Six Days

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do; I'm half crazy, all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, We can't afford a carriage, But you'd look sweet upon the seat Of a bicycle built for two. . . .

So they sang in the days when a ride on a bicycle was a thrilling and fashionable experience. Bicycles are still ridden. Last week an enormous crowd in Madison Square Garden gathered to see the most famous pedalers of this decade start on a race that was to last six days.

Their bicycles were not built for two. Taut skeletons of aluminum and steel, so light that they can be lifted on a stiff forefinger, so strong that they can endure terrific smashes, their racing bicycles reveal what a strenuous age has done to an engine once fitted for leisured lovemaking and connubial perambulation. The wiry men who rode them did not all look sweet upon the seats; their faces, as they swept around the track for the first lap, presented a jumbled cinema of anxiety, hope, fear, ferocity and desperate determination. Two to a team, they relieved one another periodically. There was Reggie McNamara, staunch veteran of uncountable races, pedaling warily, knowing that the road was a long one. Experienced Eddie Madden and Bobby Walthour, too. let the young up-and-comers snatch the first kudos. There were Dutchmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Poles, Irishmen and Jews, with names like Lacquehay, Georgetti, Goosens, Stockelynch, Keller, Kockler, Golle, Meithe, Bello, Wambst.

Round and round they went; McNamara took the lead, held it for hours. Then, out of a jam of swirling pedals, Coburn and Petri flashed, lapped the field, replaced McNamara. The semihysterical incidents that accompany all endurance contests began to crop up. Three riders were arrested, charged with being "public nuisances." They hurried to court, while their partners kept their places in the flying scrum. A magistrate quite properly dismissed the case.

Admirers in the galleries showered their favorite racers with bunches of roses, lillies, Cattleya orchids. Less gallant spectators munched hot frankfurters or stretched themselves at length and snored sottishly till wakened by the shouts that meant a sprint, a jam or a tumble. Georgetti, the Italian, blew out a tire, catapulted to the track. "He is dead," an individual in a plaid suit asserted solemnly. Georgetti was already riding on. Four riders went down on a corner. One did not get up. It was Bobby Walthour. He had broken his collarbone.

Round and round and round. The hours merged into nights, the nights into days, until all nights and days were one, an endless circle coiling round and round, until past, present, future, became only a) chain-driven wheel rotating under the arena roof. Who could tell tomorrow from yesterday? Not the pedaling juggernauts. For all they knew, Time had reversed its gears and left them to pump on and on into the past. Douglas Fairbanks offered $200 for a sprint; Mary Pickford's starry gaze followed a little wearily the incessant circlers. A bronzed well-dressed little man kept jumping up and down in his seat. It was Theodore Roosevelt, back from hunting the Ovis poll. He studied his program and laughed at some of the names. Were Grimm and Winter freezing the others out? What about the good team of Egg and Eaton? Yes, they were badly scrambled, he was told. He smirked briefly and recomposed his face. His father, he reminded himself hastily, would never have laughed at a pun like that.

Now McNamara was out in front again. It was the 125th hour and the end was just around a few thousand more corners.

He rode on. Not lightly had he won his name-the Iron Man. His legs, his nerves, were as ferrous as the machine under him. If he was to win he must sprint, and he must time his sprint perfectly. He was out in front now, pedaling like a maniac. Georgetti relieved him. Egg was at Georgetti's shoulder. McNamara relieved Georgetti. A pistol cracked-McNamara had won his third successive six-day race (2,109 miles). And the Beckman-Stockholm team was second. Wambst-Lacquehay, Walker-MoBeath, Grimm-Winter-third, fourth and fifth-tumbled into their pits, having done their furious best for 146 hours to win some of the prize money so that some day perhaps they would be able to afford-a carriage.