Page:The fastest bicycle rider in the world - 1928 - Taylor.djvu/41

 me to dismount. However, they urged me to continue riding just a few more laps until the doctor arrived. Later I found this was only a ruse to keep me going. I rode for three miles and four laps more, and then stepped off my wheel and went to my dressing room to eat, bathe and sleep. My nap was of short duration as I was rushed out on to the track after fifteen minutes, my trainers explaining that I had slept fifteen minutes over my schedule. On the way to the track one of my trainers gave me a glass of water into which he had dumped a powder which he claimed cost $65.00 an ounce, and which would allow me to ride without any sleep until the race was over. This was only the third day of the race. Later I found out also that this powder was nothing more than bicarbonate of soda, but it kept me going for the next eighteen hours without a wink of sleep.

Somehow or other I stuck in the race and finished in eighth place with 1,787 miles to my credit. The race was won by Teddy Hale, an Englishman.

My trainers and many of the star bicycle racers declared that this long distance race would kill my fine sprint. I returned to Worcester immediately after the race and spent the winter in the Y. M. C. A. preparing myself for the next season, determined to show the experts that the six-day grind had not put an end to my sprinting ability.

The following spring I competed in the League of American Wheelmen's opening race meet at the Charles River track, Boston, against some of the leading professional riders of the country. Among them were Tom, Nat and Frank Butler, who were widely known in racing circles as the famous Butler brothers. I won the feature event, the one-mile open race and proved to myself, at least, that the six-day grind had not killed off my sprinting ability, defeating the Butlers, Watson Coleman, Eddie McDuffee and others.

My next success was at the Providence, R. I., meet which was also staged by the League of American Wheelmen, and I ran away with the one-mile open, the feature race of that program, again defeating the famous Butler brothers and a field of the greatest professional riders. Flushed with that victory I competed in the half-mile open and was beaten for first prize by Orlando Stevens.

In those days the three Butler boys were looked upon in the bicycle world as practically invincible. When word reached the western riding circles in the spring that I had taken their measure at the Charles River Meet there was much nodding of heads. Included among the starters at the Providence Meet were Floyd MacFarland, Orlando Stevens and other star western riders. Here again I demon strated my superiority over the Butler brothers, Stevens and MacFarland, and even the experts thereupon agreed that my experi-