The Original Eddie Mulder
The Original Eddie Mulder
Squirrel's still kickin'
WHEN THE WEST COAST VINTAGE FLAT-TRACK CLUB came up with a Novice 750 class, a skeptic asked, "Is this a class for real novices, or is it a class for guys tired of losing to Eddie Mulder?"
Caught in the act, the club officials admitted that, yes, mostly it was a class for guys tired of seeing that No. 12 get smaller and smaller.
Class? Shoot, Mulder’s been winning for 40-plus years.
By now, the guys who’ve lost to him could have formed their own club.
Eddie Mulder The Original began with a fair advantage. His dad was the Triumph-Ariel-AJS dealer in Lancaster, California, so Eddie got his first motorcycle, a Triumph Cub, when he was 8. He rode his first race when he was 11, and got his first overall win, at the
Mojave Hare Scrambles, in 1959 at the age of 16.
Enter now, sportsmanship.
Second in that race was the nowlegendary Bud Ekins (see “Advantage Ekins,” CW,
September, 1999), the man who actually jumped the barbed-wire fence in The Great Escape and drove the Mustang in Bullitt.
Bud Ekins was King of the Desert. When he spoke (which wasn’t often), people listened. Thus
when Ekins, unasked, told the Triumph factory that Mulder was a kid worth helping, the help arrived.
Mulder had parts and a budget to go with his talent. He went to the desert and to Ascot, then the mecca, the peak, of dirt-track. He earned his national number, 12, in one season.
He also earned the nickname “Squirrel” because he was a showman, seemingly in the air anytime he wasn’t crossedup. Perhaps because he came from the desert, where leaping tall canyons in a single bound was what you did every Sunday, Mulder was a natural TT rider. And he was precise, just as comfortable on the tiny, indoor short-tracks of the day.
He broke every record at Ascot, won three AMA Grand National TTs in a row, was high-point indoor racer for three seasons, 1966-68, and won five national TTs, all on Triumphs, as an AMA Expert.
Mulder quit the Pro ranks in 1973, just about the time Triumph faded away.
What he didn’t do was retire. Instead, Mulder became a stuntman, riding and driving, choreographing and coordinating car and motorcycle action in the movies and on TV.
He was in “Then Came Bronson,” “The Dukes of Hazzard” and “The Bionic Woman.” Mulder jumped from carrier to carrier in Magnum Force, a stunt made especially tricky because nobody had allowed for the tide going out, while the police Moto Guzzi had to become a lighter Triumph in mid-air, so to speak.
The high point, also so to speak, of his stunt career was the time he jumped a bike off a cliff while strapped to a cable.
The other end of the cable was attached to a helicopter, out of camera range. He took off, let go and was violently yanked away as the motorcycle got trashed and screen magic let the movie’s star land safely.
Along with that sort of non-retirement, Mulder began promoting races in the Vintage classes, when that hobby arrived. Mulder’s series has now tied-in with the PACE dirttrack events on the West Coast.
Mulder and wife Jodi live on five acres on the edge of the desert, useful because she’s a horsewoman and, umm, there are days when being able to test a racebike out your back door comes in handy.
Most of his time now is spent in management of stunts for movies and commercials, while his shop has piles of parts and equipment for his line of replicas, as well as his racebikes, Triumphs and Harley-Davidson XR-750s provided by The Shop, a Ventura, California, outfit.
Oh, yeah. Racing. The weekend before these photos were taken, Mulder went to Pikes Peak for the big hillclimb. Riding his Champion-framed Triumph 750, Mulder won the Vintage class. By better than two minutes. He was only sorry he hadn’t entered the Pro class in time, because he would have been a contender.
Eddie Mulder in 2000 is just about like Eddie Mulder in 1959, as far as racing goes.
So, has anything changed in all this time?
Eddie Mulder gives that squirrelly grin: “I don’t put cables around my butt and set sail anymore.
“We’ve got kids for that.”
Allan Girdler
