Cycling 3: Decline, Rise & Fall
Cycling began to lose some of its allure in 1903. The Ford Motor Company was founded that year, signaling the start of the automotive age. The market for bicycles was pretty well saturated, and many of those who might otherwise have bought a bike were looking at cars instead. A number of bicycle manufacturers switched to automobiles as sales went down.
Interest in racing also declined, several tracks went out of business, and prize money dropped at most of those that kept operating. Many American cyclists headed for Europe, where interest was higher and prize money was better.
In 1908, John M. Chapman came to the rescue. With backing from the owner of the Newark Velodrome, he set up a franchised racing circuit in the Northeast and offered substantial prize money to persuade some top European and Australian racers to join it. That was something new, and fans flocked back.
Chapman teamed up with Tex Rickard in 1920 to revive six-day racing at Madison Square Garden, where it had died out, and the following year he took over the New York Velodrome, adding it to his circuit.
He also set up a circuit of six-day races featuring riders from Europe and Australia in major cities throughout the Northeast and Midwest. Because of Chapman, bicycle racers were the highest-paid athletes in the country. When the great American cyclist, Frank Kramer, retired in 1922, he had earned $500,000 in 22 years of racing, at a time when most top major league players made only about $10,000 a year.
Amateur racing was virtually crowded out by the popularity of the professionals and the increase of automobile traffic. The LAW dropped racing from its program entirely in 1920 and was replaced by the Amateur Bicycle League of America (ABLA), which held its first national championship road race in 1921 and added a women's championship in 1937. However, ABLA races were held on little-used roads in out-of-the-way areas, often in the early morning to avoid auto traffic, so they were invisible to the public and the press.
The Great Depression wiped out all the gains professional cycling had made under Chapman's leadership, and then some. Six-day racing lingered on at Madison Square Garden through 1939, when it was dropped because of severely declining attendance.