The Six-Day Bicycle Races: America's Jazz-Age Sport
As cycling reaches new heights of popu-larity in America, Peter Joffre Nye contin-ues to remind us that this era is but a renais-sance. For the charity rider enamored with the novelty of the sport, this book will be pulling back leaf after leaf as you enter a lush garden of the Halcyon days of American cycling. At the turn of the 19th Century, cycling enjoyed a popularity few realize in the smothering pop kitsch that is baseball. The center of that popularity was the Six-Day races held on tracks throughout the U.S. This pictorial history is great to leave around your house or office, because it has just enough layover to an earlier generation of household names known only to Baby Boomers. Jimmy Durante, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Rudy Vallee, and Jackie Cooper were all fans of the races held at Madison Square Garden. Damon Runyan, perhaps the great-est sports writer of the 20th Century, heralded the sport. And the year Ty Cobb earned $5,000 playing baseball, Bobby Walthour Sr., made $20,000 racing bikes on the board tracks. This book also drills home some beauti-ful bits that given the tech-nology of the time drops the jaw of today s hard-core cyclist. For example, the original six-day races were solo marathons in which rid-ers often crashed heavily after falling asleep at the wheel. Charles Miller of Chicago, the king of the one-man sixes, would put Chris Eatough to shame, riding 2,105 miles in the first Madison Square Garden event. The concern for those racers wellbeing sparked such a protest the two-man six-day race was developed. Peter Nye s research and writing sparlde, but just enough to keep astride the photos collected by Jeff Groman for this book. Nicely done are the touches to include Jackie Simes and Marty Nothtstein, which leaves the rider a sense of optimism going forward. This is a splendid book and a great gift. No, we won t give back our promotional copy. Richard Fries, in Bike Culture East --Bike Culture East, No. 138, Summer 2007Press Review: Bicycling Magazine January 2009 On the dedication page of The Six-Day Bicycles Races, America's Jazz-Age Sport, the authors of this homage to velodrome bicycle racing in the United States thank their families for "giving them the blue-sky to rescue the history of this once robust sport."  The 225 pages that follow are hardly a rescue mission; more a labor of love by three men who invested their time, care and enduring passion to bring a period when cycling was king to life.  Peter Joffre Nye takes the lead on Six-Day Bicycle Races, backed by the contributions of cycling historians Jeff Groman and Mark Tyson. The result is a meticulously researched and elaborate coffee table book featuring stories, photographs, news clippings and memorabilia from an era when bike racing captivated our collective conscious and cyclists were the major league sports heroes of the time.  Six-Day Bicycle Races begins with high wheel bicycles in the 1870's and ends with Americans Marty Nothstein and Ryan Oelkers claiming victory at the Moscow Six-Day in 2002. It was the first US Madison team claimed victory since Charlie Bergna and Cecil Yates won Cleveland in 1949; and one that was built on the blood, sweat and guts of the legends found on the pages in between. Six-day racing is one of the most grueling, physically demanding sports of all time. This book captures its birth and will be cherished by anyone who loves riding or racing bikes, sports history, or has ever been mesmerized by the fast-paced, adrenaline rush of velodrome track racing. Liz Reap Carlson, Bicycling Magazine --Bicycling Magazine, January 2009