Board track racing book

[American-X]

May be this is of interest. Steve Slocombe presented the book: "Flirt with death" in the AMCA Magazine.The book covers board track racing in France, England, America and Germany. Board track racing started in France around 1900 and spread quickly around the world. The book is in German and has 280 photos. The goal was: If we don`t put it together today, the informations are lost!
Only a very limited number were made. Antique Motorcycle works in Oregon has a few copy`s for sale. See also the excelsior topic.
Only around 70 books are left!
http://www.American-X.org

[American-X]

Here are more pics from Motorcycles on the Track in Solingen,Germany
http://www.flickr.com/photos/seat850/set...298766869/
and track Darmstadt
http://www.vc-darmstadt.org/Historische-....html#c469

[cyclingday]

Wow!
Very cool!
Your contributions to this site are greatly appreciated.
The track riding looks like a lot of fun. I have only seen bicycle races in a Velodrome, and they are very exciting.
I have always thought that if more people were exposed to track racing, that they would become a very popular spectator sport.

[American-X]

Attached is a picture of a French velodrome (Build around 1900-1905), made from wood (333,33 m). Velodromes (also called Boardtrack, because they were made of wood), were mainly build for bicycle pacing with Motorcycles. The engines had single and twin -cylinders with a capacity of up to 270 cu.in. Due to the bad roads at this time, motorcycle racing on velodromes was a first class and clean Sport. It started started with Tricycles, like De Dijon and Cudell. Every town in Europe had a track! The big city`s like Paris had 5 Tracks, Berlin had 4 Tracks. Thousand`s of Spectators wanted to see this new Sport and filled the velodromes. The velodromes are small and the spectators have a good overview of the racing action inside. The early Racers became stars and earned good price money for their wins. The outside wooden tracks were soon replaced by cement tracks, because the maintaining costs and problems due to the bad weather situations (a lot of rain here in Europe too, wood does not like) escalated. Racing on outside tracks is limited and can only be done if it is dry. Between 1900 and 1906 was the high time on French Velodromes ( Buffalo, Parc de Princes, etc) with speeds of 60-70 mph. Banking was between 30 deg. to 50 deg. Also accidents happened, because the motorcycles were faster than the track. This was one of the reasons in England to stop it. 1908 Brooklands became the most desired and interesting place. In Germany velodrome racing had another boom between the great wars and ceased around 1936. The fastest 333,33 m Oval tracks allowed a speed of max 90 mph. All brands of machines were used, from Harley, Indian to Norton, Sunbeam, BMW, DKW etc.
The "Board Tracks" we have in mind today, are the ones build by Jack Prince. This small tracks for Motorcycle racing had a high time from approx. 1910-1914 with banking up to 60 deg. They were larger "Wall of Death" bowls. They could not be used for car racing.
Because of the danger and limitation to Motorcycles only, larger Tracks were build, mainly for car racing and also used for motorcycle racing.

[cyclingday]

Right after the 1984 Olympic Games here in Los Angeles California, A series of bicycle races was held on the Velodrome that was built for the track competitions.
It was a six week series that was held every Friday night. They always featured the same athletes in many different type of races. Match sprints, the Madison, the miss and out, etc.
It was so much fun for the spectators to see such high powered racing right before their eyes. There was not a bad seat to be had. After several weeks, we got to know the racers personalities and sportsmanship tendencies, so you had your favorites and your villians to root for or to boo for. The Madison races were really exciting because when there was a crash, it was explosive. Kind of like a bowling ball hitting a strike.
So with all of that said, I can only imagine what Motorcycle races held in a similar venue would have been like. The only thing that I have to compare that to, is the Summertime Speedway racing series that is held here at our local Fairgrounds every year.
It has always been a real family affair, and has featured some of the greatest Champions that sport has ever known.

[American-X]

            More Stuff from the "good old times"

[jurassic]

    .

[American-X]

(03-20-2010 12:56 PM)jurassic Wrote:  .

Perfect jurassic!

1904 Osmont and Fossier in the 10 Km Race in the "Velodrome d`Hiver" (Winter velodrome) in Paris. This were the early racers. Tricycles were used for a long time on the Boardtrack.

[American-X]

Take a look to a 8-Valve Indian (Ported) is started...

[cyclingday]

That was Awesome!
Talk about a fire breathing dragon.