A quarter mile race for a cup with a 10 mile back story

“Annette, the whole family and I have such special memories of you and all our SSC friends.  When we were married in 1989 the Club presented us with a beautifully engraved, very handsome Dartington glass decanter.  I recall that Alan Titmuss took charge of the proceedings and true to form, he insisted on hamming it up.  So the box he initially handed me was full of broken glass which he made me drop onto the ground- with the desired gasps from the suitably appalled club members!”

Writing in the mid 2000s, Alan Titmuss captured memories of Farbe -  "Louis, a likeable Frenchman, full of Gallic charm and a Maurice Chevalier accent, was born in the South of France. His love of horses brought him to England at the time of the First World War, with the idea of signing up.  It is not clear what happened but he never made it back to France. Right up to his death at the ripe old age of 88 years you would have thought he had just got off the boat at Dover, his accent was so strong. But it paid off with the ladies, especially at his wife's hairdressing salon in Paddington.

"Always fond of the open-air life, at seventy-six he could still be seen, early in the morning, exercising racehorses on Epsom Downs."

When pulling together the club history, Alan Titmuss reported the following achievement by Louis:

In 1919 the British Olympic swimming coach, a Mr Brickett, claimed a world record endurance event over eight miles -  1 mile walking, 4 miles cycling, 1 mile running over hurdles, 1 mile rowing and 1 mile swimming all in 55mins. 34.5secs. 

Some thirty years later our own Louis Fabre tried to better the record and covered an extra two miles. Apart from his acknowledged prowess as a swimmer, Louis was an outstanding all-round athlete of some ability, so no one was surprised when he undertook at the age of sixty-one a 10 mile endurance test, set on beating Brickett's record. The organisation of such an attempt was a considerable problem and had to be postponed on more than one occasion. Difficulty finding a suitable track, the police refusing to allow hurdles on the public highway, and getting little support nearly caused Louis to give up the idea.  Finally a suitable track in Paddington was found, having four circuits to the mile. The attempt was made on the 8th September 1949, in the presence of a leading ' specialist in each sport, two official timekeepers and the press who followed the entire event. The performance consisted of one mile running in 7 mins. 29 seconds, one mile walking in 11 mins. 13 seconds, one mile over 32 hurdles in 7mins 30 seconds, and five miles cycling in 15 mins 20 sees. Changing to his road machine and cycled the four miles from Paddington Recreation ground to Hammersmith, where at Lyons Boat House a sculling boat was waiting; a quick change and off he went for a one-mile scull from the 'Bemax Works' to Crabtree in 6 mins 25 seconds. He then dived into the Thames and swam the mile to Putney Pier in 15 mins 53 seconds, finishing his 10 mile non-stop performance. He accomplished his feat in the astonishing time of 63 minutes 50 seconds. A remarkable achievement, and rightly claimed by Louis as a world record.