Rochester’s history is filled with interesting characters, one of them is trick cyclist Nicholas Kaufmann.

Kaufmann was born and grew into young adulthood in Rochester in the late 1800s. Like many in Rochester in the late 19th century, Kaufmann came down with a serious case of the bicycle fever that sweeping through U.S.

Karen McCally, a former senior communication specialist at the University of Rochester, mentions Kaufmann in an article in the spring 2008 edition of Rochester History.

After a childhood friend broke his arm riding his bike, Kaufmann scraped up the money to buy it. Not long after, Kaufmann was a top racer at the Driving Park track in Rochester’s Maplewood neighborhood, setting a new world record for a mile on a dirt track (3 minutes, 17 seconds), McCally said.

He walked away from his picture-framing business in Rochester to follow his love of cycling.

Within a few years, Kaufmann’s skill and renown had grown so large that he was invited to England, where the future King Edward VII snuck out at night to watch him perform, according to a splashy June 13, 1935, article by Howard H. Kemp in the Democrat and Chronicle. Kemp says Kaufmann became a world champion and developed stage show to that displaying his remarkable prowess on bikes. He eventually performed for the sultan of Turkey and tsar of Russia in the late 1800s.

Not too shabby for a kid to from Rochester who in 2024 became Remarkable Rochesterian. But Kaufmann’s living legacy isn’t the tricks he performed on his bike. It’s a sport he founded in Rochester that’s all but forgotten locally.

As retired Senior Editor Jim Memmott tells it, Kaufmann was riding a high wheeler — bikes with a giant front wheel —in Rochester when his dog Mops got in the way.

“Kaufmann moved Mops aside with his front wheel. Eureka! He realized there was sport to be had if you substituted a ball for a dog and created a competition between teams,” Memmott wrote in a 2024 column for the Democrat and Chronicle.

That sport came to be known as cycle ball, or radball. The indoor game is basically soccer on bikes. Riders guide a ball up and down a court using their front wheels to pass and shoot while never letting the feet touch the ground. The goalie, also on bike, is the only player who can use their hands.

It never caught on in the U.S., but it did catch fire in other parts of the world. There’re even world championships.

Once he became famous, Kaufmann returned to Rochester many times, but he ultimately settled down in Germany. He died in 1943, ending a life transformed by a bicycle.

— Bill Wolcott is a producer who helps cover the Buffalo Bills, high school and Rochester sports in general. The lifelong New Yorker has been a journalist for 31 years. 

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Nicholas Kaufmann invented cycle ball in Rochester NY in late 1800s