The Fast Times of Albert Champion

by Peter Joffre Nye

  The NCU so ardently disapproved of cash prizes that it accused John Boyd Dunlop of supplying his company’s pneumatics to pros.11 The NCU barred the white-haired, fifty-five-year-old veterinarian from amateur racing and extended the injunction against the entire board of gray-beard trustees.12 Dunlop walked with a shuffle and had never sat on a bicycle. But the gentle man became enraged. He prevailed on son Johnny to teach him how to ride in defiance of the NCU bullies.13 The elder Dunlop suggested that he just might one day show up on the start line against athletes in their prime if he felt the urge to take a break from his veterinary practice.

  Warburton faced the menace of a one-year NCU ban from every track in Great Britain, thereby depriving him of his livelihood in England, Wales, and Scotland. But the ban had no effect across the channel. He met with Champion in Paris and organized a cadre of pacers to lead him on Clément Gladiator triplets and quads. He took Champion and pacers to his tailor to outfit them as successful sportsmen. In late February they decamped together to Germany for a campaign on the winter indoor vélodrome circuit.14 Champion raced as Warburton had trained him, to blast from the starter’s pistol, claim the inside lane behind his pacer, and lay down the law. In Berlin, Dresden, Hanover, Leipzig, Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and other cities he won enough prize money for the team to travel first class by train and stay in fine hotels. Opponents included Fritz Opel, who would later join his brothers in a business making autos.

  Champion and Warburton returned to Paris for a March 28 match of one hundred kilometers in the Vel d’Hiver, pitting Champion against Constant Huret,15 a former baker turned cycling star. Huret wore a flattop haircut way ahead of its time. He was Champion’s height and packed twenty pounds more muscle. Artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec immortalized him, crouching with his back low behind a tandem, in a poster advertising La Chaîne Simpson, plastered all over the city. In the Champion-Huret match, both paced behind motor-tricycles, all the rage among the Paris elite. The match meant that Champion was a recognized pro. The contest was hyped as a clash between the young challenger and the established star, eight years more mature. Ten thousand devotees filled the Vel d’Hiver. Champion was impatient to show off.

  Artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec captured Constant Huret in action. Huret arrived to have dinner with Champion on October 26, 1927, only to learn his friend had died an hour before. Image courtesy of Poster Photo Archives, Posters Please, Inc., New York.

  The contest started out fast, with Huret and his driver setting an aggressive pace, topping 35 mph. Champion kept close behind, biding his time, waiting to see what the big guy had in store. The cheering crowd rocked the building. After seven miles, however, the engine conked out on Huret’s pacer.16 Huret swung around the stalled machine while his driver dismounted on the apron inside the track to make repairs. Champion caught Huret and, as one account he pasted in his scrapbook put it, “passed him like an arrow.”

  Champion shot into the lead. While Huret soloed as best he could, Champion took advantage of tucking behind his motor-tricycle to lap him several times. Thousands in the grandstands and gallery seats grew angry over Champion’s unfair gain. They jeered, whistled, and threw balled-up programs at him. He was so mad he shook his fist at the tiers of spectators. They yelled even louder at him and turned hostile.

  “The public found Champion guilty of a breach of etiquette so he was booed,” wrote journalist Victor Breyer of Le Vélo.17 “The crowd wasn’t with Champion. Then young Champion stopped finally when he saw their reaction, and he didn’t get back on his bicycle until he saw Huret got going again.”

  Victor Breyer, one of France’s leading sportswriters, had watched Albert Champion’s meteoric ascent and described him as a gifted athlete but impulsive. Photo courtesy of Alain Pernot.

  Champion, a sophomoric eighteen-year-old, could not conceal his resentment at having to stop, even for Huret. He turned an angry face at the tiers of humanity and glared. To his astonishment, the people who had cheered him continued to rebuke him. They had paid to watch, and they expected either heroics or gallantry. Huret did his best to limit the damage. He kept going like a bulldog. Ticket holders had expected Champion to assess the state of affairs and make a beau geste toward his unlucky adversary. Instead, he trounced Huret like a ruffian.

