Goodbye Ricky G.
Goodbye Ricky G.
National Number 3, 1958-1998
DON CANET
OF ALL THE BIKES I'VE RIDDEN OR WRITTEN ABOUT SINCE COMING To CYCLE World nearly eight years ago, I hold our Project Honda CR500 racebike dearest to my heart. Part of my fondness for the machine stems from the thrill of riding it, but of greater significance, it was through this bike that I got to know Ricky Graham.
With 39 main event wins and three Grand National Championships to his credit, Graham was unquestionably one of the great racing talents of our time. Maybe even the greatest dirt-track racer who ever lived. Sadly, the Ricky G. record book closed forever on the night of January 22, 1998, when he perished in a fire that engulfed his Salinas, California, home.
Whenever Ricky threw a leg over a motorcycle, you knew excitement would soon follow. He was a grandmaster in the particularly American art form of throwing a motorcycle sideways on a dirt oval. An epic performer who painted a lasting impression in the minds of all who had the good fortune to see him in top form on a racetrack. His first championship came in 1982 as a privateer on an underfunded XR-750. A glory deal on Honda’s full-factory team netted the ’84 title. And then came an incredible dream season in ’93 after inner demons had all but annihilated his career.
“Ricky Graham was a remarkable motorcycle racer and a tremendous unfulfilled talent,” says motorsports commentator Dave Despain. “When you consider that he won three championships as far apart as he did, to describe a guy who did that as unfulfilled talent seems a bit odd. But Ricky always had this kind of star-crossed life. I’m not sure that he ever reached his full potential.”
Ricky’s career, sporadic as it may have been, was punctuated with some of the greatest comebacks in racing history. His tenacity to overcome physical injury and still win was put to the test time and again. After a horrific, spine-jarring crash over Peoria’s TT jump in 1982, he finished the season riding in a back brace. His tremendous will to win carried him to the championship that year, winning by a narrow two points. Two years later, he got off at 100 mph while battling at the front in the final race of the 1984 season.
The violent crash should have cost him the title, but once again Ricky overcame adversity and pain. Restarting his twisted bike, he soldiered on to finish a dazed 13th. It was a storybook act of heroism, and the few championship points it earned were enough to edge out teammate Bubba Shobert for the title-by a solitary point.
Ricky’s life away from the track, however, was not always so charmed. Much of this has been attributed to his continuing bouts with alcohol. “I know that his personal life has always been difficult and I think some of his problems were self-inflicted, but not all of them,” suggests Despain. “I think he
inherited a pretty tough way to go in the world.”
You wonder, though, if things had gone smoother for Graham, would the motorcycling public have showed nearly as much interest in Ricky G., the fallen champion? “He had this kind of old mystique to him,” says CW contributor Joe Scalzo. “Like Bart Markel, who had been a Golden Gloves boxer. Or Carroll Resweber, who had this thing where he was divine somehow, that he could just walk on water. Or Gary Nixon-they each had some kind of a persona outside of the racing itself, and Ricky seemed to be a throwback to that type of guy. He wasn’t just a cardboard-cutout mile-track racer.” Scalzo admits to having witnessed only the dawn and twilight of Ricky’s racing career, but offers this perspective: “I remember it was just sensational what he did on a motorcycle.”
Ricky began riding Johnny Goad’s USC Racing bikes in the middle of the ’91 season, a time when nobody else would have anything to do with the troubled ex-champ. Goad believed that if Ricky could keep himself clean and sober, and remain focused on racing, great things would happen. And they did: A third-place showing in the ‘92 standings was followed by a phenomenal championship run the year after.
“I think his 1993 performance may have been the most remarkable thing I’ve seen in dirt-track racing,” says Despain. “To win 12 races-and six in a row! To win like that, in that league at that level, when your last championship was almost 10 years ago...that’s big. That’s real big.”
Although Ricky slipped back into troubled times over the following couple of seasons, Goad maintained a special place in his heart for Graham-and a bike in the USC stable with Ricky’s number 3 on it. “I just don’t think anybody else will come along like Ricky,” laments the soft-spoken Southerner. “I know there’s been a lot of good riders out there, but this guy could reach down and get it just when you thought there was no more gettin’.”
In talking with the Goads, you soon realize that Ricky came to be a member of their family. “He was almost like a son to us,” says Johnny’s wife Sarah. “We went through a lot of painful times with him, but he’s also given us the greatest memories of our motorcycle life, and motorcycling is our life.”
I, too, felt a sort of kinship forming in the brief time I knew Ricky Graham. He had a similar effect on many of the people around him. “He wore his heart on his sleeve,” says DeWayne Jones, who tuned CIUs Project CR500 at the Peoria TT. “He was really sincere and very devoted to the sport.” In particular, Jones remembers the sight of Ricky scorching the Pomona Half-Mile in ’93. “He never shut off! That motorcycle ran wide-open all the way around. It was incredible!”
To have seen Ricky Graham work his magic on a sideways-slewed dirt-tracker was truly unforgettable. I only hope you had a chance to witness it first-hand. E3
