Here’s how the national cycling club is paying tribute to a black cycling legend and making the sport more accessible

May is National Bicycle Month and a conversation about Black history and cycling would not be complete without talking about Marshall Walter “Major” Taylor. He was the undisputed GOAT –Schwinn Bicycles calls him “the greatest sprinter of all time.” He won quite a few competitions and world titles, set many world records and was considered one of the first black celebrity athletes.

Between 1898 and 1899, Taylor “set seven world records” in the distances of a quarter-mile, one-third mile, half-mile, two-thirds mile, three-quarters mile, one mile, and two miles. At the time, racism was common, especially in the world of cycling, and when he was allowed to race, Taylor “often had to deal with insults, fouls and outright sabotage (such as having ice water thrown at him and nails hammered into the track) by both competitors and spectators.”

Unfortunately, though almost 100 and twenty-five years have passed since Taylor’s dominance, the legacy of exclusion still stays. “Not enough African Americans are involved in professional cycling,” said Dereka Hendon-Barnes, president of the Major Taylor Iron Riders.

The data supports these claims. “Cycling is one of the whitest sports in the world” – sports website Andlandscape reports. “During the 2021 International Cycling Union (UCI) world tour – which hosts the sport’s most important races, including the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France – less than 1% of cyclists were Black.” Additionally, there have been no black competitors at the 2022 Tour de France. A yr earlier, there was just one “black cyclist” in the peloton: Nic Dlamini, the first black rider from South Africa on the route. There are many reasons for the lack of diversity and inclusion in cycling in any respect levels, from a lack of coverage to an exclusionary history, the sport often seems reluctant to move past the issue.”

“It’s not just black and brown people represented in cycling. They are also women,” Hendon-Barnes continued. Only in 2021 for the first time Black woman joined a “professional road cycling team”. Ayesha McGowan didn’t make her racing debut until she was 26, but as she told Olympics.com, “A giant a part of this journey for me has also been to create space for other people to do that and hopefully show other black women, African American women , women of color that they’ll race bikes.”

There are cycling groups throughout the country inspired by Major’s work Taylor’s legacyresembling Major Taylor Iron Riders in New York, want to change that and increase the variety of black and women cyclists.

Like McGowan, Hendon-Barnes also took up cycling later in life. She told ESSENCE how her brother inspired her to take up the sport and she would take the train to “Brooklyn, go to South Street Seaport, and I’d rent this bike day-after-day. One summer I used to be literally just exploring, getting lost on my bike in the city. It struck me that I remembered the joy I had as a child riding my Huffy with a basket on the handlebars, riding around the neighborhood and the freedom of being on a bike.

Major Taylor Iron Riders (MTIR) was officially founded in 2006, something Barnes explained was born out of necessity. Before MTIR, there was the Element Tour, which was began by “a few sisters who liked riding bikes and felt like they weren’t accepted or included in what they were doing, so they started doing what they did.” But when people wanted to ride fast, MTIR stepped in, and a part of the name Iron Riders “came from the Buffalo Soldiers, black infantry who rode bicycles during the war.”

“In 1897, the all-black twenty fifth Infantry Regiment Bicycle Corps launched into a powerful bicycle ride of over 3,000 miles from Fort Missoula, Montana to St. Louis, Missouri as a part of a U.S. Army experiment to determine the effectiveness of moving troops on bicycles,” the article reads Missouri State Parks website. “The journey, called the ‘Great Experiment’ in national newspapers, lasted 41 days.”

For Hendon-Barnes, increasing representation is crucial. “It’s not for lack of talent. It’s a lack of resources. It costs a lot of cash to do that. You have to be at the very top to be invited or to give you the option to get to the training facilities. Moreover, “people have no idea about it at all because they just don’t see someone who looks like them doing it.”

Hendon-Barnes is hopeful about the way forward for integration in sport. “I have a constant rule, whether you are in a club or a racing team: you will have to work, but you will never be left behind.”