Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1960's

[_SeRA lIonn C_II (Ossa) adds a little dasll toppIn, TrIP 13. story and Photos by Gary Barton - ORANGE. Calil•• March 30. 1969 - With SUIlD7 sties and a coollng ocean breeze. S8ddleb .ek Park played host to prec1slo o riders In tile first of three scheduled TrIals to be held In the motorcy cle PJayground. Stgn-llP over, the Trialer s got down to the serious bustnes s of compet ition. Perhap s serious is tile wrong word for in every Trials held by the Southern Calil. Trials Assn. fun is the primary goal, and for tbts reason a light-he arted mood prenJls . All riders were require d to ride three Japs around the approJd mately 5 mUe course , Along the course were 7.Amateur and 7 more difficul t Expert/ Master section s. There was sUll an abundaDce of mud in several of tile traps as well as tile regular variety of obetac1es. Perhaps one of the best things about Engllsb Trials is that no track prepara tion is needed. Any area that would be looked \lPOfl cok:ly by most compet ition riders wUJ delight a Tr1aler no end. Some of these reaijy beautifu l natural sections were Amateu r Trap 12, wbtch had you enter by droppin g off an embankme nt. An immedi ate 90 degree rlght turn and down a mud filled gully wltII a easy right turn before an extrem ely d1ff1cult left in a foot of the gooiest mud possibl e. Then. to make th1ngs even worse you had to climb a gentle slope of slippery clay to clear the extt. Several riders had tile misfortu ne of mak1Dg it to tbts little hill. then dabbing. With tires nlled with mud. traction was next to imposs ible. except to those who knew the secret. This was climbin g out with the englne just doing a tickaver to keep the rear wheel from breakIng trac tion. Section /Hl for the ElM's, was a real "natura l". It consiste d of the three-fo ot drop Into mud, then before tile rear wIleel was down, the front end was climbin g uP a 3-1/2 foot near vertica l rock wall, hit the power quick, and as the wheel crested, back off just enough to keep that front end as close to earth as possible . Too much power and your bike might be sittlng on you Instead of the other way around. Too llttle power and the frame center-p unched the rock wall and you stopped dead. Making it over you were still faced with a run UP a wet, rockfJUed gully with a tight left and a tight right before a really tricky extt consisling of a deep mud hole and a two-foo t ledge to jumP. Most riders left this section babbllng incoher ently or shak1Dg their heads in disbelie f. Trap #13 would have been a good one for those to see who think that English Trials is all slow and no go. Avery steep hill with increas ing gradien t, it had to be attacke d flat out in third gear.As the h1ll crested , you had to back off and make a 9O-degree right and cross the off-cam ber section to make the "ends" . Top Master for the day was Jack Ward riding a Bultaco Sherpa T. Jack sheared a clutch key on the !irst lap and had to push the bike up h1ll for nearly 1/2 mlle before he could coast down to make repairs. Losing nearly an hour. he made do ad ltn1shed tile day droppin g only 37 points. C."ol Slone (Gr....s) has a pod slyle_. lor a ,Irl. ~l By Mauree n Lee We have to start this weeks' column with an apology, although we didn't make the error. In a recent story about Chuck Minert and an ex-Bar ry Briggs BSA he was riding another name appeared as the tuner, courtes y of the editor who thought this guy was the tuner. Well, he isn't. All of Feets' machine s come from Le Bard and Underwood with Bob Tryon doing the spanner work on 'em. By now nearly everyon e on the Distric t 37 scramb les scene has heard that Jim Hunter is' no longer with Norm Reeves . It just doesn't seem possible because Jim has been holding. down a job there for years and back when we started racing, you never thought of Jim without automatical ly th1nking of Norm Reeves because in those days the top riders wore Norm's colors and great advertis ing it was, too. The scramb lers did all right for themse lves at Westlak e this year. Rick Marquis who rides every week ts just one example and be showed llP with Class C traction on his 21" Honda and went like blue blazes, althoug h we suspect that those tires caused a few snicker s from the desert brigade when he llned up to start, but they had to grin on the other side of their faces wilen he ltn1shed . Still on the subject of Westlak e we