A century before Lance Armstrong captured headlines around the world by winning a record seventh consecutive Tour de France, another American dominated the world of competitive cycling. His name was Bobby Walthour and, though all but forgotten today, in the early 1900s he was one of the most famous and highly paid athletes in the world.

            Life in the Slipstream will chronicle Walthour's rise from a lowly bicycle messenger in Atlanta to a national and world cycling champion who was nearly as popular in Paris and his adopted home of Berlin as he was in his hometown of Atlanta. Walthour's career parallels the surging popularity of the bicycle in America, and this biography will depict his life against the backdrop of the bicycle craze that swept America in the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

            Readers will meet the rough-and tumble world of professional cycling at the turn of the 20^th century, where deadly accidents were not uncommon and illicit drugs were used.  During Walthour's long career, more than a dozen of his rivals were killed or permanently maimed. He himself suffered a long list of injuries, from fractured ribs and separated collarbones to mangled fingers and concussions, and was twice declared dead as a result of racing accidents.

    Professional cycling in Walthour's day was a very different animal than it is today. It ranked among the top sports in the United States and was widely popular in Europe and Australia as well. Life in the Slipstream will paint vivid pictures of the raucous, smoke-filled stadiums where the races were staged from Atlanta, New York, and Boston to Paris and Berlin. The six-day race at Madison Square Garden in New York, one of the most important cycling events of the year in the United States, routinely attracted more than 15,000 spectators, many of whom would camp out for the week, bringing food, blankets and other provisions to sustain themselves.  Major races in Europe often attracted 20,000 or more spectators.

            This biography will describe the different types of races, from sprints (short, tactical contests that start slowly and end in a fury of frame-bending speed) and motor-pacing (high-speed, extremely dangerous contests in which riders follow perilously close to pacers, on bicycles, and later motorized vehicles) to the notorious six-day races (grueling, often brutal marathons). Walthour excelled in all three forms. He started his career as a sprinter and developed into a formidable six-day rider, but he achieved his greatest fame as a fearless motor-pacer.

            In 1903, Grantland Rice, a sports reporter for the Atlanta Journal, described one of Walthour's many memorable victories in his home city:

 It was a dash such as thrills one to the very marrow, one that should live in the history of cycling annals, for track records were smashed to smithereens and the big crowd lifted from its feet in the wildest outburst of enthusiasm that has ever echoed and re-echoed throughout the walls of the coliseum. Not even in the days of old when Roman thousands watched the struggles of life and death in the arena below could there have been more thrilling interest shown.

            In many respects, Walthour's story is a classic rags-to-riches tale. Although his family was once prominent (Walthourville, a small town in the swamplands near Savannah, Georgia, was named after his grandfather), he grew up in a large, working class family. His father died when he was a youngster and Walthour's first job was delivering messages by bike in Atlanta. Bobby was only 18 when he married his first wife in fairytale fashion, eloping on a bicycle built for two. The couple had four children, one of whom, Bobby Walthour Jr., grew up to become a famous cyclist in his own right.

            The book will give a detailed account of Walthour's long career, beginning as an amateur racer in Atlanta, and his rise through the professional ranks, capped by his winning two national and two world championships. By the peak of his career, in 1904, Walthour had earned more than $60,000, a staggering sum for the time. (Babe Ruth, by comparison, earned $80,000 in his highest-paid season with the New York Yankees decades later.)