The Little Black Bottle

Toulouse-Lautrec poster for the Simpson Lever Chain

On 6 June 1896, Jimmy ‘The Mighty Midget’ Michael, the reigning World Champion at 100 km participated in a series of races called the ‘Simpson Lever Chain Challenge’, which were cooked up by William Spears Simpson to demonstrate the superiority of his peculiar new bicycle chain. Although the chain was pure snake-oil and quickly disappeared from the scene, the races, which came to be known as the ‘Chain Races’ and were held at the Catford Cycling Club Track in London are central to the story of his manager Choppy Warburton, Michael and Warburton’s other charges, and Warburton’s lasting legacy in cycling, which largely flowed from his little black bottle and its mysterious contents.

Before gaining fame as a trainer of World Champion cyclists, Choppy  looked destined for a life in the cotton mills of Lancashire where he grew up. Like most youths growing up in poor, working class families in Lancashire in the 1850s and 60s, Choppy began working down at the mill at a young age (presumably for tuppence a month like his neighbors in Yorkshire). However, Choppy’s athletic and entrepreneurial gifts provided him with a route that would take him far from the mills of Lancashire, even if not quite all the way to the decadent luxury of the four Yorkshiremen:

Choppy’s work at the mill involved meeting trains at the switch and then following them along the spur to the mill, and instead of walking back, he would run back alongside the train. The mill-owner, a sportsman in his own right, noticed Choppy running, and realized he had the making of a runner on his hands and encouraged Choppy to race. Spurred in part by workers having new leisure time and more pay as a result of the Trade Union Act of 1871, sporting activities were then developing into a professional enterprise instead of just a diversion for gentlemen of means. With his talent and the changing times, running turned out to be Choppy’s way out of the mill although it would not provide an immediate exit. Choppy began by competing on Sundays and holidays, fitting it around his mill-work, but eventually he became successful enough as a runner (or pedestrian as they were known at the time) to travel to the United States for a series of races.

However, not dying young, Warburton was confronted with the problem all athletes face as they get older, which is what to do next. Warburton took what would become a well-trodden path for athletes, although he was something of a pioneer, and become a coach once he could no longer run himself. Although coaches were still looked upon with suspicion, as they were believed to subvert the amateur ideal, Warburton believed in the importance of regulated training and that his experience training himself would allow him to make money training other athletes. Warburton began by training runners, but soon realized that there was more money to be made in the burgeoning field of bicycle racing, and despite not knowing how to ride a bicycle, he believed that his general methods would be transferable.

In fact, Warburton proved correct, and his combination of persuasion with regards to talent, showmanship with respect to putting on races, and training proved to be a promising one, and he quickly built up a quality team of racers racing for Gladiator Cycles. One of his strengths was building up a large stable of well-organized pacers, who would ride bicycles built for two, three, four, or even five, and were vital to success in the races of the day. The pacers needed to be trained well-enough to set a high pace and to switch out smoothly so the racer would not lose time or energy changing from one pacing team to another. Despite these successes as a trainer, he is not best remembered for his workouts or the champions he trained, but rather for his mid-race fueling choices that brought him infamy and serve as the crux of the The Little Black Bottle by Gerry Moore. The eponymous bottle, from which his riders would get a potent pick-me-up during the race. When his racers appeared to be hitting a wall in the epic contests of the age, Choppy would appear, bottle in hand and give them a swig, and they would perk up immediately. Given the subsequent history of cycling, this activity has been cited as the first case of doping, however, as the book lays out, there are numerous problems with seeing it that way.

First, no one knows what was in the bottle. Choppy was both a showman who liked to entertain the audience, and if they thought he had a magic potion all the better, and a coach, who felt the same way about opponents, if they thought his riders were unbeatable once they had a drag from the little black bottle, that was all to the good. Second, there were no rules against doping at the time. Cocaine and other useful substances were as close as the nearest druggists and were used by people in everyday life, as can be seen from Sherlock Holmes and his seven-percent-solution. Riders and their coaches, then, were on their own for choosing what would best help training and racing. Third, the cases that are supposed to be examples of his riders becoming ill and/or dying from Choppy’s ministrations are a lot more ambiguous than given out when cited as the first casualties of doping.

