Page:The fastest bicycle rider in the world - 1928 - Taylor.djvu/134

 1895 at which time he weighed 118 pounds. At present he weighs 160 pounds.

“In racing Taylor rides very low, his back arched over his handlebars which offers but little chance for the wind to impede his progress. Major Taylor’s father, Gilbert Taylor, a veteran of the Civil War, having served with the Union Army, is still living in Indianapolis. Taylor finds the racing and record-breaking business profitable, and has cleared several thousand dollars out of 1it.

“Despite the pleas of the race track managers and the bicycle riders Major Taylor has refused for years to compete on Sunday, as he has felt that all should rest on the Lord’s Day. He has held strictly to that theory and in 1898 his decision to refrain from riding on Sunday almost cost him the American championship title.

“Major Taylor has never ridden on Sunday and says he does not intend to. When the International Cyclists’ Association was formed in September 1898, Major Taylor went with the other riders in order to finish out the championship series in which he had been competing with the other fast men. Taylor claimed the N. C. A. promised not to hold any races on Sunday if he went with them, but this agreement was not kept, and later the colored boy sought reinstatement in the League of American Wheelmen. The colored champion does not say in so many words that the N. C. A. took this action in order to force him out of taking a big slice of the honors, but that he believes as much cannot be doubted.”

The Official Bicycle Record Book gives the following chronological order of my achievements in the year of 1899: