World Champion Walter Rutt
On January 6, 1913, Berlin newspapers reported that Walter Rutt would not be offered a contract for the upcoming six-day race due to his excessive fee demands. In the race that had just ended at Madison Square Garden, which he won alongside Joe Fogler, he had ridden for a fraction of his current demand.
He started the most successful season of his career as a sprinter. Not only did he win the Grand Prix races in Paris, Copenhagen, and Berlin, but he was also one of the favorites at the World Championships in Leipzig. These took place on August 28 and 31 at the Lindenau sports field in Leipzig, with 43 riders from eight nations participating.
Walter Rutt completed the preliminary and intermediate rounds in outstanding fashion and faced Denmark's Thorvald Ellegaard and France's Andre Perchicot in the final. The final had to be restarted twice because Ellegaard had a flat tire on his bike. Rütt forced the Dane into the lead and skillfully controlled the Frenchman riding behind him. With 300 meters to go, Ellegaard opened the sprint, but Rutt worked his way up energetically and then beat him decisively. He received prize money of 1,000 marks for his victory.
The participants of the 1913 World Championship
The memory of that day stayed with him for the rest of his life. “I remember being overcome by an indescribably wonderful feeling of triumph when the crowd cheered me enthusiastically on the final lap and my teammates carried me on their shoulders to the finish line, where the UCI president pinned the gold championship medal on me and draped the gold-embroidered sash around my shoulders.”
Gold medal front
Exclusive to walterruett.de:
The gold medal from the 1913 World Championships
The suspension mechanism features a link from a racing bike chain. It comes from the chain that was mounted on the racing machine Walter Rutt rode in the final race in Leipzig.
Orla Rutt (1915-2004), Walter Rutt's second son, received the medal in 1964 after his father's funeral and took it with him to his adopted home of Denmark. Orla Rutt gave the medal to his son Alex on his 50th birthday.
Photos: Alex Rytt
Fotos: Alex Rytt
Gold medal back