Choppy Warburton with his charges (from left) Arthur Linton, Jimmy Michael, and Tom Linton

Most notably among the controversies involving Choppy’s little black bottle was the one involving Jimmy Michael at the aforementioned Chain Races. Here after a sip from the bottle Michael did not improve his performance, but rather weakened and lost his race badly. He would later accuse Choppy not of giving him performance enhancing drugs, but rather of poisoning him.  Although Choppy was sanctioned by British cycling authorities for his actions, Moore suggests that Michael was really making the accusation to get out his contract to allow him to move to a new manager where he would get a larger share of the winnings.  Choppy and the Might Midget would both soon pass away, with Michael’s death adding more fuel to the fire of condemnation for Choppy.

The two main weaknesses of the book are that it lacks citations, including for information that seems to be verging into the realm of speculation, especially about the state of mind of Warburton at various times, and that it covers much of the ground in the book multiple times. Many races, for example, are covered from Warburton’s perspective as well as that of his main riders. Neither of these may be the fault of the author, since he died before the book was published, but they do detract from the impact of the book. Although The Little Black Bottle provides a good aperitif, another treatment of Choppy may be on the way, as Andrew Ritchie, who has written a number of cycling books, including a biography of Major Taylor and who helped to put The Little Black Bottle together after Moore’s death, says that he is working on his own book about Choppy which will be better sourced and more thorough by better engaging with French language sources.

Despite its shortcomings the book provides a fascinating glimpse into the world of early bicycle racing, with the beginnings of the legendary Paris Roubaix and of the World Championships. In the end, whatever the contents of his bottle, Choppy Warburton surely left his mark on the cycling world and set a standard for showmanship and rigorous training for others to build upon.

The Cyclist and the Counterfeiters

When racing against Fausto Coppi, Gino Bartali used to sneak into Coppi’s room and search it for drugs, herbs, cordials, and anything else Coppi might be taking to improve his performance before or during a race. As portrayed in Road to Valor by brother and sister team of Aili and Andres McConnon this behavior is that of an obsessive racer trying to learn everything he can about his opponents. However, after World War II, they were also the actions of a former champion, who was drinking up to twenty espressos a day, desperately trying to regain the pinnacle of the sport as time and the younger, more talented Coppi were confounding his efforts. This challenge from Coppi forms the third section of the  McConnons telling of Bartali’s story which begins with his rise to fame and then pauses for an interlude of World War and Bartali’s actions therein, before returning to the road and the undiminished struggle for the maillot jaune and the hearts of the tifosi.

During the war Bartali served in the Italian Army as a bicycle messenger in Italy, but it his actions after the Italians surrender and the Germans takeover that make the war fit for an entire section, instead of just a break from his career as a cyclist. In fact, Road to Valor probably would not have been written without the middle section, and it is therefore disappointing that this is the weakest section of the book.

The main gist of the story is that during the war Bartali helped a Jewish friend from his pre-racing days and his family find a safe place to live after the Germans had invaded, making it substantially more dangerous for Jews in Italy. More notably, and more poetically for a cyclist, Bartali also used the fact that he and his bike were a common presence on the roads, even during the war, to help ferry documents to help Jews survive. Previously, people had helped Jews to escape from Italy to Switzerland or other safe countries, but as the war for Italy intensified it had become difficult to leave. Therefore, a ring of counterfeiters had been set up to provide the identity papers critical to life in a totalitarian state to allow Jews to live incognito in Italy.

The story is a compelling one. However, from the endnotes and the authors’ description of their sources there is simply not enough extant information about Bartali’s activities during the war to do more than give vague probabilities. Bartali was deeply religious and there is evidence of his friendship with the bishop who organized the ring, but little more than third hand evidence. The fault of the authors’ is not a paucity of research, but rather trying to build too complete a picture with insufficient data. In shaping their story the authors want the reader to follow Bartali through his decision making as he gets involved in the ring and on his first rides to ferry documents, just as they have the reader follow him through his struggles in the Pyrenees during the Tour. Unfortunately, although there were many reporters present when he took on the Tour, his clandestine activities during the war could not be covered.

