Choppy Warburton

Choppy Warburton (suited) along with cyclists Arthur Linton, Jimmy Michael and Tom LintonJames Edward 'Choppy' Warburton (13 November 1845 – 18 December 1897 ) was an English record-breaking runner and a cycling coach.

Cycle racing Warburton coached three cycling champions: Jimmy Michael and brothers Thomas Linton and Arthur Linton of Aberaman, in the Cynon Valley. Warburton's success has been questioned, with claims that he drugged his charges.

The writer Rudiger Rabenstein claims that Arthur Linton was "massively doped" for the 1896 Bordeaux–Paris. There is in no proof that Linton was doped but his obituary "by one who knew him" said: I saw him at Tours, halfway through the race, at midnight, where he came in with glassy eyes and tottering limbs, and in a high state of nervous excitement. I then heard him swear – a very rare occurrence with him – but after a rest he was off again, though none of us expected he would go very far. At Orléans at five o'clock in the morning, Choppy and I looked after a wreck – a corpse as Choppy called him – yet he had sufficient energy, heart, pluck, call it what you will, to enable him to gain 18 minutes on the last 45 miles of hilly road.

Another obituary added: I hear by a side wind that one eminent promoter of professionalism... could, like Hamlet's Father's Ghost, a tale unfold which would cause each individual hair upon the licensing committee of the National Cyclists' Union to stand on end...

Arthur Linton was described by the Anti-Doping Forum in Sydney in 2004, as the first reported death of an athlete from drugs in sport, citing strychnine although other sources indicate he died of typhoid.

Warburton was banned from the sport.

Warburton appeared in a drawing of Michael by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the French Art Nouveau artist, for a poster to advertise Michael's sponsor, the Simpson chain company. The National Museum of Wales bought one of the posters in the 1960s although it is not on display.

Nickname Warburton is said to have gained the nickname Choppy from his father, a sailor who always responded with 'choppy', when asked what the weather had been on a voyage,

Death Warburton died of a heart attack in Wood Green, London in 1897.