Transcribed and edited by Peter McCormick

schmalz Today I am here with Jack Simes, who is third in the line of Jack Simes of the bike racing Simes. He is of the first family of cycling: the Simes family has probably been racing bicycles for as long as bicycles have been raced in the United States. Would you say that’s an accurate statement, Jack?

Jack Simes From the beginning of the sport, right. I think bicycles started getting raced back to the 1880s or so. That’s around when my grandfather was born. He was the first Jack Simes to race bikes: he was racing around the turn of the century.

schmalz A lot of the background in the Simes family goes not only toward track racing but a lot of the indoor racing, which was much more popular at the turn of the century and the early twentieth century in the U.S.

(From left to right, Jack Simes III, Jack Simes, Jack Simes II. Photo circa 1964.)

Simes Well, that’s true. Having only read about it and experienced what was passed down to me, as we know, when the bicycle was invented, it was a new form of transportation. Clubs formed and the next evolution was, let’s race these things. Promoters came along and figured out a way to put it into an arena setting. It has always been a pretty American setting; that’s how it developed. 

My grandfather did some racing on roads and on tracks and became a huge fan of cycling as well. He took my father to the New York Velodrome. They were living in New York City at the time, when my father was born. They were fans and my father was exposed to what big-time cycling was like at that time. He became a lifer.

schmalz Did your dad ever do any of the six days in Madison Square Garden?

Simes No, he never progressed that far. He was mostly a road rider and then became a road and track rider. After he won the Nationals on the road in 1936, he turned professional and began a six-day career but he had a severe head injury in his first six-day race, which was in San Francisco, and he didn’t go beyond that. But he stayed heavily involved in the sport. 

schmalz Track racing, especially six-day racing, was very dangerous back then. I think a lot of the moto-pace things they did, and because they were so fast, and also the technology at the time – especially the tire technology – was a little more dangerous: you’d have blowouts at high speed on the bank track, and that’s just a recipe for disaster, when you add the machines and the engines. 

Simes Yeah, they went at high speeds if you’re talking about moto-pacing, when they had the 24-inch front wheel at that time. The rollers were closer to the motor, so there was more draft: they were going up to 60 miles-per-hour. But from what I heard, the tires were of fairly decent quality. But there were probably things like, you know, maintenance issues with the track: little nails and screws popping up here and there; things like that before they got the whole thing wired. This caused a lot of accidents.

schmalz Also, when you crash back then, your safety equipment was a wool shirt and some pomade. There was no safety equipment to speak of. You just hit the deck and hoped for the best.

Simes Yeah. Very much the way it is now, I think. If you’re talking about moto-pacing, the danger was there because of the speeds and probably things going on that we can’t even imagine—those old motors leaking oil onto the track and everything else. And then, if you get into the Madison racing, it was a lot different; that whole technique of Madison racing was in development. For example, the exchange part that they do: it’s gone through several different evolutions. 

The original exchange was done from the opposite side, when the riders in the field came around their partners and gave them a shove on the backside with their left hand. Then that changed and went the opposite way, where the relief riders were on top and came back in; now of course they use the hand-sling. That’s all gotten a lot more polished; in the beginning it was probably a lot more helter-skelter.

Why Road Racing Never Took Off in the U.S.

schmalz It’s odd that the United States cycling team didn’t go the way Europe did. The track racing excitement never jumped over to the road. There are no point-to-point races that are as old in the United States. There are a lot of crits and things like that, but it never went the same route as Europe did. It just stayed in the velodromes until the Thirties and Forties, when the popularity waned. Auto racing took over and took away some of the thunder of bike racing. It’s unusual that they didn’t have the notion to put that racing onto the roads.

Simes I think one of the main reasons for that is, the sport developed as sport entertainment initially. In Europe it was a little different. The sport was developing similarly until World War One. [Afterward] the bicycle became a utilitarian tool to get around, as well as the fact that they were still racing these things. We didn’t experience any of that. Gasoline was plentiful; automobiles continued to develop, especially with the advent of World War Two, pushing engine development technology and all of that. In Europe, they didn’t have the vehicles to drive people around. After World War Two, countries were struggling; people were struggling to get back on their feet. Velodromes probably were bombed out craters at that point and the sport really grew up on the roads. 

Whereas here, it was continuing as sport entertainment in the velodromes and there were races on the road if you look back at the history, the group that controlled cycling in this country was called the National Cycling Association. That was the governing body, and they were all, all about six-day racing and racing in the outdoor velodromes. Another organization, the Amateur Bicycling League of America, was formed around 1918 to govern “amateur” racing that was coming up on the roads, but it was more of a participatory thing through clubs. The governing body, like the league of pro cycling, the NCA, wasn’t really interested in that at all. They were interested in racing in velodromes and selling tickets to those events.

schmalz It’s hard to sell tickets to have someone stand by the side of the road. There’s just no way you can do that.

Simes There are ways you can do it but it wasn’t considered at that point because it wasn’t necessary. People were brought into the velodromes; they were buying tickets and some of the velodromes had 12,000 to 20,000 seats. They were doing fine with that. 

schmalz A lot of the promoters who did bike races also did other sports. They would do boxing, they would do other events. So their focus was more on what they could get at the gate. They weren’t necessarily focused on the sport. They had venues to fill. Some even did vaudeville promotion.  They had to think about what they would get at the gate.

