New World’s Record in Bike Contest.
A new world’s record was set in the recent six-day bicycle race at Madison Square Garden, New York. Alfred Goullet, of Australia, and Alfred Grenda, of Tasmania, who won the race, covered a distance of 2,758 miles and 1 lap. The previous record was 2,751 miles.
Close behind the “Kangaroo team,” as Goullet and Grenda are known, were Iver Lawson and Peter Drobach, the Swedish-Polish team. Jimmy Moran, of Boston, and Reggie McNamara, of Australia, were third. Moran had declared it would be his last race. The veteran made a desperate effort to win, but evidently his age told against him. Francesco Verri, of Italy, and Oscar Egg, of Switzerland, known as the Italian team, and Fred Hill, of Brooklyn, whose title was the American team, tied for fourth place, while George Cameron and Harry Kaiser, of New York, the Bronx team, finished last among the leading six.
One might imagine a six-day race as a terrible, and even cruel, test, of human endurance, but the riders do not complain. Though they obtained very little sleep, they are not racked with the sufferings of exhaustion, as supposed. They eat continually, often over forty times a day, and it is not unusual for them to leave the track at the end of their long ride weighing more than when they began. They become more tired mentally than physically, and strangely, they insist that it is their arms, and not their legs, that become fatigued.[Pg 68][Pg 67]