  “Never in my life have I raced in front of such an unfair and cruel crowd of spectators,” Champion declared.18 “Undeserved whistling cuts into your legs more than a series of sputtering engine kicks. What’s so bad about the sharp little stones they throw at you is that they hit your thighs. Then they toss programs weighted with coins that slash across your face. The crowd wanted me to wait up for my opponent. But could I reasonably be expected to imitate his every movement, dismount the same as he, slow down when he slows down, drink when he drinks? No, that would be even worse! And what would racing become? If a match must be stopped by the occurrence of an accident that puts one of the competitors in any kind of inferior position, then let’s not have any matches at all. It’s quite simple. Racers themselves, made victims like I was on Sunday and subjected to verbal abuses from a delirious crowd, will be the first to agree.”

  Victor Breyer had observed Champion over the past year and caught signs of pride, brusqueness, and a streak of childishness.19 The youngster’s outburst before the audience demonstrated hot-headedness. Breyer, born in London to an English mother and French father, had grown up in Paris and lived in Champion’s arrondissement of Batignolles.20 A small man of twenty-nine with narrow shoulders, he had tried racing high-wheelers. Competing as a club mate of Marius Renault from the French automobile family, Breyer lacked the fortitude and turned to journalism to cover the “cracks,” an English term for those with superior talents. He maintained an open curiosity about the personalities, training methods, and strategies of those he deemed as cracks, seeking insights into what made them excel. Athletes felt relaxed talking to the courteous journalist with a mustache, cravat, and bowler. He wrote with ironic distance about Champion’s match with Huret, describing him in the affectionate patois as a young Parigot. Breyer had heard reports around Batignolles about his pressing money, unsolicited, into the hands of neighbors so they could buy food and firewood to get them through the winter.21 This Parigot supported three younger brothers and provided enough that his widowed mother retired from working as a washerwoman. Breyer assessed him as a gifted cyclist, well intended, but with a complex personality. Cycling was a pastime for Breyer and multitudes of others, but Champion treated it as a profession—he was the family breadwinner.

  The Champion-Huret rematch was inevitable.22 Both men had full racing calendars and could not meet until May 30 in Roubaix, on the outdoor cement vélodrome that Champion knew so well. The highly anticipated match filled the stands. This time, Champion’s pacing machine engine faltered and quit on the twelfth lap. He kept pedaling as Huret kept lapping him. Champion expected his driver would fix the engine, but the driver gave up. They did not have a spare machine. Champion withdrew. This time it was he who pleaded for a rematch.

  On June 7 the second rematch took place, a fifty-miler in Paris at the Buffalo Vélodrome. Huret had been logging long, hard miles prepping to defend his Bol d’Or, the coveted Golden Bowl, a twenty-four-hour competition in three weeks at the same venue. Huret’s workouts required extraordinary stamina for the round-the-clock contest, at the expense of dulling his high-end speed. In their rematch, Champion tore away from the start and opened a big lead. Huret felt Champion was too full of hubris and pulled out before the second lap.23 If Champion had restrained himself to make the competition look even, Huret would have kept going. Champion had tried too hard, desperate to prove himself. He had to learn about giving spectators a show for their money.

  On the weekend of June 26 and 27, Huret won his third twenty-four-hour Bol d’Or,24 pedaling 518 miles behind pacers, yet another world record. The press called Huret King of the Long Distance. He left Champion feeling perplexed. The surest way to gain an opponent’s respect is
to beat him. But the sport, like life, had more dimensions. Huret taught him about character, self-confidence, and a professional’s obligation to his audience.

  In 1897, Englishman H. O. Duncan published a book in Paris offering his perspective on the sport: Twenty Years of Practical Cycling.25 Duncan, a pioneer pro in the high-wheel era, remained a close observer of the game. His book’s twenty years stretched back to 1876, the dawn of high-wheel racing on both sides of the channel. In a section dedicated to cycling as a lifestyle, he recommended an extensive list of French wines, champagne, German and English beers, and Caribbean rum for their health benefits when taken in moderation. He saw Champion as full of promise and explained his training regimen under Warburton. Duncan published the Bauenne publicity photo of Champion on his bicycle and line art of him and Warburton running in the Bois de Boulogne. He identified Warburton as an early proponent of cross-training, and Champion as destined to mature into one of France’s greats.

  “Choppy” Warburton, left, manager-trainer of Champion, right, was an early advocate of cross-training for cyclists. They ran together in Paris’s popular Bois de Boulogne. From H. O. Duncan’s Vingt Ans de Cyclisme Pratique (Paris, 1896).

