.
Away from the saucer the professional
may admit that the game is hard one
but it isn't long before he is a-straddle
of a frame again listening to the bang
ing of the motor and the harplike hum
ming of the wire spokes and watching
lot rfh nf "a
itself beneath his fork. It's like the
black smoke. After the third fast ride
the man is los Then he begins to
figure out some way to cut the fifth Of
8 second from his speed The multiple
city of spokes always bothers him, for
he thinks each spoke adds to the wind
resistance But the disk wheel will not
do.
It's like riding one wing of an aero
plane" explained Arthur Chapple one
o. the three fastest American riders.
"A disk wheel catches the air, and
whirrO! You so planning sidewise.''
No motor cyclist of worth worries
about his legs, which have been burned
by his red hot motor. At the earnest
solicitation of a man who has unfortu-
nately missed seeing several satisfying
accidents, Che pple pulled up his trouser
legs, displaying new blisters which
reached from ankle bone to knee. The
inside of either calf was dead white.
Were oiu DuILS lldQ -D6dleU- Inc HeSn
had been shrunken and atrophied by
the glowing motor, which sets between
the barbecued calves. The site of the
Indignation explained that it is not
possible to put a heat shield on the mo-
Tor 1t would reduce speed by perhaps
the fifth of a second to the mile. Races
are won by that.
The Strategist May Win.
1t isn't all speed, though. The man
VINO can think most clearly at 95
miles an hour while his less are siz-
zlng is apt to get first money. For |
no form of strategy is barred The
riders hook handlebars ana indulge in |
hoInicldal comedy. Now and then |
they digress from the ethics of COM |
petition long enough to put a thum /
in the other fellows eye. Thumbing |
IS rarely favored by the thumbed but |
1t gets results. A really gentle rid
er's- methods will fall JUST short of
mayhem. Once Chapple couldn't pass
a competitor, and so he reached OYER |
and slapped the other on The back |
A bursting tire will sometimes curl |
up and slap rider just that way. |
and bursting tire means smashing
with red hot motor chasing you at |
80 miles an hour. So the other man
Strengthened up in fright and Chap |
pie shot by and won.
Sometimes the boys bump each 9TH |
er into the casualty ward. Not long
ago crOwding pair jumped the track /
into the grandstand, and the least
lucky hooked his stomach over the |
rail. He slid along on that Useful or
gan until he had reft evey splinter |
from twenty yards of pine scantling. |
The other kicked his motor from be- I
meath him and fell 20 fact to the |
ground. They practice that arop kick
on red hot motors, it. seems. The |
rapidly revolving mechanism will lift (
meat from a bone like a meat chop I
per. Not even the heavy leather reg
gings they all wear are sufficient pro-
lection To save their heads and |
necks they wear football helmets of |
heavy leather, REINFORCED by steel |
arches. But the real motor bug is |
more concerned about his f.ths of a |
second than about his osseoas forma- /
ton. One enthusiast rode against /
time not long ago. He not only dis
carded the helmet, but figuring that |
his ears mights1catch a lot of loose !
breeze and thus retard him, ne put on /
4 rubber bath cap to pin them tight |
to his head. They train for weight as