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to compete in the Isle of Man TT. At the TT, De Rosier set the fastest qualifying speed, but he found the course to be extremely difficult, leading to his famous quote, "This ain't going to be no tea party," which was immortalized by the British. De Rosier, who wore black theatrical tights for better aerodynamics, led the first lap. The course was so rough that De Rosier's tool cases were broken, and he lost all his tools and spares. When he crashed a few laps later, he had no tools to make repairs. He put a borrowed spark plug in his Indian and continued the race to finish 12th, only to be disqualified for receiving outside assistance on the course. After the TT, De Rosier took part in a series of match races against British Champion Charles Collier at the famous Brooklands circuit. De Rosier won two of the three races using his board-track-racing experience on the banked circuit to draft past Collier before the finish line. De Rosier left England as a popular figure, having received numerous gifts from British fans. Tributes to De Rosier, including a poem, appeared in British motorcycle newspapers and magazines. Upon his return from England, De Rosier and Indian had a disagreement, and De Rosier signed to race for Excelsior. While he won races for Excelsior, he never recaptured the success he'd had with Indian. On March 12, 1912, De Rosier sustained serious injuries in a match race with Charles Balke at the Los Angeles Stadium Motordrome. Doctors gave De Rosier a slim chance of recovery. De Rosier rallied after an operation on his severely broken leg, but he never fully recovered. He returned to Massachusetts for a third operation on his leg and, at the age of 33, died from complications of the surgery on February 25, 1913. Hundreds attended his funeral, and Indian ordered its flags set at half- mast and ceased production for five minutes as the funeral procession passed the factory. De Rosier was laid to rest at St. Michael's Cemetery in Springfield, Massachusetts, nearly in the shadow of the Indian factory. "Woodsie" and Frenchy Castonguay were De Rosier's nephews, and both became racing stars in the 1920s and '30s. De Rosier reportedly won nearly 900 races of all types during his racing career. He was said to have had a magnetic personality and was considered the craftiest racer of his era. He rode from the earliest days of single-cylinder motor bicycles to the time of full-fledged motorcycles capable of triple- digit speeds. The motorcycle magazines of the time called him the most famous racing motorcyclist the sport had ever known. CN This Archives edition is reprinted from the September 30, 2009, issue of Cycle News. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor CN III ARCHIVES P102 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives At the TT, De Rosier set the fastest qualifying speed, but he found the course to be extremely difficult, leading to his famous quote, "This ain't going to be no tea party."