Seis días en bicicleta (SPA-ENG)

Six days bicycle race

It is undeniable that @palabras1 knows me well enough to know that when someone touches on a topic about which I have a memory or a story to tell, I can hardly avoid the temptation to take the keyboard and spill descriptive words, yes, it is stronger than I.

@tonyes' post about professional cycling brought back fond memories of my adolescence and youth when I accompanied my father to watch sporting events.

He wasn't as passionate about sports as I was, not at all. He was a supporter of Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata because surely his older brothers encouraged him to be or because the husband of one of his sisters had been a center forward for Lobo Platense. Still, he did not exude enthusiasm for his club or football in general. He was only passionate about one sport and it was boxing, however, he was quite fond of cycling or to be precise with a race in particular, he was a persistent attendant of an emblematic and very popular race on the world calendar at that time: the 6 days cycling; Every year, when the two-wheeled circus arrived in Argentina and the legendary Luna Park stadium, he was there buying the tickets to see it.

I was lucky enough to be able to accompany him on a couple of occasions, attending Luna Park was something fascinating at that time, the largest covered stadium in Latin America located in the heart of Buenos Aires, the vast majority of the boxing fights took place there and it was fascinating to see the enthusiasm and passion of the fans who were delirious before the great champions that we knew how to have in the golden age of the sport of fists, Pascual Perez, Olympic gold medalist, and world flyweight champion, Horacio Acavallo, fought there on several occasions, heir to the first and also world champion for several years, the great Nicolino Locche, Oscar Bonavena and our greatest idol of that sport, Carlos Monzón.

Luna Park was a stadium adaptable to practically any use and although boxing was the favorite of its administrator, he was also a great businessman and brought world-class shows permanently, in a few hours the ring and the ringside stands could be dismantled. and set up a basketball court, where the Globetrotters put on their show for many seasons, that show between circus and basketball that was in fashion for a long time. The Cirque Du Soleil stage was also being set up and later the ice rink for Holliday on Ice.

However, one of the biggest attractions was the 6 days of cycling, for which a large banked oval was built. This show began as a popular competition that started in the 19th century in England and its beginnings, it was an individual competition that it required an enormous effort, covering six full days and nights, practically without rest. As time went by, the format was changed to become a team competition where there were different combined events and until the 1960s it was a requirement that at least one cyclist be riding on the track at any time during the six days. Then they changed some rules again and only the title of the competition remained by tradition.

The race quickly became internationalized and I remember that teams from all over the world came here, French, English, Spanish, Italian, and North American were the most famous and monopolized the pages of the newspapers, our team, although it was never as strong as them, they managed to fight them in some specialties.

As I was able to find out, in my country it began to run in 1936 and little by little it became a classic show for the inhabitants of the Federal Capital and the interest aroused was so great that spectators came from the interior and also from neighboring countries during its run.

1984 was the last year in which the six-day bicycle race was held in Argentina and 1999 there was an attempt to recover the magic and mystique of the competition, but it did not work and it has only been a memory for decades.

From some things I read about cycling, before the emergence of football in the life of humanity, this sport became the most popular in Europe and the United States could say that it was also the beginning of feminism in sporting activities. since there was competition from women, some even achieved worldwide fame and prestige. A Chicago Tribune report from 1896 tells how fans destroyed a race track and its stands angry because Dottie Farnsworth, the most successful cyclist of the moment, would not appear in a scheduled race in Minneapolis.

I must thank this memory mainly to my father, who unknowingly introduced me to the germ of sports by taking me to shows like this.