Remembering Major Taylor

A hundred years before Lance Armstrong, America produced its first world champion bike racer.

Marshall "Major" Taylor set world records in virtually every event there was, and convincingly beat every man he ever faced. But as a black champion in a world hostile to his accomplishments, he faced an uphill climb on and off the bike.

Today his memory is honored every July at the George Street Bike Challenge, a steep hill-climb race on the same street that Taylor trained on in his adopted home of Worcester, Massachusetts.