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Jackie Simes II dies at age 87

By Peter Joffre Nye
Published: Aug. 22, 2001
Jackie Simes II, with Joe Murray at the 1999 induction in to the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame.
Jackie Simes II, with Joe Murray at the 1999 induction in to the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame.
Photo: U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame

Jackie Simes II, 1936 national road champion and U.S. Bicycling Hall of Famer, died August 10 at age 87 of heart failure following a series of strokes. He died in a hospital near his home in New Tripoli, Pennsylvania. A second-generation racer, Simes inspired his son, Jack Simes III, to compete in a career that spanned three Olympics and a silver medal in the pursuit at the 1968 world championships, and grandsons, Ryan Simes Oelkers and Jack Simes IV to make the Simes family span more than a century of racing.

Referred to by friends as Jackie, he was born John Weston Simes II on January 11, 1914 in New York City. He recalled growing up near the New York City Velodrome and played as a child on the track’s boards while it was under construction in 1919. After the oval opened in 1920, he went with his father to watch races, which he continued to do in different venues for the next eight decades.

With his father’s coaching, Simes (rhymes with times) started competing in 1929 in the blue and gold colors of the Century Road Club of America. He started winning races in open competition in the early 1930s during the lean years of the Depression. Simes won a streak of 37 victories in 1933 and 1934, at distances from 1 mile to 200 miles. The sport’s governing body, the Amateur Bicycle League of America, predecessor to the U.S. Cycling Federation, couldn’t afford to hold national championships. But Simes earned a national reputation when he won a new red Chevrolet convertible while he was still in high school for his victory in the 1933 revival of northern New Jersey’s 25-mile classic from Irvington to Milburn. That evening, he won another race and took home a new Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

When the ABLA resumed holding nationals in 1935 in Atlantic City, Simes won a bronze medal. The next year in St. Louis he won the national championship. At the Olympic road trials that followed, however, a puncture near the finish took him out of contention. He concluded the 1936 season in October at the National Capitol Open in Washington, D.C., where he set national records at three miles and 15 miles on his way to winning the 30-mile event.

Mike Fraysee, former USCF president whose father, Victor, had competed against young Simes, said he grew up hearing about Simes during dinner conversations. "My father said that Jackie Simes was one of the best riders he ever saw," Fraysee said. "He was blazing fast and could win any bike race that he wanted."

In January 1937, he turned 23 and took out a professional license. While competing in a six-day race in San Francisco’s Dreamland Auditorium, he fell and smashed into a wooden railing that injured his abdomen. Doctors told him he risked life-threatening damage if he suffered another bad crash. He then retired after eight years of racing.

Simes opened a bicycle shop in Westwood, New Jersey, and shifted his sport to playing hockey on several amateur teams in Madison Square Garden. He married Theresa Bolles. They had a son, Jack III, and daughter, Patricia. They all survive him.

Simes coached many younger riders, including Jack Heid, who competed in the 1948 London Olympics. Heid went on to win a bronze medal at the Copenhagen 1949 world championships in the amateur matched sprints -- the best world-championship sprint performance among U.S. men until Marty Nothstein’s 1994 victory.

Simes was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1999, four years after his son. Musing on how he followed his son’s induction, the elder Simes’s competitive spirit flared. He observed, "My son was voted in a few years after he was nominated. I was voted in on the first round."