Success Quote by Major Taylor

Sports crowds are supposed to be fickle: they love you until you lose. Major Taylor is pointing to a rarer, almost radical exception - a public that can tell the difference between failure and fraud. The key phrase is "after doing his level best". Taylor is interested in effort not as a motivational poster slogan, but as a social contract between performer and audience. If the rider shows up with "confidence" (not arrogance) and races without excuses, the crowd responds with an ovation even in defeat. That applause is a kind of moral verdict: you were honest.

The context matters. Taylor was a Black superstar in a violently racist America, competing in an era when cycling was a major spectator sport and when crowds could be brutal, especially to someone in his position. So this observation reads as more than etiquette; it is a small argument for fairness. He is describing moments when spectators temporarily chose merit over prejudice, performance over personal animus. The ovation becomes evidence that the public can recognize competence and courage, even if it doesn't always want to.

There is subtext in the restraint. Taylor doesn't romanticize the crowd; he simply notes what he "noticed", as if collecting data on human decency. He also quietly defends ambition. Confidence is allowed, even applauded, as long as it is paired with visible labor and clean competition. In a culture obsessed with winners, Taylor praises a different hero: the rider who risks the humiliation of losing and earns respect anyway.