The (almost) Motorcycle Olympics

THE (ALMOST) MOTORCYCLE OLYMPICS

Trialing Flattrackers vs Road-Race Motocrossers vs Drag Racing Enduros? What’s Going On Here?

Henry N. Manney III

After the success of various so-called Superstar athletic events on the Tube, it was only natural that the idea would extend to motorcycling. In the days before formal m/c events proliferated into the variety we have now, it was easy to say that flying Joe Sapone was the best because he won AMA’s No. 1 Plate; however, with desert racing, MX, trials, flat track, ISDT etc etc the choice isn’t that easy. Promoter Vic Wilson (two times weener Ensenada-LaPaz) therefore organized an event which bristled with important titles and purported to pick “the world’s best all-around motorcycle rider,” a tall order indeed. The entry list, seems to me, was chosen by readers of a local m/c sheet that’s anything but worldwide and in any case, certain factories were rather diffident about letting their contracted riders run in an event which gained no points and might not show off said riders to best advantage. More to the point was that the whole Suzuki team, for example, might go belly up by happenstance as manufacturers loathe comparison tests of this sort, especially when exposed to public view. Therefore what we wound up with was a collection of southern California hotshoes leavened somewhat by a few out-of-state enduro people (all ISDT golds), a couple of authentic furriners (even if one of them lives near here), and a trained bear or two.

The events were carefully picked to be representative, a drag race, road race, quarter-mile flat track, TT (not much more than a quarter mile), a “Scottish Trials” with two observed sections plus a MX. No mile track, no Isle of Man but handily enough the events did arrange themselves between Orange County International Raceway and Saddleback Park, two venues where Vic Wilson normally promotes events. Obviously the priorities were to keep everything in front of the spectators as well as the TV cameras (the event was filmed) for, obviously, TV is where the money is. TV is also known for taking the ball and running with it, which is why you may see the next event of this sort in Los Angeles Coliseum with Howard Cosell and Betty White doing the color.

The main idea of the competition was for it to be a reliability test for man and machine on ISDT pattern, although the Olympiad was rather an antipasto compared to the full meal of the ISDT, none of the segments requiring competitors to ride more than a half hour. Consequently some rather stringent rules were laid down about all work on the machines not feasible by fingers to be done in 10-minute periods between different types of races, the only exception being a full hour Saturday evening after the drag-road race duo. On the other hand, Vic didn’t want half the bikes to drop out on the first day on OCIR’s long straight (the drag strip) of the road race so a short, nadgery course was fixed up instead. I would think that if a two-stroke can be made to run flat out across a dry lake in the Baja 500 it can be made to run flat out down a half-mile straight for a few laps but that shows just how ignorant I am, As it turned out, Vic was probably right, but for different reasons.

There are a lot of things motorcylists can do to their machines when nobody is watching and with this in mind, Vic pulled a masterful PR stroke by asking the editor of every cycle paper in Christendom plus a lot of industry PR’s etc to be Marshals, thus assuring himself simultaneously of good coverage and more beady little eyes than a housefly. Each of the original 30 riders, (eventually 32) was to be assigned a marshal (decked out like a winkle peddler) to wipe his nose, tuck him in at night and keep a clock on him during the maintenance periods. Our Editor Mr. Girdler was attending the Ash Meadows GP so I got elected to do the job instead. Probably because I have been riding at Saddleback longer than anyone else except Wilson, my name was already down to be a marshal and as you and I have never been marshals before, it might be interesting for us to know what it was like.

After the obligatory booze-up and speeches Friday evening, everyone collected Saturday morning at an indecently early hour at OCIR, the Marshals and Press after drawing costumes, passes and what’s-not at the Saddleback Inn. This was chaos of course as there are always three chaps from the Pamunkey Whig holding up the line, said paper (if it exists at all) having run exactly one motorcycle story since Harley discovered front brakes. Anyway, we then beetled off to OCIR in hopes of viewing Tech Inspection and seeing just what got sealed up so it couldn’t be changed. In this we were frustrated as TI wasn’t operating yet, although a cheery Walt Fulton Sr. was present, and most of the riders were wandering around half asleep in Levis and go-fronts having gentle arguments with Chub Kellam about not having licenses with them but could they sign up anyway. Nothing like early morning at the race track. So we wandered around talking with Mike Hannon about Bultacos and looking at the bikes; a strange sight they were too with fairings on Maicos, Schwinn Commando front wheels on Husqvarnas, drag slicks on Yamahas, Baja thumpers on road racing tires and a Class C BSA Twin, God save the mark.

