Those Aren’t The Only Medals They Deserve

 This month—February—is Black History Month. And, at this moment, the Winter Olympics are taking place in Italy.

It’s difficult not to notice that more Black athletes have been competing—and winning— during the past few Winter Olympiads.  While Erin Jackson didn’t make it to the podium this year, she won the gold medal in speed skating’s 500 meter event. Elena Meyers Taylor won a gold medal in bobsledding this year, at age 41, after taking home two bronze and three silver medals over the the previous three Olympiads.  The US hockey team won this year’s gold medal with its first Black player, Laila Edwards, scoring a goal against rival Canada in the opening match.

But, to me, one of the most successful Olympic athletes of any race, nation or time is Lauryn Williams. She earned a silver medal in the 2014 Sochi Games’ two-woman bobsled event— after winning a silver medal in the 2004 Athens Summer Games and gold in the 2012 London Summer Games as a track athlete. Quick, name another athlete who won medals (gold, no less) in both the Winter and Summer Games.

Speaking of Summer Games, one of the most memorable victories was by a silver medalist: Nelson Vails in the 1984 Los Angeles games. Fellow American Mark Gorski won the gold in that year’s sprint. What made Vails’ finish so memorable was that he and Gorski rode such a good race—and that Vails was the first African-American to win an Olympic medal in cycling.

One reason why Vails’ medal, and his other victories, were so important is that they came in a sport, and in venues—like those of the Winter Olympics—in which most competitors and spectators were White. After Major Taylor—one of the greatest cyclists, athletes and human beings who ever lived—cycling went into a long, steady decline in North America. Its main events and competitors for the next seven decades were in Europe and Japan. When the ‘70’s North American Bike Boom helped to revive bike racing in the US, most of the new competitors were White suburban college students for a variety of social and economic reasons.  I think Nelson Vails helped to show young Black would-be athletes and White audiences that Blacks could, and would excel in sports other than those stereotypically associated with them, like basketball, (American) football, track and field (especially the sprint events) and boxing.*

*—Don’t get me wrong:  I think they’re great sports. I am simply happy, or at least hopeful, that they won’t have to be the only ones accessible to Blacks or, for that matter, Whites or anyone else from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Matthew Cherry

 Today, most people believe tricycles are for toddlers or old people. But as the first “bike boom” took shape during the late 1880s, some saw “trikes” as a viable alternative to high-wheelers, a.k.a., “penny farthings”. 

The bikes most commonly associated with that period had front wheels much larger in diameter than the rear. Cranks were attached to the front axle. The bikes were therefore “direct drive,” which meant that the gearing was determined by the size of the front wheel. A larger wheel meant a higher gear and potentially more speed. (I can only imagine pedaling them uphill!) Racers and riders who simply wanted to go fast (or “prove” their manhood) often rode perched over front wheels taller than their bodies. And, aside from their inherent instability, “penny-farthings” posed another hazard: A cyclist’s foot could be caught in the wheel.

Variations of the “safety” bicycle—one with wheels of equal diameter and a chain connecting a sprocket on the rear wheel with a chainring on the crank—had been in the works well before that first “bike boom” began and mostly displaced “penny-farthings” by the middle of it. It’s what most of us have been riding ever since.

But around the same time British inventor and industrialist John Starley introduced the first commercially-successful “safety “ bicycle, another inventor on the other side of the Atlantic patented a new kind of human-powered wheeled transportation: the tricycle. It would look more or less familiar to us today: two rear wheels and a somewhat larger front attached to a metal frame. The first version was propelled (and stopped) by the rider’s feet on the ground; a later version had cranks and pedals attached to the front wheel: the drive system of “penny farthings.”

Among Matthew Cherry’s later inventions were a fender (what we might call a bumper) for streetcars.  Believe it or not, until he developed it, those transport conveyances lacked anything that could absorb shock from a front or rear impact and were thus frequently damaged.

Anyway, in spite of his accomplishments, little is known about Cherry’s life aside from having been born 5 February 1834 in Washington, DC. (Nobody is sure of when or where he died.) The nation’s capital has long been a racially segregated city: It didn’t outlaw slave auctions in its confines until 16 years after his birth.

That last sentence is a clue to what I’m about to say: Matthew Cherry was Black. It’s hard not to wonder whether that was an impediment to his further developing the tricycle. Had he been able to secure more investment and other support, might he have developed a way to create something like the adult tricycle we see today: one with the drivetrain system nearly all of us ride today, with its capacity for variable gears.

I haven’t ridden a tricycle since I was a toddler. I don’t recall seeing an adult trike here in New York, though some cargo bikes resemble them. Still, I wonder:  What if tricycles, and not “safety” bicycles, had displaced high-wheelers?

Certainly bike—or more precisely, trike—design would be different. Transportation and urban planning might also be different. I suspect that one reason why adult tricycles are so rarely seen in New York and other cities is that three-wheelers are more difficult to maneuver in traffic and even in bike lanes. (In fact, some “bike lanes” aren’t wide enough for them.) Would streets and other infrastructure have been designed differently—possibly in less auto-centric ways? And might our cities—and society—be less segregated?

If nothing else, tricycles might not be just for kids and folks in retirement communities.