Albert Champion (cyclist)
 |
|
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Albert Champion |
| Born | 5 April 1878 |
| Died | 26 October 1927 (aged 49) |
| Team information | |
| Discipline | Road, track |
| Role | Rider |
| Major wins | |
| 1899 - Paris–Roubaix 1904 - French Motor-paced Champion |
|
Albert Champion (5 April 1878 Paris – 26 October 1927 Paris) was a French track bicycle racer who won the 1899 Paris–Roubaix. In 1905 he incorporated the Albert Champion Company in Boston to make porcelain spark plugs with his name on them. Three years later founded the Champion Ignition Company in Flint, Michigan. In 1922 he changed the name to AC Spark Plug Company, after his initials, to settle out of court with his original partners in the Albert Champion Company (documented in Peter Joffre Nye's new biography, The Fast Times of Albert Champion: From Record-Setting Racer to Dashing Tycoon, An Untold Story of Speed, Success, and Betrayal (Prometheus Books, 2014), .
Albert Champion was a talented racing cyclist at the end of the 19th century. His win in Paris–Roubaix (see below) came as a surprise because he had been known as a velodrome rider.
U.S. Cycling historian and author Peter Joffre Nye explains that after Champion won Paris-Roubaix he received a contract from a bicycle manufacturer in Boston to race in America for the 1900 season. The offer coincided when Champion received orders to report for compulsory conscription, which could have meant up to seven years in the army.
Champion raced behind motor-powered tandems during the 1900 season on outdoor board velodromes in cities from Boston to New York and down the Eastern Seaboard to Atlanta. He competed against riders such as Jimmy Michaell and Bobby Walthour Sr.and lead a comfortable life, Three years later, he had won 100 races in America and imported a four-cylinder motorcycle from Paris. Nye's biography documents that on July 12, 1903, Champion piloted his 350-pound French motorcycle around an outdoor board track in Cambridge Massachusetts, on what is now the MIT Campus. He drove a mile in 58-4/5 seconds, a world record on a motorcycle around an elliptical track.
He crashed driving a Packard Greywolf in a car race in October 1903 and snapped his femur in a compound fracture. He spent months in a New York hospital, finally leaving with one leg two INCHES shorter. He hobbled out of the hospital on two crutches. During his recovery he made up his mind to enter the new auto industry.. By June 1904 he returned to his native Paris to raise money and found a company in Boston importing French electrical parts. Coping with his shortened leg by using cranks of different lengths, he won the Grand Prix of Paris 50 km motorpace race on the Buffalo Velodrome and then the 100-kilometer motorpace championship on the Parc des Princes track by beating specialists such as defending national champion Henri Contenet and the "blond Adonis", Émile Bouhours. The race reopened the injury to his leg. He was taken to the Hôpital Boucicaut where he was operated on to remove several bone chips..
...
Wikipedia