  Champion needed constant reassurance. When Warburton became distracted with other matters and his family, Champion sulked that his trainer ignored him.26 Champion threatened to leave. However, Warburton knew how to soothe him. They kept together through the season. October brought the season to an end—and a break from racing. They parted company and planned to continue together for the next season. Then the fates intervened.

  Champion spent time at home with his mother and Prosper, Henri, and Louis. He came out of the spring and summer more fit, his competitive skills honed, and with a new appreciation of the show-biz aspect of his métier. He and War-burton managed expenses against race winnings and appearance fees. Champion had picked up some English and a smattering of German.

  His luggage was festooned with colorful travel stickers advertising railroad companies and hotels. Porters and bellhops had slapped them on as souvenirs beckoning his return. Champion could point to each artistic oval, square, and rectangle label to regale Marie and his brothers with stories about the travel, accommodations, and meals he had experienced on trains and in hotels and restaurants.

  Warburton returned to his house in London’s Wood Green. Every day when he rose and buttoned his tattersall vest and reached for his bowler to go outside, he could anticipate being persecuted by whispers and rumors of drug accusations. He was fifty-three and anxious that the National Cycling Union might ban him for another year. While shaving on the morning of December 17, he collapsed to the floor, still clutching a hand towel.27 Warburton had suffered a fatal heart attack.

  National Cycling Union officials went to Wood Green Town Hall and demanded an inquest. The findings of the coroner who performed the autopsy noted that Warburton’s heart had been double the normal size.28 The jury returned a verdict of death from natural causes.

  Publications across Europe churned out recollections of Warburton’s practical jokes and knack for spotting potential in Michael, Lisette, and Champion. Champion and Clément sent wreaths for Warburton’s funeral in Wood Green and donated money for a headstone.29 Its engraving testifies: Tombstone erected to his memory by sorrowing English, Scotch, and French friends.30 For the rest of his life, Champion described his manager as crucial to taking him out of Paris and expanding his outlook.

  A pro at pursuing motor-tricycles, Champion focused his attention on another pursuit. He wanted Elise Delpuech as his sweetheart. She had graduated from high school—well educated in his perspective. Her wine-merchant parents had given her and a younger sister and brother more comfort than Champion and his brothers had known. Elise knew about his rise from unicycle performer to courier and racer. Nobody in her family had been cited in journals or in a book like Champion had. She watched him flashing around on his Clément Gladiator, all energy and ambition. She liked his handsome face and gray eyes. Elise couldn’t miss seeing his rough edges, the fiery temper. But he made up for those faults in the way he supported his brothers and liberated his mother, so petite yet strong, from having to wash clothes for a living. Now Marie Champion stayed at home to care for her other sons.

  He fell under the spell of Elise’s intelligence and her brown eyes that scrutinized his. A daughter of shopkeepers,31 she could glance at a pile of coins of different denominations on the counter and announce in a heartbeat exactly how much they totaled. She could transform from demure ingénue into flirting minx. She wore her dark hair long down her back, sometimes in a chignon, and she had a penchant for white blouses with high lacey collars. Chic scarves and artistic earrings displayed her refined taste. For time together away from the stares of relatives and neighbors, Champion and Elise escaped to the city’s center. At sidewalk cafés, they indulged in coffee and pastries.

  In April 1898 he turned twenty. Elise, already twenty-one and thus an adult capable of making her own decisions, pledged herself to him. Champion promised himself to her but put his career first. Winning meant not just crossing the line ahead of his rivals and earning more francs but also thrusting himself into the center of attention with the public and the press. To be the focal point of others stroked his ego.

  Now, assured he had won Elise, he turned his attention to the intoxicating addiction of winning races.

  In May 1898 a new outdoor track, the Parc des Princes, named in honor of the Bourbon royals, opened near the Bois de Boulogne. Built to accommodate paced racing, Parc des Princes was more than twice the size of the recently closed Buffalo Vélodrome. With long straights and wide turns, it measured 666 meters around.32 Its grandstand and bleachers seated thirty thousand—one of the largest sports arenas in Europe. There Champion upset France’s two-time paced titleholder Emile Bouhours, descended from Normans who had defeated the English at the Battle of Hastings. Race programs with Champion, Huret, and Bouhours ensured that the stands at the Parc des Princes—as well as Clément’s Vélodrome de la Seine—were filled with fashionable society and the press. Their cheering for Champion nurtured his lust for la gloire!