Shortly we were summoned to the Tower, not to have our heads chopped off but to be read the riot act by Chief Marshal Tom McGeachin. He told us primarily what the schedule was going to be and what was expected of us as marshals; i.e. not to be pit crew or cheering section for “our” rider but to keep tabs on him at all times. No maintenance was to be done outside of the designated periods and areas, no marked part could be changed, any non-marked part could be swopped for an identical one. etc etc but fiddly stuff like clutch levers could be changed without much ado from plastic to alloy. No engines running in work area. Finger maintenance could be done at any time. Und so w eiter, just what you would expect.

Then they brought the riders in for their meeting; Dave Aldana, Malcolm Smith, Hannon et al carried the brunt of this and the main decision really was whether to run the drags handicap or straight up. Jim Rice with his BSA Twin was the only one in favor of straight up and I am sure a lot of the others regretted it later. Several of us marshals were a bit surprised by all the argy-bargy and now we know what Russian village politics must be like! Anyway, soon afterward we all filed downstairs and out onto the track to listen to a stream of introductions by Larry Huffman (The Pest of the West) including the big wheels of the major sponsors—S&W (springs, not canned goods) and Monroe—Vic Wilson of course, stars of stage, screen and radio, and a slightly knock-kneed Miss MX West who was to draw the slips for rider-marshal pairings. There was also an introduction for a trained cat (we are still trying to figure that out) and then a slight panic when it was discovered that Aldana’s leathers were still locked up in the van.

As it turned out I didn’t get picked to hutch over anyone I know but instead wound up with Jack Penton, one of the celebrated Penton family who had just returned from a somewhat unsuccessful ISDT and, frankly, was still a bit tired and depressed by the whole thing. No prizes for guessing what he was riding; the orange 400 looked reasonable enough if not an ISDT bike and the only departures from stock I could see were Carlisle rainpattern street tires, a Lectron carb and what looked like a VW steering damper mounted in parallel with the right rear shock. While we were still swopping stories about Europe and discussing what we could do and couldn’t do. the show moved right along and we all got ourselves lined up for the drags. All this was as big a mystery to him and many other riders as it was to me; all riders would take four practice runs from which they would choose a target time. Improving or “breaking out” of this time by more than .1 sec would mean consignment to outer darkness or at least the lower echelons of placement, while the lucky, crafty or successful would determine the upper four placings in a final shootout. Practice of course was the usual shambles with lots of bringa-bringa and rushing about warming up tires and vain kicking on suddenly reluctant TT500s, most of which had been bored out to the fins. Carl Cranke was doing a bit of extra kicking under the fishy eye of marshal Dallas Baker and it turned out that Cranke’s Penton had stuck on him. said bike’s brand new engine objecting to being hurried down a dragstrip with southern Califs lousy gasoline. Jack Penton was complaining about a lot of dingling on the top end, Hannon had an “I wish I were a Bultaco” sticker on his Yamaha’s tank, John Hateley was having fun doing wheelies and Aldana shot past on an unauthorized pit trip to fix an oil leak, marshal waddling in pursuit, said fix costing Aldana several penalty points.

