Whether you're an avid fan of the Olympics or you've watched an event or two, you probably have some idea of what to expect. Everything is organized, documented, and clearly displayed for the world to see.
Most of all, there are detailed official records kept, both by the International Olympic Committee and all of the many international newspapers of record that report the day's news in their myriad languages.
But as you're no doubt well aware, people are people. And people are messy.
We might mean well, but if we don't have well-established routines and patterns set up, sometimes we don't know what to do. And when enough people trying to do things haven't agreed on a specific set of rules, things can get very confusing, very quickly.
Which is why the 1900 Olympics, which also took place in Paris much like the games going on right now, included motorcycles. Well, maybe.
As you can imagine from imperfect beings, the answer is both yes and no, and here's why it's a bit more complicated than you might expect.
The 1900 Olympics Was Only The Second Olympics Ever Held
By the third or fourth time you do something, you've probably figured a few things out.
You have a better grasp on what works and what doesn't, and you've probably worked out some of the pain points that you may have run into on your first and even second tries, just by virtue of experience.
But the second time? You're probably still at least a little in awe of having pulled off the first event, just because you didn't fully know whether you could do it or not. And yet somehow, you managed, and probably even surprised yourself along the way.
And so, the 1900 Olympics were messy. So messy in fact that historians are still debating which of the sporting events that actually took place in the Paris area in 1900 during the months of the Olympics were, in fact, actually considered true "Olympic" events.
So, Did Motorcycles Actually Race At The Olympics In 1900?
Again, yes and no.
The motorcycles did race, but both historian Bill Mallon, who dove deep into historic primary sources to write a book called The 1900 Olympic Games: Results For All Competitors In All Events, With Commentary, as well as the International Society of Olympic Historians' Journal of Olympic History, say that the motorcycle races that took place during the 1900 Paris games were exhibitions rather than true Olympic events.
At the same time, the utter chaos surrounding the organization of the 1900 games makes it extremely understandable why there's still such confusion about this.
To give an extremely clear example of the level of confusion, here's what Mallon wrote when introducing the 1900 Olympics as an event.
"The Olympic Games can be said to have begun on 14 May and lasted until 28 October [1900]. However, there was no opening or closing ceremony, and one's interpretation of the date of the opening and closing is entirely dependent on which events are termed "Olympic." No real official interpretation has ever been made and various sources list differing events, further adding to the confusion that was Paris 1900."
He goes on to add that "it is difficult to know, because of the confusion over titles, and the many, many events held at the fair, what events should actually be considered "Olympic" and which should not. The IOC had no real control of this and thus one sees various listings. Many unusual sports and events were contested such as motorboating, balloon racing, underwater swimming, live pigeon shooting, and an obstacle swimming race."
In other words, the 1900 Olympics were clearly a wild time to be in Paris, whether as a competitor or as a spectator.
Mallon's account goes on to highlight serious scheduling confusion during the event, where French organizers wanted to schedule a track and field event on a Sunday, but the Americans then threatened not to show up. So the French then tried to accommodate the Americans, but since July 14 was Bastille Day, they thought the better of it and thus, both the Americans and the French were confused; the Americans so much so that many didn't show up for the events in which they had originally intended to compete.
But at the same time, the 1900 Olympics also marked the very first time that women competed in Olympic competitions. There weren't many, only about 12 or so, but the fact that they were there and competing at all was a landmark achievement, even among all the confusion. (None were among the motorcyclists, though.)
Perhaps my favorite bit that explains just how deeply confusing the 1900 Olympics was is this story that Mallon unearthed. In 1965, the French Olympic Committee discovered that an athlete by the name of Vasserot, who had supposedly achieved a second-place finish in the cycling sprint event of 1900, was still alive.
So, since they were interested in getting as accurate a count of French Olympic medal holders as possible, they paid him a visit. Upon chatting with Vasserot, they discovered that while he did indeed remember racing in an event at Vincennes, he had absolutely no idea that he had participated in the Olympic Games that year.
Just three years later, in 1968, he died. The French still regarded him in his obituary as a silver medalist, says Mallon. Additional research after his passing, undertaken by an Austrian researcher, came up with different results that had Vasserot nowhere on the podium.
So Do We Know Anything About The Motorbikes That Raced In Paris?
We do know a little bit. For one thing, both several classes of automobiles and motorcycles of the time took part in races surrounding the 1900 Olympics, even if they may not necessarily have been officially sanctioned Olympic events. It's still contested.
Automobile classes included two-seater touring cars over 400 kilograms, four-seater touring cars over 400 kg, six-seater touring cars over 400 kg, and even a special touring cars with seven or more seats category. That's wild to think about if you consider the state of automobile development at the time, and only two entries competed in this class, but still.
For motorcycles, there were two events in which they competed in 1900. One was a track race consisting of a set number of laps, and the other was more of a time-speed-distance rally running from Paris to Toulouse and back to Paris.
What bikes participated? Both the manufacturers and the competitors in the motorcycle class (which, incidentally, consisted of more trikes and quads than motos) all claimed French nationality, so it wasn't really international.
Of the bikes involved, two were Rochet-Petit tricycles; one was listed as a Rochet-Petit tricycle/quadricycle, one was a Werner motorcycle, another was a Creanche tricycle, there was a Fernand Renault quadricycle, and one was a Luc tricycle.
The more history I read, the more I'm reminded that humans have always kind of been a mess. Sometimes we get our stuff together, but other times we just show up to the track, try to compete, and cross our fingers that someone writes it down well enough to tell the story later.
