Robert Walthour

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Bobby Walthour (~ 1903)
Walthour with the pacemaker Franz Hofmann (1905)

Robert "Bobby" Howe Walthour , also Bobby Walthour, Sr. , (born January 1, 1878 in Walthourville , † September 1, 1949 in Boston ) was an American cyclist .

Cycling career

Bobby Walthour started cycling in the early 1890s. He then got a job as a bicycle courier in Atlanta , and he also drove as an amateur road race in and around Atlanta. He quickly developed into a very good sprinter and turned professional. With the emergence of motorcycles and their use as pacemaker machines on cycle tracks , he turned to stayer sport in 1901 .

Walthour won the Stayer World Championship twice , in 1904 in London and in 1905 in Antwerp , twice in the US American Stayer Championship and twice in a six-day race in New York's Madison Square Garden (1901 and 1903).

In 1904 Walthour traveled to Europe for the first time to race there. In the first year he won eleven of twelve races and earned the nickname "The unbeatable Walthour". In the following years Walthour spent almost all of the summer in Europe, mostly living and training with his family in Dresden . One of his four children died there of typhus. His marriage later broke up because his wife could not get over this loss and suffered from fears about the dangers of standing sport. She became mentally ill and repeatedly attacked her husband with a knife.

After Walthour had to witness in the following years how many of his best competitors were killed in accidents on the velodrome , he too had two life-threatening accidents with very serious injuries in 1907. After that, he could never find his way back to his old form. In 1911 he was still European champion in Breslau . For financial reasons, he was forced to race well into the 1920s. In 1939 he hit the headlines again when, at the age of 61, he cycled 800 miles from Atlanta to Miami because he said he wanted to visit "some old friends" there.

family

Walthour with his family, everyone - as specifically noted - on Allright -Rädern

Bobby Walthour was born in Walthourville, which is named after his family. His great-grandfather Andrew Walthour, whose father was still called Waldhauer and came from Salzburg , owned a large plantation there. Andrew Walthour's son later became the man with the most slaves in Liberty County .

By the time Bobby Walthour was born, the family was impoverished as a result of the American Civil War . Meanwhile, he founded a dynasty of racing cyclists. His son Robert Walthour, Jr. was just as successful a racing driver as his father, and his nephew Jimmy , grandson Bobby III and great-grandson Bobby IV were cyclists. His twin brother Jimmy Walthour Sr. appeared with his wife as an art cyclist in variety shows. He is reported to have advertised Gage during his brother Bobby's most popular times and pretended to be Bobby due to the great similarity of the twins, which angered his brother very much.

Honors

In 1964 Bobby Walthour was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame and in 1989 into the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame (USBHOF). His son Bobby and his nephew Jimmy are also members of the USBHOF.

literature

  • Andrew M. Homan: Life in the Slipstream. The Legend of Bobby Walthour Sr. Potomac Books, Washington DC 2011, ISBN 978-1-59797-685-5 .
  • 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 : Robert Walthour  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Homan, p. 213
  2. ↑ Atlanta Journal , May 27, 1904
  3. ↑ Until the " European Cycling Union " (UEC) was founded in 1995, European championships for professional riders were usually invitation races in which non-European riders could also take part.
  4. ↑ Homan, p. 215
  5. ↑ cityofwalthourville.com ( Memento from January 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ This information is based on the book by Homan. There are z. T. other information on the Internet.
  7. ↑ Homan, p. 89
  8. ↑ Bobby Walthour on gshf.org (PDF; 147 kB)
  9. ↑ Bobby Walthour on usbhof.org
personal data
SURNAME Walthour, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Walthour, Robert Howe (full name); Walthour, Bobby Howe (nickname); Walthour, Bobby senior
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American cyclist
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Walthourville
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 1949
Place of death Boston