My Boy in practice, between bites of my lunch, did 13.74, 13.65, 13.82 and 13.85 which is pretty good for a two-stroke, temperature and so forth being as critical as it is. At any rate Jack picked 13.78 for his target and on his first timed run edged Billy Uhl (Maico) with a 13.778 which is close enough to be magic. The next run was delayed somewhat as Rick Hocking couldn’t get his thumper to fire but Jack got a really good start, instead of his usual selection of leaps and bounds, and led the four-stroke down the strip. Unfortunately he got too good a start ( 13.526) as both he and Hocking “broke out,” the local boy being kept in because he was the lesser offender. “I was beating him so bad I shut off!” complained Jack and most of the people I talked to thought that it was a helluva way to run a race, sort of like some of the old GPs with five gallons of fuel. Anyway, at the end Mike Bast went vs Dick Burleson (Bast broke out). Bast red-lighted against Kent Howerton (for 3rd), then Gary Semics red-lighted against Burleson so the Enduro King, not mud-covered for once, became King of the Dragstrip would you believe it. My Boy finished up 9th which gave him 23 pts against a possible of 40. Well, even Napoleon started small.

TV is known for taking the ball and running with it, which is why you may see the next event of this sort in the Los Angeles Coliseum with Howard Cosell and Betty White.

We all then trundled down to the pits for the official 10-min orgy. Jack was mostly preoccupied with putting a richer needle in the Lectron which involved taking most of the bike apart. A nut and washer got dropped into the pit which meant shaking the bike upside down but everything was done in plenty of time. Cranke was engaged in his basic top-end job w hich meant pulling exhaust, carb. head, barrel, wristpin and piston, then sanding out the cylinder before fitting a new' piston with rings (the old one had “picked up”) and doing everything in reverse order. Just at the end he asked “Hey Brian, where does this circlip go?” which got a good laugh. In a very cheerful and chatty fashion he did the job in 16 min which tells you something about professionals. doesn’t it? He lost points for overtime but was still running.

The road race was next, a Luh Mahnz start if you please with bikes in the order of their drag race finishes. We lucky marshals got to hold the bikes straight while these stoked-up fiends ran across and fired them up. Much to his surprise, Jack’s Penton lit up first kick and he shot away in the first 10 w hich, when they came around, was led by speedway flash Bast ahead of an interesting mixture of sound and styles, thundering four-strokes mixed in with whining two-strokes. My Boy was 7th at this point hut gradually slowed as the needle turned out to be too rich. Bast dropped out, muttering something about touching a valve, Hateley acceded to the lead until he stuffed it and lost time restarting the trick Honda, Uhl’s Penton slowed, Hannon lost his brakes and went into the hay, while Mosier’s Maico with fairing no less commenced a series of horrendous wobbles (loose spokes) and cooled it drastically. Diane Cox was motoring v well, holding her own in the scramble at the corners, Aldana came in with a loose inlet tract clamp, and when all was said and done Malcolm Smith of all people had blown off the four-stroke talent with his Husky, Rice (BSA Twin), Howerton (Husky),.Hocking (TT Yamaha) and Jim Fishback (Yamaha 400) following, in that order. Howerton was now' the points leader with 70 while Malcolm followed with 67. Ha. Cranke finished 15th with his new piston.

Then followed the 1 hr maintenance period, all of us a bit feeble as Wilson hadn’t provided anything to eat for riders or marshals, let alone time to eat it. My Boy swopped back to his original needle muttering remarks like oh well that’s life I guess, changed oil in the right fork tube, and spent most of the time fiddling with the motor mounts as one had broken and a spacer fallen out. In fact he went for a ride around the track looking for it; one would surmise that the Penton van close by would have such an object (he was free to get one) or a suitable substitute. Cranke and the rest of the ISDT people were an object lesson in rebuilding their bikes while carrying on a coherent conversation. The funny thing is that everybody expects these enduro heavies to be monsters who eat nails for breakfast but mostly they look like accountants (except Burleson who has a nice line in vampire teeth), are extremely polite, and aren’t all that big really. So then the horn blew, the bikes were all loaded into a semi, and that was all until Sunday.

