1. Reggie McNamara was born on Grenfell, New South Wales, Australia, 7 November 1887, died Belleville, New Jersey, United States, October 1970 or 1971 or 1972 and was an Australian cyclist known as a roughhouse velodrome rider with a string of dramatic crashes and broken bones over 20 years.
Reggie McNamara rode 3,000 races on three continents over 30 years and won more than 700 before he retired aged 50 in 1937.
Reggie McNamara grew up in the Australian countryside, the son of a sheep rancher.
Reggie McNamara began racing for money in local fairs around Sydney, shooting kangaroos and selling their skins to raise the entry fee.
Reggie McNamara won his first race, over a mile and a half on a dirt track, and travelled across Australia and New Zealand to wherever he could find races.
Reggie McNamara won the Sydney six-day race at the start of 1913 and caught the eye of Alf Goullet, an Australian international who had been asked to find two good Australians to race in Newark, New Jersey, United States.
Goullet signed just McNamara, telling the historian Peter Nye that McNamara was worth any two other riders.
Reggie McNamara would go and go and ride himself dead and then fall down.
Reggie McNamara went to the US and took American nationality when he married an Irish nurse, Elizabeth McDonough in 1913, whom he had met after breaking a leg during his first training ride.
Reggie McNamara set five world records from one to 25 miles at Newark velodrome in 1915,1916 and 1917.
Reggie McNamara won seven six-day races at Madison Square Garden in New York between 1918 and 1932, another five at the Chicago Coliseum and other six-day races in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and England.
Reggie McNamara won the 1932 Madison Square Garden six-day at the age of 45.
Reggie McNamara was known for spectacular crashes on the steep wooden tracks.
Reggie McNamara crashed up to 20 times in some sixes.
Reggie McNamara had needed 500 surgical stitches and suffered concussion five times.
Reggie McNamara distinguished himself by winning the [Madison Square] Garden's six-days in March and December in 1926, but only after narrowly averting disaster.
Reggie McNamara won his 19th and final six-day victory in Cleveland, USA, in January 1933.
Reggie McNamara's partner, Norman Hill, was 26 and born the year McNamara began racing.
Reggie McNamara was already 45 when he rode his last six-day.
Reggie McNamara worked as a race official while the races lasted and then in a school kitchen.
Reggie McNamara wrote his life story but failed to find a publisher.
Reggie McNamara died at 83 of a stroke in Belleville, survived by his wife, daughters, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Reggie McNamara is credited in VeloPlus, the Belgian reference book, with 19 six-day victories and finishing 108 sixes.
Obviously heir to Iron Reggie McNamara, Giorgetti was once pierced by an eight-inch splinter which he sent to his father to be exhibited.
Reggie McNamara earns $28,000 per year, has a barber shave him every day of the race, frequently dines on rice, lobster and beer with Tenor Benjiamino Gigli of the Metropolitan Opera Company.