Review: Pedestrianism: When Watching People Walk Was America’s Favorite Spectator Sport (Chicago Review Press)
(2019) Much of what I am about to say will sound familiar. At the turn of the last century there was a sport that spanned six days. The bigger events eventually migrated to lined tracks indoors. The inside of the track featured cabanas for the participants to rest during their competitions. One of the first Madison Square Gardens hosted numerous Six Day events to the delight of crowds looking to get a glimpse at human endurance and perseverance. It was the first professional sport to lure fame seekers to big cities, and it was called Pedestrianism. It was the sport of walking.
Matthew Algeo’s book, Pedestrianism: When Watching People Walk Was America’s Favorite Spectator Sport, pulls the cabana curtain back on a forgotten sport that attracted thousands who lined distance attempts from city to city, gamblers who spectated the indoor tracks, and vagrants who used the six day events as housing. All I could think about was how much cycling’s Six Day mirrored the structure of pedestrianism.
According to author Algeo, the sport of pedestrianism started with a wager. Edward Payson Weston believed Abraham Lincoln would lose the election of 1860. If Lincoln was elected, Payson agreed to walk the 478 miles from Boston to Washington, DC, for the inauguration. Weston would later recall the wager was not set in stone, but few would guess his ‘walk’ would usher in the modern age of sport. His attempt lay the foundation for endurance and one-up-manship. Each time someone walked a new distance, it inspired others to go best the record.
The sport evolved into its crescendo where ‘walkers’ - hardly walking, averaging at times six-minute miles - would circle indoor tracks amidst the smoggish air of pollution, gas lamp fumes, and second-hand smoke. Big news would come about when walkers pulled into their cabana to rest. Competitors would make up ground during these breaks. By the sixth day, walkers were zombies, often with coaches and gamblers yelling at them to continue. To observe the Sabbath, the events ended just shy of Sunday.
In an interview, author Matthew Algeo was asked what killed the sport of pedestrianism. He was quick to answer the sport of cycling in 1885 when John Kemp Starley introduced the safety bicycle. It was faster. It was intense. And it involved the new presence of danger. Thus the new era of nationally-recognized athletes strode track bikes and no longer walked hundreds of miles. The Six Day format remained with riders making use of cabanas located in the middle of banked wooden tracks. The dawn of professional athletes had arrived and few recognized it. Track cycling would become gigantic for its time - dwarfing baseball salaries - all on the scaffolding of pedestrianism.
While creakybottombracket.com is a cycling site, the well-researched and gripping book by Matthew Algeo can provide several glimpses into the yet-established world of track cycling through the lens of pedestrianism. We couldn’t put the book down. The most enjoyable take-away from Algeo’s efforts is the relatively diverse field of participants who tried to walk farther than anyone else. There were always white men, but fans also cheered on women, immigrants, and athletes of color. This was at the turn of the twentieth century, a progressive approach by fans of the day. Algeo’s book is one more thing: It is a study in how a sport blossomed and collapsed in a short time. Perhaps studying how pedestrianism stumbled (sorry) can provide insight to preserving cycling for the future. And we didn’t even have to walk 500 miles to learn century-old lessons.