All the marshals had to be at Saddleback Park at 9:30 even though racing didn’t start till 12 noon. Needless to say these instructions were honored more in the breach than in the observance and there was a good deal of scurrying about looking for alternate marshals. Bast and Jimmy Ellis had dropped out (Ellis’ CanAm bottom end had gone away) and four riders had penalty points, Aldana and Cranke obviously being two but I don’t know the others as that sort of info never filtered down to us. The riders appeared and we had another lecture from our Chief Marshal and another speech from Vic Wilson, most of which was taken up discussing whether to disconnect front brakes or not for the flat track (they stayed on) and the results of possible blockages on the “trials” section of the mountain circuit. Vio had put in bypasses for the sticky bits as everyone would be charging off at once and a jam-up could be serious; it was decided that the bypasses would count as a “five” but couldn’t be used on the first loop as otherwise the boys in front would have a real advantage. Actually the way to do this, as the trials sections were the second part of a rather loose hillclimb plus a very narrow canyon full of case-hangers, was to send the riders off at 10-sec intervals but that doesn’t look as spectacular on film, as well as being harder to score.

Eventually we off-loaded the bikes and coasted down to the fenced-off pits where poor Jack just stood and looked at his Penton as he couldn’t do any work on it. Anyway, very shortly we were called to line up in front of the stands with the riders and be introduced; I had always wondered what it would feel like to stand there like an absolute berk in white sombrero waiting for Huffman to get around to introducing My Boy; actually it is more like an Army short-arm parade than anything else as there are all sorts of shufflings and reorganizations first in alphabetical then numerical order etc. Then it was back to the pits where Jack wedged a rock in between frame and engine, using up the best part of a roll of duct tape, in an effort to keep the motive power from shifting around too much before the flat track. Practice for that was even more of a shambles enlivened by Aldana trying to bump-start his Yamaha which had well and truly stuck after its induction tract had worked loose in the road race. The event of course was on the usual knock-out principle which meant that the first two in the heats, and three from each semi, I think, ran the final while everybody else ran in the Hooligan. Jack got a good start in his heat and was 2nd on the first lap but as he never had done that sort of thing before eventually finished 4th. The engine had commenced to be a bit popply on top which didn’t help much but at least he could continue, complete with rock. Cox, who had looked v good in practice, lost her master link and spectated.

It is rather confusing in the infield like that with bikes coming at you from all angles, juggling Jack’s prop stand and plug wrench, grabbing cold drinks for My Boy, and taking notes all at the same time. The orders, results etc were posted on a camera truck and Jack almost missed his semi, getting an indifferent start this time and finishing 7th behind Semics and ahead of Lars Larsson. The consie wasn’t all that joyful either as the Carlisles weren’t giving much grip and then Burleson and Terry Clark fell over in front of Jack, resulting in a 10th-place finish. Boo. Hocking, Rice (who had no brakes since yesterday) and Hateley took the final in that order; nice to see four strokes come back! Hocking now had 101 with Howerton 2nd. As one of the marshals said, he could remember when the most important thing about a race meet was to get the bike started!

While the ever-busy Saddleback staff was moving haybales around like the carnival shell game, we all shot back to the pits for our Ten Minutes. Jack now produced a motor mount spacer, a nut to hold same, and bodged up the repair while also changing the rear wheel for a knobbied one (apparently they had thought the same tires had to be run all the way through) and also put a section in the chain, perhaps because the new sprocket was bigger. All in 10 minutes. Anyway the TT was run on the same lines as the flat track, using half the oval, a jump in the infield, and a sort of wiggle to get back out again. My Boy now really got his race face on while watching the elbowing in the first heat, featuring a nice crash by Hocking that removed his kick lever. Jack was all keyed up for the second but made a crummy start and passed Malcolm in the air to finish 6th. He was a bit despondent as the Penton still wasn't running right while Montesa’s Mike Griffits, a trials man, laughed that he wasn’t used to all that first corner action. King Richard Burleson in the next heat certainly proved he was by knocking handlebars with a beserko Mosier, beating him out for 3rd. Next up the semis and while a Harley (Marty Tripes) won the first one, Hateley took the second with My Boy 4th just unable to catch Hannon who still looks odd on anything but a Bultaco. Pretty crummy of them to cut him loose. In the consie. Jack was 7th through the first corner but finally learning the angles, working himself up to 2nd with a very fluffy engine and even pulling abreast of winner Hocking once or twice. In the main Hannah was a bit handicapped by a flat rear tire (“You can take air out but not in,” they told him) and finished last, his teammate Mike Bell taking the crown.

