RIVALLING THE FLY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12066, 9 September 1902, Page 6

RIVALLING THE FLY.

->- AN AMERICAN WHO CAN CYCLE UPSIDE DOWN. In its latter days the Westminster Aquarium is providing the public with one of the most sensational exhibitions of daring seen within its walls for many years. .An American cyclist, who masks his identity under the name Diavolo <s demonstrating the possibility of riding a bicycle "upside down," with the wheels against the ceiling, so to speak, and his body hanging from it. The performance is called "looping the loop," and it has tilled American audiences with a creepy delight. The "loop'' is a part of'a board track, which begins in a corner of the Aquarium, about 45ft from the ground, and ends on the stage, over 200 ft away. From the starting-point the cyclist swoops down the inclined track, attaining a speed of nearly 50 miles an hour by the time he reaches the floor level. Then he loops the loop. From the floor the track bends upwards, forming a circle in the air 30it high, and Diavolo enters the loop at such speed that he is carried right round the inside of the circle, with the result that at one moment, at the top of the circle, his wheels are pressing the "roof" and he himself is riding head downwards. So far, say the looping experts, there is no risk at all. It is when the rider begins to come down the half-circle that brings him to earth again that he requires all his nerve. The momentum which has carried him upwards is all but exhausted, but his own force of gravity naturally impels him down the completing half-circle with great force, while, the pressure which Has " glued" his wheels to the track is at the same time relaxed. In this critical moment he must keep his front, wheel set precisely straight. Succeeding in this, his machine descends in safety, and, emerging from the loop, runs up the, incline opposite to that by which the rider has entered, and he steps off lightly on to the state. But it the wheel swayed ever so slightly as the rider came down the halfcircle from the top of the loop to the floor the machine would fly from the track, and I lit* cyclist, would, if he were lucky, gambol in the outstretched nets, or, if unlucky, roll in the track itself. Diavolo knows how to avoid either fate. 'The track varies in* width from about 3ft at. the starting-point to 12ft in the loop, and for the rider's guidance a. thick black line is painted down, the middle of it, upon which he rides.