Simes Who was doing vaudeville?

schmalz I don’t know. It was some of the guys who promoted Major Taylor. He did a big race with Major Taylor in Australia and he was also into vaudeville promotion. (It was Bill Brady in the US and Hugh McIntosh in Australia – ed.)

Simes OK. It’s true what you say: some of them did do boxing. It was closely related to the structure of boxing. One of the great cycling promoters of the United States, John M. Chapman, who promoted many six-day races, became a vice president of Madison Square Garden and was involved in a lot of other sports.

schmalz When you were growing up, you had your father and your grandfather who had raced. When you were younger, how did you decide to get into it? Was it something they shared stories around the table, and you thought: I’ve got to get involved in this? Did they push you in that direction? Or did you just find it yourself?

 I would see old scrapbooks and trophies—big trophies; trophies that were as big as I was when I was growing up. That stuff started to make an impression on me.

Simes It’s not a matter of being pushed in any particular direction. When you grow up with this stuff around you; there were always fixed-gear bikes that people were riding, and there was what is now known as cycling memorabilia around and there were stories about the heyday of cycling. Of course that wasn’t that many years before I got into it. It wasn’t half a century away. It was closer and it had disappeared more recently. And so this business was always around and I would see old scrapbooks and trophies – big trophies; trophies that were as big as I was when I was growing up. That stuff started to make an impression on me.

schmalz The gleam of the trophies caught your eye.

Simes Yeah, the trophies, and the paintings on the wall and the old photographs, and then along came Tino DeAngelis. What had happened to cycling: you had the Depression in 1929 and less money to bring over European cyclists, the different organizers not banding together but fighting one another through the Thirties, and then World War Two beginning to develop and the United States going to war, and the riders from the wooden velodromes all going away to fight in the war. We didn’t have women cycling at that time [unlike in] baseball, where the women came and filled in, in women’s softball leagues. 

And so a whole generation passed by. The velodromes rotted. After World War Two we had guys who had raced and been involved… they belonged to clubs also, and they began to bring the sport back and stabilize it by running races on back roads in New Jersey. Anyway, along came Tino DeAngelis, who was a member of a New York club called the Acme Wheelmen. He brought over I believe about 60 small racing bikes. We called it Midget Class at that time, for kids between 9 and 12-years-old. Some of these bikes had 22-inch wheels; some had 24-inch wheels. He gave them to several clubs in the New York Metropolitan area. The theory was that now we’re going to rebuild the sport. 

Just around that time, occasionally I would go to a race with my father and I saw a guy racing a small bike… this guy was on a 24-inch bike. It was Mike Fraysse  and I said to my father, “I’d like to have one of those, I’d like to try that.” It was just at the time DeAngelis was donating bikes to these clubs, so I got one of those. That began my involvement in cycling. As I began racing, well, forget websites, we didn’t have any publications, only newsletters through clubs –

schmalz So was that 24-inch bike your first racing bike?

Simes Yes. It was chrome. It was a Landini. From that point on, the track bike became very close to me. I just loved it. It was light. It was fast. We had 24-inch tubular Continental tires on it. It was a real machine. 

schmalz How old were you when you had that bike, Jack?

Simes I would have been about nine. 

schmalz Do you remember what gears you ran as a nine-year-old?

Simes Probably a 23 or 24-10 when I first started out, so it would have been a 20 on the back; like a 48-20. When I got a little older, that 10 went down to a 9.

schmalz Where did you ride the bike? Where did you race?

Simes This is a fixed-gear bike. We learned to ride these things on the road. Some kids had one handbrake on the bike. I didn’t have a handbrake. I just learned to glove the wheel down.

schmalz Can you imagine in this day and age a nine-year-old training on the roads on a fixed-gear bike?

Simes It’s amazing, right?

schmalz I think your parents might get arrested for that now.

Simes I don’t know. I didn’t get arrested until my kid learned. He had a little six-gear bike with a handbrake. 

schmalz Were you successful right away? Did you start beating the other kids? What was the age group?

Simes It was 9 to 12. There were two categories, A and B. I was in B first, and then – I don’t recall how it worked but I think it was an age thing: when you got to be about 11, you were an A. In my first race, it was on a course that still exists, in River Vale, New Jersey. It’s still known as the Simes Course up there. Of course it’s all built up there now. It was way back in the country at the time. I was second in my first race and from then on, I began winning in my B category. I was winning a lot and in the A category straight away. Then a funny thing happened that helped me learn. It helped me with Jackie, when he was getting into the sport. I got to be about 12, 13, and these other kids, whom I had been beating, all started kicking my ass. We were growing at different ages, and I couldn’t understand that. 

