Major Taylor - in his day one of the biggest sports celebrities, now remembered, but only by people into what's become a bit of a fringe sport.
Same idea, there were a lot of famous cyclists between the late 1800's and the start of WWII. Especially the ones who rode the 6 day races during the depression. Now they're pretty much entirely forgotten.
One of the guys I met did a lot of work meeting the few left and interviewing them. I think he did a documentary. All of them were surprised and grateful to be remembered at all, more than one of them had family that didn't know how good they'd been or that they'd been famous at all.
That's probably true for most of the top players in any sport that's not one of the big four in the US now.
Steve B
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