The Scene

THE SCENE

BY IVAN J. WAGAR

THIS issue of CYCLE WORLD features a very controversial figure in motorcycling, namely Wester S. Cooley, a man I have known for 10 years and yet not really known. The reason for publishing the article should be plain: It is time that the public knew about some of the behind-the-scenes power plays that are threatening this country’s motorcycling future.

As early as 1960, when I wanted to resume racing after a six-year absence, I grudgingly paid Mr. Cooley the ofttimes seemingly ridiculously high entry fees to compete in one of his road races. Week after week and month after month I kept on paying those entries. All because, as someone once said, it was the only game in town.

How true that statement was during the California AMA road racing drought of the Sixties. Our “national” sporting body, the American Motorcycle Association, simply did not exist as far as road racing was concerned.

Another reason for paying the money and keeping quiet was because I wanted to race a 7R AJS, a machine that the AMA did not even recognize.

Both of these reasons, riding a 7R and wanting to compete more than once a decade, made me appreciate just how much Mr. Cooley was doing for me. Why he was doing it, I never could understand. Was it money or ego, or did he really dig motorcycle racing? I never did fathom the reason. Whatever it was, he did permit me to ride a machine I liked, on the type of circuits I liked, without forcing me to buy something suitable for Ascot Park in order to stay in the club. Or, for that matter, traveling halfway across the country to ride a road race on a modified street bike.

Mr. Cooley’s races are often criticized because of low prize money. A winning day, in fact, is when you go home with the 350 heat, final and a 3rd overall in the open class, and buy a root beer, providing you had 25 cents before you started.

I chuckled a while back, as I sat in an AMA Trustees meeting and heard one of the stalwarts(?) of the association suggest that the AMA form a committee to find out why people want to ride “outlaw events.” It should be mentioned here that any event not sanctioned by the AMA is considered outlaw

by some of the people in that association. It is now more than a year later and the committee is, to the best of my knowledge, still groping for the answer, despite suggestions from many outsiders. How easy it would have been to ask half a dozen of the AMA’s best road racers.

Even Jody Nicholas could have related how it cost $21 to run at Riverside recently. In fact, he had to pay admission in order to get himself into the race track. But, looking at the calendar, we find that Jody would have been out of luck for an AMA road race within 2000 miles on that particular day. Like the man said, “It’s the only game in town.”

This column has frequently criticized the AMA’s bitter outlook toward nonAMA racing. Too often there have been devout non-motorcyclists making and enforcing the rules which thousands of motorcyclists must live by, and frequently they are the ones pushing for absolute AMA domination of our sport.

The simple truth is that this country is too big, and the sport too diversified, for a single association to handle the whole ball of wax. Even in a country as compact as England, where the Auto Cycle Union rules with an iron hand, there is a splinter association and, as you might expect, the feuding and rider suspension is similar to the problems we have faced here.

The splinter group in England and the non-AMA clubs in this country can, because of their small size, give the members a more custom-tailored type of racing. They do not have outdated rule books they must live by, and in many cases there are no rule books whatever. Therefore, apart from basic displacement limits and starting and scoring procedures, it is fairly easy to adjust the less important rules to suit the course or the riders.

It is this less formal approach that has lured thousands of riders in this country to take part in events sanctioned by the splinter groups. The seriousness of AMA professional racing can be an earth-shattering experience for someone just breaking into the sport. But the high number of top AMA riders that have graduated from the splinter ranks prove the benefit to the AMA of these groups.

The contract between Mr. Berry and Mr. Cooley is a gigantic positive step toward peaceful coexistence and more and better motorcycling. Now we learn that the AMA Executive Committee, at their meeting on April 28, voted unanimously to accept Mr. Berry’s resignation from the post of executive director. This move could mean that some of the staunch AMA members in favor of AMA domination will use any anti-Berry feeling to squash the good intentions of the contract. And that could be disastrous.

Even now, with these petty behindthe-scenes power struggles, we must seem a little bit silly to the FIM and some of the member countries. The only saving grace in the whole affair is that the FIM needs this country’s membership so badly that they will go along with just about anything we may fumble through in the way of a proposal.

This eagerness on the part of the FIM was made clear to me 10 years ago when Count Laurani, then president of the CSI (the sporting body within the FIM), told me that it was imperative that the United States belong to the FIM. Since that time we have grown into the biggest motorcycle sporting country in the world. Until this contract, however, no single organization has shown the maturity required to represent this country in the FIM.

I think the AMA should take a long hard look at all of the functions they cannot provide for the motorcyclists of this country, and let the Cooleys, and others who are prepared to do the work, get on with better motorcycling.