Plague of Strength

Louise Armaindo (1861-1900) isn’t just awesome because she was a drunken French Canadian version of Stefi Choen, filled to the eyeballs with cocaine and strychnine, waving a pistol, and sitting atop one of those ridiculous old timey bicycles with the giant front wheel, screaming mockery at the men she just trashed in a race, or because she is Canada’s first professional strongwoman- she’s awesome because she’s living proof that any person who trains with an obsessive will to succeed can achieve great things in damn near any sport, no matter what the challenges they face. 

The photo above is one of the only one of Louise in existence, and certainly doesn’t capture all that was Montreal’s maniacal first internationally famous female pro athlete, Louise Armaindo.  Standing between 5’1″ and 5’4″ and weighing about 130 pounds, Armaindo was the daughter of a circus strongwoman and a Canadian voyageur (a boatman who takes fur traders to remote areas) who was such a bad motherfucker he would reportedly fight groups of people at once for prizefights… and she was every bit the badass you’d expect.

Raised to be a strongwomen, she could do a teeth lift of 760lbs as a teen and became a trapeze star in Chicago, but by the mid 1870s she had ditched the trapeze for competitive racewalking, which had recently become all the rage in the United States (seriously, it was THE sport of the era).  In her first race, which occurred in 1879, Armaindo came in third to two men in what can only be described as a horror spectacle rather than a sexual one:

“Near total sleep deprivation and fatigue left participants hallucinating, delirious, walking corpses. The events were so grueling that there were protests against it, even back then. It was a vehicle for gambling, sure, but it was also a theatre of cruelty. New York City banned marathon walking because the races were “offensive to the sense of propriety and decency, demoralizing on community, and cruel and inhuman for participants’” (Giddens).

When interest in that waned, Armaindo turned to racing penny farthings, which were just as difficult to get on as they were to stay on, and dangerous as fuck to fall off of.  Women lacked any amateur races and went right into pro meets, so by 1881 Louise had channeled her inner Mat Hoffman (BMX’s answer to Tony Hawk) and started doing trick riding at a local bicycle school, then began challenging both men and horses to races (as there were few women to challenge her).  She began racing and defeating the two top men in the field the following year, and by 1883 it was getting hard to find anyone who’d challenge the brash, brawling broad from Montreal… other than her coach, promoter, and possible husband, who hung a sound beating on her every chance he seemed to get.

“A reporter was watching Louise train and ride at the Chicago Natatorium in preparation for these races. Suddenly wheeling up to the visitor, Louise stopped, dismounted, and inquired, ‘How do you like me for ze expert bicyclienne?’ ‘Oh, pretty well,’ said the reporter, who attempted to transcribe her accent, “but you are almost too fat to be in good racing condition.” ‘Too fat! Too fat!’ Louise screamed. ‘You of my leg feel! You ze muscle find and not ze fat!’ She was an incredibly strong and superbly fit young woman, and she was about to prove it” (Hall).

When they parted, Louise replaced him with a pistol she’d use to ensure promoters paid her in full and on time by pressing it against their cheek when they tried to fuck her about.  Racing was a corrupt sport and the fans knew it, however, so when high-profile races would devolve into brawls people began to turn their backs on a sport already considered to be “too difficult for women.”  Though the competition began to pick up among the women, Armaindo was so sick of racing men and horses that she’d let herself get out of shape.  When she competed, it was more of a demonstration ride than a race, and so when she beat the fucking brakes off her second abusive husband for raising his hand at her, her career was finished.

“He got physical and Louise, according to reports, dragged herself out of bed, and proceeded to beat the daylights out of young Norman. She threw him all around their room, then knocked and dragged him out into the common areas of their rooming house, kicked him down the stairs, and out the door.

We might quietly applaud Armaindo for this, but at the time, she was held up as a cautionary tale for other young women thinking about a velo career. Editorials warned parents not to let their young daughters get into bike racing. Articles argued that their health would surely suffer from racing, and also that once they got a taste for adulation, the racers would find a return to uncelebrated domestic drudgery less inviting, and we don’t want that! The Omaha Herald called out Louise Armaindo as a particularly sorry example.

‘She comes from a family of strong women, The Herald said, but even she is all broken up now’” (Giddens).

What actually killed her were complications from an injury escaping one of the many fires to plague Chicago in that era.  The hotel in which she was staying, the Carlino, caught fire, and that boded poorly for our heroine:

“Armaindo had nailed her window shut, to prevent people from getting in her room from the fire escapes. So the flames were well advanced by the time she was able to get free. In her usual take-no-prisoners fashion, Louise leapt out her window, and partially broke her fall by landing onto a shed roof. Still, she fractured a hip and suffered internal injuries that confined her to a five-month spell in a Buffalo, N.Y. hospital.  Professor Hall tracked down her name exactly there, recorded in a 1900 census, which appears to be the last official mention of our heroine” (Giddens).  

And in case you’re curious about any of the other badasses of the era involved in this crazy nonsense, here’s a list of chicks to research:

Sources:

Giddens, David.  Louise Armaindo: Canadian professional sports pioneer.  CBC.  7 Aug 2019.  Web.  13 Jul 2021.  https://www.cbc.ca/sportslongform/entry/louise-armaindo-canadian-professional-sports-pioneer

Hall, Anne.  Muscle on Wheels: Louise Armaindo and the high-wheel racers of nineteenth-century America.  Canadas History.  23 Jan 2019.  Web.  13 Jul 2021.  https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/books/racing-against-the-best

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