hope you got as big a kick out of all those signs on the road leading into the VUlage as we did, and when you know the people involVed , they get even tunnter . Such as "John Rice is sponsor ed by Uncle Ben." "The Checke rs have gone to pot," "and in tbts corner, Husky Nick Nichols on," are just a few example s. One of our favorite lady racers, Mary McGee will be riding a Husky in tile BIlja run tbts year and we wish her all the luck in the world. Mary and Don came out to a few scramb les but prefer to ride rather than sit around waiting for tbose few minutes on the track, so they stick to motocro ss and desert. Mary's partner wUJ by Cycle World publish er Joe Parkhurst unless he has to take off for some exotic place in the world. Team Cycle World ought to be someth1Dg to watch! COOLEY'S COLU." By Wes Cooley - I APOLOGIZE Amallur Bill Balzloll (Collon) tightropes Illhrouih Trap Number One. Second place was taken by Gary Davis. and his Greeves with 41 marks against . Tom Stowers (Greeve s) and Gene Lindley (Montes a) both had dropped 42 points. but Stowers took third place honors by having cleaned seven sections to Lindley's six. First-ti me Expert, John Brewer on a Cotton, topped Bullaco mounted Kevin Walker, and Honda riding Geoff Hammond nalled down thlrd. The Amateu r lightwe ight found another of those tie-brea klng rideoff thls class has become so famous for lately. Cotton riding Bill Batzlof f and Spri te mounted John Schulz both had to ride the Expert l Master section #14, backwa rds twice. Batzloff rode first and dabbed just at the extt, wbtle Schulz found himself droppin g three marks the first time through . On the second pass Schulz did a remarka ble job crosS1Dg a log in the section but as he attempt ed to climb the tricky hill at the exit, the Sprite dug in and came over. landing upside down in the bottom of the gully. This gave the victory to Batzlof f but just for fun he tried it a second time and just as his front axle cleared the end the bike slalled and died. This win cost Blll his Amateu r standing for he earned enough points to transfe r himself to the Expert class. The Amateu r Ultra-lig htweigh ts had Hodakas ridden by Bob Riggs and Dean KUpper t In for first and second respectively, while Donn Stewart on a Honda capture d thlrd. Dee Dee Earl on a Hodaka took first women' s. with Edna Evans second on a Bultaco . Doreen Portner rode her Honda 90 to a thlrd. Amongs t the kids. Greg Lerscil was first. Marlin Bela1r took second and Scott Montgo mery was third. all riding Hodaka s. After hearing the true story about Daytona from one of the riders wIlo particip ated, I can see why tile decisio n was made by the riders not to race in the rain. I underst and that some of the course had as much as two inches of water standing . Of course, the onIyfee dback we receive d at the time was tbat it was ra1n1Dg. Even Rod Gould, a world recogni zed racer felt tbat because of tile deep water the event would be unsafe. So our apologie s go for any unjust criticis m made toward the riders for not being heroes and particip ating. We agree that motorcy cle racers are heroes. but there is no sense in being foolish and gettlng someone injured needles sly. I WILL NOT WASTE TIME, MR. BY GOING INTO A NICHOLSON, LENGT HLY DISSER TATION REGAR DING YOUR LETTE R TO THE EDITOR IN LAST WEEK'S EDITIO N. lAM SENDING PHOTO STATIC COPIES OF THE LETTE R FROM THE FIM TO MR. CLAYT ON wmCH REFER S TO YOUR COMPL AINT TO THEM AND REFER RING YOU TO US, AS WELL AS A LETTER FROM THE ACU STATIN G THAT GREEVES HAD RECEIV ED A TELEGRAM FROM MICUS SAY!> G THAT IT WAS ALL RIGHT FOR BRYAN WADE TO PARTIC IPATE AT HOPETOWN. SIGNED BY ME. WE, TOO, HAVE ASKED FOR A COpy OF THIS TELEG RAM; WE WOULD LIKE TO K1 OW WHERE IT ORIGIN ATED. THERE lI-UGHT POSSIBLY BE A LEGAL VIOLAT ION HERE. We have receive d news from Kim Kimball . Preside nt of Montesa Motors that Ron Nelson has definite ly been accepted to compete at Ringwood, England, AprU 4th and also April 20th in the 500Cc GP of Austria . Ron was also accepte d at the French GP in the 500cc class and John DeSoto in the 250Cc class on August 15th. We also understand there are five addition al races, making a total of eight the riders have been accepted for thus tar. We certaln ly hope they do well and we wUJ be waiting for word from their first event wbtch will be the Spanisb Grand Prix on April 13th.

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