News Flash: Mx Life Found Past Age 30!
News Flash: MX Life Found Past Age 30!
RACE WATCH
Old warriors find their own battles at the Vet Nationals
JON F. THOMPSON
THERE'S NO MISTAKING THOSE FACES. They're race faces, every one of them. Even through the helmet and goggles, as the riders sit waiting for their gates to fall, there’s that hardness around the eyes, the thousand-yard stare, the body language that bespeaks the concentration and commitment of the hard-core motocross racer.
Only when the race is over, only when these riders begin to pull off their helmets, wipe the sweat out of their eyes and gulp down water do you see that they’re not quite w'hat they might have appeared to be.
These riders are-my word, they’re old. Ancient, even, some of them. Creases in the foreheads. Wrinkles around the eyes. Thickened middles. Gray in the hair—and in some cases, not much hair.
Where are the triple-jumping, jive-talking, ear-ringed brats who usually infest top-class motocross meets? Why, this is just a bunch of codgers, wanna-bes out reliving lost youth-walking examples of a T-shirt seen here, in these very pits. It reads, “The older I get, the faster I was.”
Why the hell don’t these clowns go back to their rocking chairs and let the real racers race?
Well, don’t bet on these guys not being real racers. Not until you watch them hammer around in a couple of motos. For this is the Vet Nationals, a something-for-everyone motocross race weekend held this year, appropriately, the same weekend George Foreman, 45, felled a man nearly half his age to once again become heavyweight champion of the world.
This event, now' in its ninth year, is held at Glen Helen Park, a GP-style track-in fact, the site of the USGP two years ago-at the foot of California’s historic Cajon Pass, just off old Route 66 north of San Bernardino. It’s a fast track-some of the straights call for fourth gear-and it's got lots of elevation changes, including some very long drop-offs. With so many racers of so many ability levels all jumping their own jumps and finding their own lines, it’s also very rough. Huge potholes mark the entrances to corners, dug there by the increasingly hard braking as riders get more and more serious. Exits are marked by craters gouged by clawing, on-the-gas knobbies. Track conditions are grim. but even worse, the track has its own ageometer-a vicious set of whoops, out on its backside, that quite literally separates the boys from the men. The older you are, the less willing you are to tripleor double-jump them.
Observed Mel Moore, a Kawasaki executive on hand to watch the proceedings, “A motocross racer knows he’s having his mid-life crisis when he looks at those big doubles and realizes he’s not as young as he used to be.”
But the track doesn't worry these guys. They've been hardened by life, and so many of them have turned out that track owner Bud Feldkamp, himself a retired racer, muses, “It's just like motocross in the good old days when people used to come.”
People have indeed come. According to Tom White, half of the White Brothers and the event's patron saint. “We've got 470 entrants for today (Sunday), and 375 for yesterday. It’s up a hundred from last year. I dreamed it would be this good. But I didn't really think it would be.”
The White Brothers are involved, White says, for the best of reasons: 30and-up motocrossers account for half the White Brothers' motocross market. Said White, “Our primary market is motocross products, and the vets are the guys that have the money. So we feel like we can support this and give something back to our customers.”
A big part of that something is what the White Brothers call the Legend s-l 7 of motocross' greatest names, racers from all eras of modern motorcycling. They're here to ride a few demonstration laps, on period bikes, wearing period gear.
You want legends? How about BSA ace Chuck “Feets” Minert, who started racing in 1947, or Marty Moates, who won the USGP at Carlsbad for Yamaha in 1980, or former factory Suzuki star Kent Howerton, or Husqvarna honcho Lars Larsson, or onetime Honda teamsters Chuck Sun and Warren Reid, or any of the others of this group of 17? These guys, riders of a certain age on bikes of a certain age, showed up. To race. To visit. And to remember.
Said Reid, 36, who rode for Honda from 1977 through '79, “In a way, this makes me feel old. It must be what it’s like when war veterans get together. We all did battle. But now we're able to get together. The war’s over, and nobody’s mad anymore. Everybody’s forgotten all the old grudges.”
“We wondered what it wrould take to get these guys to come out,” said White, who added. “It turns out, all we had to do was ask.”
