Iver Lawson

Iver Lawson (1902)

Iver Lawson (born July 1, 1879 in Norrköping , † 1937 in Provo , Utah ) was an American cyclist .

Iver Lawson was born Yvar Larsson in Sweden . In 1895 he emigrated to the USA with his two brothers. They settled in Chicago , where they joined the Swedish-American Cycling Club. Lawson also changed his name there.

Lawson began cycling in Sweden, and like his two brothers he was a member of the Norrköping Bicycle Club. His discipline was the aviator race on the cycle track . In 1904 he won the world title in London . Later he also competed in six-day races . In July 1901 he and John Chapman set a tandem world record in Salt Lake City of 9 minutes and 44 seconds over five miles, which lasted for 50 years.

Lawson was a bitter opponent of the black racing driver Major Taylor , against whom he and his racing colleague Floyd MacFarland were not only unsportsmanlike but also racist. Otherwise he was notorious for his unsportsmanlike conduct.

Iver Lawson's two brothers, John (1871–1916) and Gus, were also active on the velodrome, John as a driver, Gus as a pacemaker. On September 8, 1913, Gus Lawson suffered fatal injuries in a fall on the cycling track in Cologne-Riehl .

Iver Lawson is said to have worked as a dealer in a casino near Salt Lake City in the last few years of his life . He died in Provo, Utah in 1937 after falling out of a window. He had never got over the death of his brother Gus and was addicted to alcohol .

literature

• Wheel world . Sports album. A cycling yearbook. 7th year, 1909, ZDB ID 749618-7 .
• Hans Borowik : 300 racing drivers in one volume. Short biographies. Deutscher Schriftenverlag, Berlin 1937.
• Peter Nye: Hearts of Lions. The History of American Bicycle Racing. Norton, New York NY et al. 1988, ISBN 0-393-02543-8 .

Web links

Commons : Iver Lawson  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Peter Joffre Nye: The Six-Days Bicycle Races . Van der Plas Publications / Cycle Publishing, San Francisco 2006, ISBN 1-892495-49-X , p. 65 (English).
2. ^ Peter Joffre Nye: The Six-Day Bicycle Races . America's Jazz Age Sport. San Francisco 2006, pp. 44f.