25 Years Ago October, 1969
25 YEARS AGO OCTOBER, 1969
ROUNDUP
Flat-track racer Neil Keen, profiled in the October, 1969, issue, had the pieces of the equation that later became Supercross racing, but didn’t put them together. Keen discounted the potential of motocross racing, saying, “The American doesn’t want to traipse around in the mud and watch it.” A few lines later, Keen says baseball and flat-track racing are popular because a fan “likes to sit in a stadium, preferably where it’s padded and cool, or warm.” Racing and the racers have both evolved in the last 25 years. Keen, addressing the AMA’s rule against women in the pits, said, “It’s convenient to be able to say ‘----’
when you please without insulting somebody’s wife, or just take a leak right beside your truck. Of course we’re going to do that anyhow, women or no women.”
• What Giacomo Agostini did or said in the pits at the Belgian Grand Prix was not chronicled, but we reported on his winning the race and clinching the 500cc championship aboard his MV Three, racing on the 8.8-mile Spa-Francorchamps track. • While an Italian man dominated 500cc GP racing, Italian motorcycles dominated our streetbike coverage. The Moto Guzzi 750cc V 7 Ambassador II was called, “Moto Guzzi’s answer to getting there in a big way, ponderously, but oh so comfortably.”
• For those interested in getting there in a small way, we took a look at Benelli’s 50cc Dynamo Compact, a mini that was “light, portable, relatively well-performing and street legal.” -Don Canet