  Despite their struggles against one another, Champion and Huret developed a friendship, which endured right up to Champion’s final hour. Huret considered him a younger brother in need of assurance, fast on the track but slow to acquire humility. Huret recommended his own trainer-manager, Dudley Marks, an Englishman who knew his way around the world. Champion looked up to Marks. In November 1896, Marks had shepherded the Irish endurance rider Teddy Hale across the Atlantic for the international individual go-as-you-please six-day endurance grind in New York City’s Madison Square Garden.33 Marks kept Hale fed and motivated to pedal 1,910 miles around the indoor board track to victory.34 Hale filled his hat with $2,000 in gold coins, worth four years of wages. Such a payday indicated to Champion that racers could make a decent living in America.

  Champion asked Marks to deal with promoters offering him contracts. They typically paid travel expenses plus an appearance fee as sweetener in addition to a chance at the prize money. The press puffed up the matches, wrote profiles, dished gossip. Spectators turned out in droves. Champion—with Marks as manager, publicist, and motor-tricycle pacer—boarded northbound trains to Amiens,35 which was notable for its historic three-tier gothic cathedral. They went southwest to competitions in Agen,36 where plums grew on trees the crusaders had brought from the Middle East. Champion and Marks commuted to Berlin for races against Huret and German stars. Without fail, Champion shared the prize money he earned with his family. As usual, he clipped journal accounts of his exploits for his flourishing scrapbook.

  His home vélodrome became Parc des Princes. He paired with Bouhours, who had moved to Paris from a farm village in Normandy, against Welshman Tom Linton and an Englishman named Armstrong. They competed in team matches billed as France versus the United Kingdom. The matches were reported in Desgrange’s sports newspaper L’Auto-Vélo and throughout
the continent and America. At the Parc des Princes in a Sunday program on September 22, 1898, Champion scored a career highlight. Barreling behind a tandem, he tore across the start line at full speed and flew around the oval to set a paced world record for the flying kilometer,37 two-thirds of a mile. He covered the showcase distance in fifty-six seconds flat—a leg-burning 60 kph or 37 mph. Thousands of spectators filled the air with unrestrained vocal adulation as Champion claimed the honor of the world’s fastest man in the kilometer.

  The Paris press corps was hyping the premier season opener for 1899—a road race for pros on Easter Sunday, starting near the Bois de Boulogne and finishing on the Roubaix Vélodrome, a distance of 167 miles. Paris-Roubaix offered a hefty purse, put up by two wool mill owners, and extensive coverage from the sponsoring newspaper Le Vélo,38 published by Pierre Giffard.

  Today Paris-Roubaix, a World Cup race, stands out as the most important one-day event on the international pro cycling calendar. It is widely regarded as Queen of the Classics—cycling’s crown jewel among venerable events, ranking in stature alongside the Boston Marathon in running or Wimbledon in tennis, with a roll of winners celebrated as legends. Paris-Roubaix still includes the same rutted dirt thoroughfares, ancient paths cutting through farm fields that disintegrate to muck in the rain, and some three dozen stretches of cobblestones the size of large bread loaves—northern France’s notorious pavé, now protected as part of France’s heritage and open to car traffic only on race day.

  Champion had trained often on roads, but he had not raced on them since he turned pro. For the 1899 event, organizers were so enthralled by engines that they encouraged cyclists to pace behind their choice of motor-tandems, motor-tricycles, or automobiles.39 The 167 miles was more than twice the distance of any of his other races. In addition to a motorized pacer, another incentive was 1,000 francs to the winner.40 Foremost in his mind was finishing on the Roubaix Vélodrome. He respected road racers for their stamina and perseverance, but he felt smug about having superior speed. Road racers earned his respect as rugged, but, like workhorses, they were pluggers. The unforeseen opportunity to motorpace Paris-Roubaix intrigued him. With this in mind, he was willing to go the extraordinary distance, give up the smooth, level track surfaces to which he was accustomed, and brave the rough roads and daunting pavé so he could win on the Roubaix Vélodrome.