Early Years
Tom Cooper began his cycling career in Detroit, where he was the star of the Detroit Athletic Club's bicycle racing team. His talent and athletic ability soon made him a national celebrity as he climbed to the top of the sport. As a champion bicycle racer, Tom Cooper was a contemporary of Barney Oldfield, Carl G. Fisher, Johnny Johnson, Arthur Gardiner, "Plugger Bill" Martin and Eddie Bald.
At the 1898 League of American Wheelmen championship race on the Newby Oval in Indianapolis, Tom Cooper won the half-mile professional event. Cooper went on to win the Bicycle Championship of America for the 1899 season. Cooper was instrumental in the formation of the American Racing Cyclists Union in 1898, a rival to the League of American Wheelmen.
Cooper, like many bicycle racers at the time such as Fisher and Oldfield, was drawn to the nascent automobile industry in the early 1900s. The gears and chains of bicycles were the heart of the powertrains of the earliest automobiles.
Read more about this topic: Tom Cooper (cyclist)
Famous quotes related to early years:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)