Icons of cycling: Madison Square Garden
The self-styled ‘World’s Most Famous Arena’ hosted New York’s famous six-day races for nearly 50 years, writes Giles Belbin
The modern Madison Square Garden sits in Manhattan. The New York Knicks and the New York Rangers play there and upcoming events at the time of writing included World Championship boxing. Strange then that an arena best known today for basketball, ice hockey and pugilism should feature as an icon of cycling. But in the early to mid-1900s, when the Garden hosted New York’s famous six-day races, that’s exactly what it was.
Madison Square Garden’s history can be traced to 1874 when legendary promoter Phineas Taylor (P.T.) Barnum took over a vacated train yard close to Madison Square Park and built a 10,000 capacity arena. Originally called the New York Hippodrome, the venue was renamed Madison Square Garden five years later.
Six-day racing came to the Garden in 1891. By then the original venue, dubbed “dirty, rickety, even dangerous,” by the New York Times had been demolished and in its place stood a splendid new arena. Dublin-born William ‘Plugger’ Martin won the inaugural race.
Six-day races were ridden individually and the popularity of the event and the cash prizes on offer meant riders often pushed themselves to utter exhaustion. By 1897 the format was being seriously questioned. “[This] is not sport, it is brutality,” reported the New York Times. In 1898 the winner, Charles Miller, spent more than 126 hours on the track out of the 142-hour race duration, and he still found time to get married in his downtime.
In 1899 the New York legislature introduced a ruling that no one could ride for more than 12 hours a day. Although it was thought the move would kill off the event, the New York organisers kept the six-day format but opened it up for teams of two. And so was born the event that would become known as the Madison.
The event became such an integral part of the city’s sporting scene that when the Garden was relocated in 1925 it was designed with the requirements of six-day racing in mind. The event’s popularity was at its peak and celebrities of the day joined the thousands of New Yorkers who flocked to the Garden to watch the high-octane action. In 1939, the last pre-war race was started by baseball legend Joe Dimaggio.
After World War Two six-day racing returned to New York in 1948 but not at the Garden. It wouldn’t be until 1961 that the event dubbed ‘the Mad Whirl’ returned to its spiritual home. It had been hoped that taking the race back to the Garden would be something of a rebirth for the event but sadly the 1961 edition proved to be the last of the New York Sixes.