Reid and his pals weren’t the only ones who showed up. This was a full day of racing for a full paddock of racers. But it w'as a race day with a difference, and Reid wasn’t the only one feeling old.
Because motocross is so much a young man's sport, you can race as a vet starting at the doddering old age of 25. Of this younger contingent of vets, few felt older, and none went faster, than Doug Dubach. who won the Vet Nationals headline race, the 30-year-old Pro event, last year.
Said Dubach, 31, “It’s strange-you look at the word vet, and at how it sounds, it makes you feel so old. I don’t feel old. and I don’t feel like the word. But if that’s what they’re gonna call it, I'll race it.”
Mike Dunlap, at 26 another young vet-mini-vet, maybe?-also is aware of the passage of time. He informed a reporter, “Yeah, 30 is old. But if you want to have fun, this is the way. You bust your butt working all w'eek. you can come out and race. It's fun.” Dunlap and Dubach had their eyes on the prize, but there were plenty of others who were less interested in winning and more interested in participating. Lots came to see the Legends event, a few part-throttle parade laps combined with an opportunity to shake the riders’ hands and seek their autographs. But a lot more came for the same reason Dunlap did.
Said Chuck Sun, a Honda factory rider in 1984 who became a stockbroker, and who now works for the U.S. Husaberg importer, “This is good for my attitude and my outlook, and it pushed me to exercise. I was up to 200 pounds. Motorcycling, once again, came along at the right time in my life. It saved me once when I was a kid-I could have gotten into drugs and things. Now' it’s saved me again. I’m gonna be out there looking for that berm, throwing up dirt.”
But wait a minute: Isn’t there some age beyond which it’s unwise to ride, much less race?
Maybe. but if there is. Fred Ses sions, 65, from CleElum, Washington, hasn't found it. Sessions. a retired gent collecting Social Security, says he's sponsored by the federal governmerit. It must work. Fle holds the number-one plate in his age group. and lie won his class here today.
The "why" of the thing may he something only men can understand. Asked why her husband. Scott, 55. and son, Scott Junior. 33. ere batter ing themselves out on the race course, Linda Walker. from Rid~ie crest, California. offered a female's perspective on the lowly male: "I think when it gets in their blood they can't leave it alone." And then. more serious. she added, "The racing has kept our boys out of all kinds of trou ble. Instead of parties, drugs and smoking. they trained. It's a very healthy sport."
It's good for business, too, accord Ing to Horst Leitner. Leitner, 53. of Laguna Beach. California. is the founder of ATK motorcycles and now makes his living building high-tech bicycle parts. He's here today to race because, he sas. "Doing this keeps your spirits up. Your brai ii stays sharp. In motocross, you have to make so many decisions. and you have to make them f~ist. It helps you all day long. In business, you can't he a slow thinker."
In fact, these guys contend that haying a bit of time on them makes them better racers. Listen, for instance, to Thonias Englehardt. 37. of San [)icgo. California: "Sure. I've been hurt, and now the healing process takes more time than it used to. So you get a little older and you ride a little more conservatively. But the experience definitely helps. It pays off in gating, and in reading the lines.”
Richard Zeiler, 61, of Renton, Washington, agrees: “The experience definitely helps you. I'm a smarter racer now, and I have more confidence in myself."
So. they're here to race—codgers and not-so-codgers alike. But there was another reason, as well, a reason that could be summed up by just watching a group of riders with Sessions and Zeiler who made the trip down to Southern California from Washington State. When they weren't racing, they were enjoying one another, their folding chairs pulled in a circle around a motorhome. They laughed, they teased, they told racing stories. And they had a terrific time.
Male bonding. Senior division.
“This is such good, clean fun." said Pamela Bray, wife of Alan Bray, as she watched her husband, part of the Washington group, enjoy his pals. “There’s no vulgarity or hard drinking. They’re all such gentlemen."
And when the weekend was finally over, the final moto run, the last bike loaded and the final gas can put away, the results? The ones who cared most were the 30-year-old Pros like Dubach. He won his event, beating the likes of Jeff Ward and Greg Zitterkopf.
For the rest of the runners, it was a bit like visiting the scene of an ancient battlefield. The cannon fire of combustion is gone, now, and as the sun sets, it's silent. Ah, but the memories arc there. And so is the glory. □
