Description

Arthur Augustus Zimmerman

Photo from the Horton Collection Archives

Arthur Augustus Zimmerman (June 11, 1869 – October 22, 1936) was one of the world’s great cycling sprinters and the winner of the first world championship in 1893. His amateur prizes were considered in the establishment of the International Cycling Association (ICA).

Zimmerman won more than 1,000 races thanks to exceptional acceleration and the ability to pedal unusually fast. He was American national champion in 1890, 1891 and 1892. In 1892 he won the British one-mile and five-mile championships. In 1893 he won the ICA world sprint and 10 km championships in Chicago, Illinois. In the same year, he won 101 of the 110 races he disputed.

He turned professional in 1894 and won the sprint championship of France. His performances include a 100m flying start in 5.4 seconds, an average of 66.6 km/h. Claims that he could ride the last 200m of a sprint match in 12 seconds are less established. Bill Mills, who investigated the claims for the British weekly, The Bicycle, wrote:

It seemed to be a commonly held opinion that he invariably covered the last 220 [yards] in 12 seconds flat, despite the fact that he rode a gear of 68 inches with 6½-inch cranks… and no toestraps! Now this, if true, would be a phenomenal performance, seeing that our moderns, with gears in the high eighties or low nineties, on modern machines and tires, only rarely get below 13 sec. There is, unfortunately, no direct evidence of Zimmerman’s performances over the 220 yards, for the very simple reason that in those days it was not customary to mark off the 220 yards mark nor to take times from it.

Zimmerman, known as “Zimmy” or “Zim”, was a lean, athletic-looking man who stood 5 ft 11 in. He was born in Camden, New Jersey, the son of a real estate broker known as T.A., and grew up in Freehold. There he excelled at county level in high jump, long jump and triple jump, competing for the military school he attended.

“I liked it so well that I jumped in the game with all the spirit that was in me,” he said.

He began cycle-racing at 17 on a penny-farthing, a traditional bicycle on which he sat above a 55-inch wheel, a smaller wheel following. He abandoned that in 1891 for a Star bicycle, which had the larger wheel at the back and was propelled by pedals to be pushed up and down. A further novelty was that both pedals could be brought to the top of the pedaling stroke at the same time, which the makers claimed gave better acceleration. He won the League of American Wheelmen national half-mile championship, setting a world record of 29.5 seconds for the last 440 yards.

His speed and pedaling speed earned him the nickname The Jersey Skeeter. On a bike weighing 12 kg, on soft tires 38mm across, without toe-straps and on a gear of 17 x 7 (in today’s half-inch pitch, the gear would be 34 x 14) he rode the last 200m of a race in Paris in 12 seconds. The cycling mathematician, Dave Lefèvre, says that according to whether that was exactly 12 seconds or closer to 13, and depending on the precise size of the wheel (which could have been larger then), Zimmerman may have pedaled at 170 to 185 revolutions a minute. The cycling journalist Pierre Chany says that at the least he would have ridden at 160rpm.

The historian Peter Nye says:

“He was reputed to win 47 races in one week, which probably included heats, from the quarter-mile to 25 miles, and finished some seasons with 100 or more victories – feats comparable to the 267 strikeouts [in baseball], or the four seasons with 30 or more victories by his contemporary Christy Mathewson.”

Zimmerman told The Newark Evening News in 1912 what it had been like, racing as an amateur from 1887 to 1893:

“The racing in those days extended over a greater part of the country. Nearly every state and county fair had bicycle racing as an attraction. [We] rode principally on dirt tracks – trotting tracks – and we made a regular circuit, going from one town to another and riding practically every day. It was often the case that the riders, after spending several hours on a train, would be obliged to go immediately to the track where they were billed to appear and, without any warming up, go out and ride. This happened day after day.”

Cycling had become a widespread sport in the 19th century but there were no world championships. The championships of the National Cycling Union (NCU) in England were the world’s most prestigious and were considered the unofficial championships of the world. The NCU, which had a particularly strict definition of an amateur, proposed to create an International Cycling Association, open to national organizations whose views of amateurism were similar to its own, and to organize world championships.

Both proposals had a direct effect on Zimmerman’s career.

The first world championships were allocated to the United States, which organized them in Chicago to profit from crowds drawn to the World’s Columbian Exposition being held there. Zimmerman dominated them, although the distance from the center of world cycling in Europe limited the number of riders and Americans won two of the three gold medals.

The winners received a gold medal, and all participants received a silver medal. The table shows what would have happened had gold, bronze, and silver medals been awarded to the first three, as is current practice.

Rank	Nation	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	United States	2	2	3	7
2	Transvaal	1	0	0	1
3	Germany	0	1	0	1
Totals (3 entries)		3	3	3	9