Victor Hopkins

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Victor Hopkins Road cycling
To person
Full name Victor Morice Hopkins
Nickname Flicker
Date of birth July 19, 1904
date of death December 8, 1969
nation United StatesUnited States United States
discipline Road cycling , track cycling
Societies)
Davenport Cycling Club
Most important successes
US track championships
1926: gold- Standing race

Victor Morice Hopkins (born July 19, 1904 in Cedar Rapids , † December 8, 1969 in Nutley ) was an American cyclist .

Athletic career

In 1921, at the age of 17, Victor Hopkins set a new national record over five miles. In 1924 he took part in the Olympic Games in Paris , for which he had qualified in several races in Paterson . He could only travel there with the financial support of patrons. In the road race , he came in 58th after he had a promising third place and had demolished his bike in a fall. In the team standings, he finished twelfth with Gustav Henschel, Ignatius Gronkowski and John Boulicault.

After the Olympics, Hopkins was signed by cycling manager John Chapman and in the following years he mainly competed in six-day and standing races , of which he won around 70. In 1926 he became an American standing master. He got his nickname Flicker because he used to say: "Let her flicker" because of the sparks from the exhaust of the pacemaker machine. He was unable to defend his title in 1927 because of a four-fold broken collarbone from a fall. In 1929 he wanted to end his cycling career, but lost during the Great Depression in 1929 his savings and was forced to go on. In 1934 he retired from active cycling after having raced in Germany, France, Belgium and Switzerland for several years.

Private

In the Iowa Soldiers 'Orphans' Home.jpg in Davenport Hopkins grew up.

Hopkins was the child of a single circus performer who put him up for adoption at the age of one . His adoptive parents died before he was nine years old, and he was raised in an orphanage in Davenport called the Iowa Soldiers 'Orphans' Home (now The Annie Wittenmyer Home ). He later worked as a newspaper delivery man and used a bicycle for his work. The professional racer and frame builder Worth Mitten, who founded the Davenport Cycling Club , discovered him for cycling. Hopkins later rode wheels from the middle in races.

In the early 1930s, Victor Hopkins made friends with the German cyclist Mathias Engel . When he later wanted to leave Germany because of his Jewish wife, Hopkins helped him organize the departure. Engel settled in Nutley, where Hopkins now lived and worked as a correctional officer in the prison.

Honors

Victor Hopkins was inducted into the Iowa Bicycle Racing Association Hall of Fame in 2005, the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame in 2006, and the Nutley Hall of Fame in 2009 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Victor Morice Hopkins. US Bicycling Hall of Fame, accessed February 6, 2014 .
  2. ^ A b c d Michael C. Gabriele: Golden Age of Bicycle Racing in New Jersey . The History Press, Charleston 2011, ISBN 978-1-59629-427-1 , pp. 79 f .
  3. ↑ a b c Eric Page: American Flyer. Quad-City Times, October 1, 2006, accessed February 6, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Worth Mitten. Classic Cycle, accessed February 7, 2014 .
personal data
SURNAME Hopkins, Victor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hopkins, Victor Morice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American cyclist
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Cedar Rapids
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 1969
Place of death Nutley