Six Days

The coats of watchers at a six-day race show spots from the drop that runs down a bottle of pop when you drink out of it. Their heads keep turning from side to side as if they were rapidly reading the page of a book a block wide. All week in Madison Square Garden drops fell onto coats and faces turned from side to side, from side to side, all morning, all afternoon, all night, for six days. And round the pale pine dish the riders pedaled, jammed, sprinted, drank beef juice out of paper cups, pasted their burned legs with plaster, until a gun was fired off three times and Franco Georgetti and Gerard Debaets posed for flashlights holding the big bouquets that go to the winners. They had won by a single lap after 2,162 miles of pedaling.

Belloni and Beckman were second. Already, the evening before, Belloni had pedaled round the ring with a bundle of flowers sent to him by an admirer. A handsome Italian with two locks of curly hair sticking out over his forehead like horns, Belloni until the final sprint had threatened to beat Georgetti. So had Letourner and Brocardo, two small, nervy French boys. On the fifth night Brocardo fell four times, skidded down the wall of the saucer, strapped to his pedals. The third time he was knocked unconscious. In fifteen minutes he got up and rode again. McNamara, "Iron Man," was booed all through the race. Brocco, 43-year old champion trying to come back, pedaled till his rheumatic legs stiffened like hooks, forcing him out. A visiting band announced that as a tribute to Veteran Frederick Spencer they would play "When You and I Were Young Maggie." Furious, Spencer gained a lap. In the gallery Spectator James Miglio was mauled by a special detective, led off to court in his undershirt and trousers. The band played "Among My Souvenirs." As is usual in six-day races the records of all previous six-day races in lap-stealing, attendance, and the eating of hot dogs (called by bicycle riders "Coney Island chicken") were broken.