The primary problem with the war section is that Bartali did not talk about his activities while he was alive, saying that he had a small role and that there were many people who had done much more. By the time people found out about it, including the authors, and started asking, many of the main participants were dead. So, since the activity was by necessity secretive, there are no contemporary reports and since his actions came to light so late, there was no one directly involved with Bartali who is still alive. The authors did a good job of finding people who were tangentially involved, but they were remembering events from 60 years ago, and even then only had vague intimations about what Bartali was doing.

Compounding the sourcing problem is the fact that the authors try to paint a detailed picture of Bartali’s specific actions when they have no evidence for them at all. Somebody remembers him being somewhere and they give a detailed description of how he got there, what he was feeling, etc., and the reader only finds out how thinly sourced it all is by reading the endnotes. They would have been better served by discussing what is known and what is not known and what are reasonable guesses, although that approach may have only led to a chapter discussing what our best bets are, instead of a whole section detailing his ultimately unknowable actions.

The sections on cycling are better sourced, with Bartali writing and talking about them while he was alive, although again the authors are over-reliant on Bartali’s own writing and friends’ and relatives’ recollections long after the fact, instead of on contemporaneous reporting, of which there is plenty. The sections on bicycling follow a more traditional sports story, telling of the champion’s childhood passion, his embrace of the sport, and the rise to glory, followed, after succes or struggles, by one last shot at staving off the inevitable. Although, in this case the middle, the sustained success, is missing to the war, a fact that Bartali was not insensitive to.

Before the war, Bartali rose to the top of the growing sport of bicycle racing, twice winning the Giro d’Italia and becoming the second Italian cyclist to win the Tour (after Ottavio Bottecchia, who had won in 1924 and 25), and afterwards he would win one last time, setting the record for longest times between Tour victories. He had aspired to win the Giro and the Tour in the same year, but at a time when the Tour was organized along national lines instead of with professional teams, the Fascists decided the glory of winning the Tour was more important than attempting a double, and fearing that the Giro effort would wear him our for the Tour, they would not let him race the Giro in 1938, forcing him to focus on winning his Tour, which he did. The rising tensions in Europe meant that this would not be the last time that politics would impinge upon Bartali’s sporting goals, and the following years the Italians declined to send a team to defend Bartali’s victory because of worsening relations with France.

Coppi leads Bartali up the Col d’Izoard on Stage 16 of the 1949 Tour de France. Coppi would gift the stage to Bartali and then go on to win the Tour.

The war and its aftermath obviously precluded the running of the Tour, but during the war Bartali had struggled to maintain his form and looked forward to a return to racing. Although he had lost more fitness than he realized, by 1948 he was again ready to take on the Grand Boucle. With the sport still organized along national lines and as the established star, Bartali was now posed to benefit from political machinations at Coppi’s expense, and Bartali was chosen to lead the Italian team. With three days of epic attacks in the mountains, Bartali was able to subdue his rivals and claim his second Tour victory. The future would come soon as Coppi, who had refused to ride in support of Bartali in 1948, would conquer the defending champ at the 1949 Tour, completing the Giro-Tour double long sought by his rival. However, in 1948, the determination of Bartali, who by then was being called the ‘old man’ gave him a final Tour victory.

Bartali and his dedication to his craft through a long career spanning the upheavals of the war provide a compelling story. The cycling sections provide interesting glimpses into the development and specialization of bicycle racing, while the entire book offers tantalizing slices of life in Italy around the war. However, for the section on Bartali’s actions during the war, it would have been better if the McConnons had laid a firm basis of facts, before springing into reconstruction mode. As it stands, the reader is left to sift through the endnotes deciphering what is actually known and what was interpolated by the authors.