Louise Armaindo

Louise Armaindo (1883)

Armaindo's manager Tom Eck. Presumably he was her husband too

Louise Armaindo , actually Louise Brisbois or Louise Brisebois , (born October 12, 1857 in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue , † September 2, 1900 in Montreal ) was a Canadian circus artist and pioneer of cycling. She is considered to be one of the first professional athletes in Canada.

biography

Louise Brisbois (other spelling Brisebois ) came from a circus family and, like her parents, worked as an artist. Their ancestors can probably be traced back to the 17th century when they immigrated from France to New France . The later famous photographer Alfred Brisbois was a distant cousin. Her mother tongue was French and she spoke English with an accent. Although she is said to have been petite (55 kilograms at 1.58 meters tall ), it is said that she appeared as a power woman when she was 18 and lifted around 340 kilograms. She is said to have owned a harness with which she could lift four men with her teeth at the same time.

In the mid-1870s, Brisbois gave up her circus performances, went to Chicago, and took the surname Armaindo . She began a professional career as a walker ( pedestrienne ), a popular sport at the time that was bet on. The walking competitions went over various distances up to the marathon distance . She met her compatriot Tom Eck, who himself practiced several sports as a professional. He is said to have been the first man to bike 100 miles in less than six hours. Eck, who also managed runner Tom Longboat , took Armaindo under his wing as trainer and manager; presumably the two were married. Together, the couple traveled from one competition to another.

At the beginning of the 1880s, the walking competitions lost their appeal among the audience. High bikes , on the other hand, became fashionable, and Louise Armando switched to cycling . From 1881 to 1889 she was active as a professional cyclist: She mainly competed in races against men, in which she often won, and tried to set long-term records. In a race in 1882, she covered more than 600 miles in 72 hours (12 hours on six consecutive days), which was considered the new American long-distance record. She also urged other women to fight her.

Her greatest competitor in the audience's favor was Elsa von Blumen . The two women were very different: While von Blumen, who came from a middle-class family, was considered modest and serious, Armaindo, the daughter of circus people, was made of rougher material: when an organizer once refused to pay her, she threatened him with a gun. For von Blumen, the bicycle was also a contribution to women's liberation, while Armaindo was mainly interested in making good money.

For more than a year, Elsa von Blumen declined Armaindo's invitations to compare forces. It was not until July 1882 that von Blumen did a duel in Philadelphia : On six days, the two athletes each drove five runs over two miles, for a total of 30 races, of which Armaindo won 21. A week later, the two women competed as a team against cyclist WJ Morgan for a six-day match on Coney Island . Morgan drove six hours a day without a break, the two women taking turns every two hours. As it was raining, von Blumen and Armaindo fell several times, and Armaindo in particular was injured. Morgan won the race by a mile. Then the two women drove against each other in a race in which Armaindo beat their opponent by eleven miles. Von Blumen did not race against Louise Armaindo for seven years.

In 1883, Louise Armaindo earned $ 4,000 from racing, a large sum for the time. While she was getting stronger as a cyclist, Tom Eck became increasingly violent towards her. He once beat her in such a way that a doctor had to be called. In 1883 she separated from him. In 1888 she married the 23-year-old Norman Stewart; she herself was 25 years old. Subsequently, her performance deteriorated dramatically: Since her husband was financially dependent on her, the married couple soon broke out into violent arguments. Once, when she was exhausted in bed trying to "treat" herself with cocaine and strychnine , her husband tried to force her to get up to race and make money. Then she threw him down the stairs and parted with him.

The League of American Wheelmen (known as "anti-gambling, anti-professional, apparently misogynist" - "against gambling, against professional sports, and obviously misogynist") protested against Louise Armaindo and her successes in professional sports. In their magazine Bicycle it was said: “The sooner the female bicycle rider is hooted off the race track, the better for our sport.” (“The sooner the female cyclist is booed by the track, the better.”) The organizers, however recognized the growing popularity of women's cycling races and organized a six-day race for women at Madison Square Garden in February . The race was marked by falls, breakdowns and fights among the supervisors. Armaindo had to be carried unconscious from the track on the first day, Elsa von Blumen stopped the race in disgust due to the circumstances. Seven of the participating cyclists, including Armaindo, then toured the western United States as The Beauty on Wheels .

Louise Armaindo then traveled to Europe to take part in races and to appear at exhibitions. However, her plan to take part in Buffalo Bill's show at the Paris World's Fair failed. She could not make friends with the newly emerged safety low wheel ("Safety"). Their last known race took place in Chicago in 1893. She finished third after completing 416 miles in 48 hours. In Chicago she lived in a hotel where a fire broke out (around 1896). Louise Armando had boarded the window of her room to prevent uninvited visitors down the fire escape. Only at the last minute could she jump out of the window. She suffered numerous fractures and was hospitalized for five months. She died on September 2, 1900 in Montreal at the age of (presumably) 42 years and was buried in the local Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery.

literature

• M. Ann Hall: Muscle on Wheels: Louise Armaindo and the High-Wheel Racers of Nineteenth-Century America . McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0-7735-5465-8 (English).

Web links

Commons : Louise Armaindo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} David Giddens: Louise Armaindo: Canadian professional sports pioneer. In: cbc.ca. August 7, 2019, accessed February 2, 2020 . 
2. ^ ^{A b c} M. Ann Hall: Muscle on Wheels. ISBN 978-0-773-55532-7 ( limited preview in Google Book Search)
3. ↑ Hall researched Armaindo's life data on the basis of various pieces of evidence, but writes that she often lied about her actual age.
4. ↑ Louise Armaindo. In: lepetitbraquet.fr. Retrieved February 3, 2020 (French).