Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE Phil Pummell achieved modest success as a racer, but he was a lifelong hero to his son Scott I t was 1994, and Phil Pummell and his 10-year-old son Scott were driving down the interstate to the Dealer Expo in Indianapolis from their home in Jamestown, Ohio. Scott remembers they were having a normal conversation when some- thing strange happened. "He just quit talking and then started slowing down and then gradually he pulled off to the side of the road. I said, 'Dad, what's going on? Are you okay?' He just sat there and didn't say anything, and I was starting to freak out. Then he said, 'Sorry I was just having a spell.' "That was the first time as a kid I remember thinking, 'What in the world is going on?'" Not long after that Scott had just finished a motocross race at Dirt Country in nearby Blanchester, Ohio. After his race, he sat next to the track watching his dad race. "It was in the middle of the race, and he was winning," Scott recalls. "It was about the second or third lap, and he went over this P116 ONE KID'S HERO Phil Pummell was a promis- ing young BMX rider. He turned motocross racer in the early 1980s and won several regional titles. As he got older Pummell expanded his racing endeavors to include flat track and road racing. He was good at them all but seemed to have a special talent in road racing. He did really well at the club level and turned pro in AMA Superbike in 1987. Just about all the racing he did, Pummell did on his own. He was a motorcycle mechanic, and his bikes were al- ways immaculately prepared. Scott said he had a sponsor once, but fiercely independent, he didn't like grandstand triple jump, he lands it and all of a sudden he just stops. He was just sitting there on his bike. The bike was still running, he had the clutch pulled in. My grand- father was sitting next to me, and I asked him what was going on. My grandfather said, 'Don't worry about it. He's probably just check- ing his bike or something.' But he wasn't even looking down at his bike, so it didn't make any sense. "Then after a while, he clicked it back in gear and made it all the way back to the front and won the race. I asked him what happened after and again it was like, 'don't worry about it, I just had a spell.'" No one knew it at the time, but those were the first signs that some- thing was terribly wrong with Phil. They would find out not long after that it was brain cancer. The disease would eventually take his life. Phil Pummell leads Fritz Kling at Grattan Raceway in 1988. That year Pummell won the Michigan Gran Prix Series held at Grattan Raceway. Ironically, both Kling and Pummell passed away from brain cancer. PHOTO: LARRY LAWRENCE