I had been winning a lot and then things started changing. By the time I got out of that class, when I was 13 years-old – that’s when kids really start growing – I was in the Intermediate Class. It was during the Nationals when we had national track championships on the half-mile track, where [the old] Shea Stadium now stands: The old Flushing Meadow Track. It was the first time they had a national championship for kids, and so I was in this one-mile, one-shot national championship. I wound up getting last. (Laughter) 

It was like a shock. Nobody explained to me, look, this happens. I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore. I thought about not racing anymore. I had had the whooping cough at that time, and it just wasn’t going well. My father kept me out of the races and just put me in a few as that year and the next year went on. By the time I got in to my first year as Junior, when I was 14 years old, it began to change again and I began to come back up. And so I learned about something that happens to kids at that age, which I was very attuned to with my own son when he was getting involved in cycling.

schmalz We should explain here that your son Jackie is Jack Simes, IV, and that he’s a professional racer. He’s the fourth generation of bike racer in the family. 

Simes He started when he was about 9 as well. Kids progress at different levels and they’re not you. You really have to realize that: that they don’t have your personality. They have their own personalities and their own ways of doing things. He was more quiet and more introspective than I was. I always kept in mind the changes that kids go through; I always try to convey that to parents as well. Each kid has to recognize that he has his own way of doing things—that rate of learning and what they want as well. So you’ve got to be attuned to all that. They might not even want to be bike racers. Who knows?

schmalz How did that come about? Did he decide to race bikes; that they’d been around so long that he decided to get into it? Or did you just kind of keep him away from it and if he got interested in it, he got interested in it.

Simes Well, I was around it. At the time, I had gotten out of cycling a little bit because I had wound down. The Pro Federation, which I was running, had merged to make USA Cycling. At the time, I was also in the restaurant business. I was spending a lot of time with that. As he grew up I was still riding for fun and for health. 

I had gotten a small racing bike on a trip to Europe when I was coaching, for one of my nephews, like a racing-type bike, with drop bars and handbrakes a freewheel. That bike got passed down to Jackie. He learned to ride on that, so we used to ride every morning from the farm where we lived, a very short distance down to the bus stop, playing around, doing sprints and stuff like that. Then we’d put the bike down and play a little kickball until the bus came. Here we had the Valley Preferred Cycling Center Velodrome. They had programs for kids. They had the Peewee Pedalers, where kids could come down with their own bikes. There was instruction on how to learn to ride the track, through cones, things like that. I brought Jackie down to do that and he kind of liked it. Ultimately he became the first Peewee Pedaler to move through the ranks to the pro peloton. So, we had programs here that were geared for kids and run in a safe environment in the velodrome. That’s how he got going.

schmalz I think the velodrome is a good sell to parents in these times. It’s a closed course. There’s no traffic. It is a little easier to tell a parent that your kids are going to be in a closed environment. There aren’t going to be cars; you don’t have to worry about such dangers.

Simes It’s true. Where there is a velodrome there’s professional instruction geared toward kids. Kids are very adaptable. They love to get up on the bankings and it’s exciting for them. The key to making that work is, the kids can come down and see pro-level racing. That’s what really excites them. And then you offer them a program. You say: “You like that? Here’s how you can get involved. And it’s free.” They start learning how to ride the bikes, how to ride the track, they learn group riding, and then group racing. And it happens really quickly. As they get a little older and more experienced, then they’re placed on teams. That’s the way it works. 

Cycling Has Always Been One of the Cleaner Sports

schmalz When Jackie was getting into the sport, did you as a parent feel any reluctance because of the way the sport was heading in the mid-to late nineties, with the doping scandals. Were you at all concerned about getting your kid involved in that sort of environment?

Simes No, not at all. That thought never crossed my mind. Having been heavily involved as an athlete and through the Federation I’ve always felt that cycling is one of the cleaner sports. I’ve always felt that. We’ve done ten times more testing than other sports. Everything that exists in cycling exists in football, or boxing or baseball or basketball. It’s there. They just weren’t doing the testing. The thought never crossed my mind, to tell you the truth.

schmalz The biggest contrast is, for instance, the way Operation Puerto went. They threw out all the contenders before the Tour started. When the Panthers were playing the Patriots in the Super Bowl, some of the Panthers, before the Super Bowl were going to a doctor to get steroids prescriptions filled. But nothing happened before the Super Bowl. That’s an example of the difference in attitude between the two sports.

Simes Well, yeah. If you go back in cycling, it wasn’t that long ago in other sports, there was zero to very little testing going on, whereas with cycling for major events…I think when Pat McQuaid became the president of the UCI (laughs) – there was a photo I saw up there on one of the websites at the time, when they were really going after this stuff, and he had a starter’s pistol in his hand. That’s how he went after doping. 

Even though they were doing a lot of testing up to that point, the testing began to get ahead of the curve. I think there has probably been a ripple effect going into other sports. We were the first to test in the Olympic Games. The procedures we used in cycling began to be used for other sports. So I never thought twice about it: cycling has always been one of the cleaner sports.

schmalz I think cycling pushed the EPO test into being. I think it was big in Nordic cross-country skiing …

Simes It was big too in running and it was used there before it was used in cycling.

schmalz But I think cycling was the push that got the EPO test made. No one else has the equivalent of the passport system in any sport.

Simes Exactly. Cycling’s always been on the leading edge of fighting [doping]… because we had so much testing… the reality is that it was one of the cleanest.