Everybody expects these enduro heavies to be monsters who eat nails for breakfast but mostly they look like accountants.

Well. Another Ten Minutes during which Jack removed the steering damper thing alongside his rear shock, changed to a knobbied front wheel, lowered the fork tubes (the announcement came at this point that Howerton was leading with 121 pts and Hocking was 2nd) and changed his helmet. I had brought some food, forewarned, and circulated around with a bag of nectarines feeling like Jesus with the loaves and fishes. Some of the other Press came by complaining about how mulish the security people were and altogether it was pretty much like Andersonville!

The horn went again and it was down to the track for practice for the Scottish Trials or mountain circuit, using part of the track for a Le Mans start and then up Mt. Wilson (Saddleback’s) via the loose hillclimb mentioned, down it again over a yump, off down a spine and trails thereof and finally back up Rain Canyon. Dry as a bone and I had warned Jack and his brother about how diabolically slippery it was, a half inch of sand over baked adobe. So they went off. clambering up the hill spewing roosters, to circulate a couple of times. While we were waiting for the bikes to get back from gassing up, I had a chance to talk to Malcolm who observed that this mountain circuit was the most miserable place to ride a motorcycle he’d ever seen. Of course he has about a million pins in his legs and has seen it all.

Aha. . .the tension mounted and the bikes lined up and 1 kept looking around for My Boy wondering what the hell he was up to out of my sight and should 1 have run back to the pits to stop him switching engines etc when there he was, sitting up on the bank with his Instamatic. The engine had seized and et its ring. Phooey. I felt like an English nanny whose children grow up and get married.

There was the patter of little feet and the bikes. . .most of them. . . burst into life. Up to the hillclimb they fled and powered up the hill, only an occasional diverting of the stream revealing where some unfortunate had to take two bites at the grade. Hateley was amusing himself going up the outside and making the spectators scatter and not a few of them jumped forthwith into space, landing dustily in the chapparal. Actually the Le Mans start served to spread out the entry preventing a serious blockage there but Rain Canyon was a different matter, AÍ Baker being stuck down in there with transmission bothers (he later retired. Rice DNS) for a while and Cox was reportedly a bit of a chicane as well. Hannah now had his flat fixed and led handily, followed by a while by Mike Bell until Mosier got him. Larsson dropped out the third lap, something to do with the electrics I think, Tom Penton came off and broke off his left-side handlebar. Griffits stuck the quiet Montesa, and Fishback lost his chain while in bth but replaced it to finish. Howerton was 6th, just as a point. Well, v interesting but not Scottish by a long shot.

Ten-minute work session. No. 31 sat unattended and its teammate No. 32 was missing, nobody knew where. I didn’t need to hold the kick stand any more nor have the plug wrench wadding out my back pocket. Eventually Tom Penton turned up limping and after some discussion was allowed to start the MX (even though he hadn’t been present at the work period with his bike) to get his Startgeld. So we wandered over to the MX track under a barrage of flat humor from the speakers and speeches thanking everybody except the Saddleback crew who prepared the tracks so nicely, to see the final event, one long in coming as the scorers had to sort something out. When the flag dropped, Hateley was first away but the big fourstrokes aren’t at their best on that sort of going; Hannah won it going away from the struggling group of Bell, Mosier and Tripes. Howerton, Cordis Jones and Semics were next up although at the end Tripes supplanted Mosier and Semics Jones.

All in all it was very stimulating even if the “Best All-Around Motorcyclist” tag is a bit presumptuous. The events have to be longer for one thing, the actual racing could start sooner with less “pageantry”, the pavement section has to be made at least half (or left out completely) and a few more Big Names have to be dragged into it by their team managers, no doubt kicking and screaming. Come to that, we could have some pretty hostesses providing food and drink. Still, as a first-time effort the Olympiad came off very well and we all look forward to another; as more than one rider said, next time we will know what to expect and come ready. Perhaps there will even be a commercial breaks. j¡§§