Bobby Walthour

Robert Howe Walthour Sr. (1 January 1878 – 1 September 1949) was one of the best American professional cyclists of his era.

Bobby Walthour started his career as a sprinter and developed into a formidable six-day rider, but achieved his greatest fame as a fearless motor-pacer.

Walthour became employed in Atlanta, Georgia as a bike messenger and showed a great aptitude on the bicycle.

Motor-pacing was a fast, extremely hazardous occupation in which riders followed perilously close to their “pacers” on motorcycles, drafting within the protection of their slipstream.

In the United States, Walthour raced indoors and outdoors on highly banked wooden surface or cement tracks.

Amos G. Batchelder, chairman of the racing board of the National Cycling Association in the United States, received a cable from a high-ranking French official (probably Victor Breyer, the director of the Buffalo velodrome in Paris) indicating that Walthour was the “best ever seen in Europe and by far the best that has ever come from America, and is distinctly superior to all other riders now following mechanical pacing machines."