Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

NATIONAL CHA PION ~ ~ w d >- U By Shuon Oxner JKk MeLaM. this y_·s Nation" Enduro Ch8mpion. will be waring the Number 1 pI_ for the 1970-71 _ . JKk. a eOllc.Me1 individ..... e""resoecl his dis1r... about the sport of enduro riding and its trend toward profesion.. ism. A sport that ~ to be fun no longor is. It's now all factory riders with e few ohop .........".eI to fill out the list'. And this telk about paying enduro riden is bed ..... toe. JKk. being e family man. who 0_ the last - . h. _ -V little of his family would like to _ the National Calendar shortened from this y_'s twenty Mtionals. which is _ almost lIVery ~and. to B or 10. JKk _rkad on his ice ........ an old dilapidated Honda that h. _ bomar days. end the intllrViaw want like this: aI' con_ WHY DID YOU CHOOSE A HONDA 350? Well, when I started out, I had a Greeves, Bultaco. BSA, I couldn't keep them together. So then Honda came out with the 305 Scrambler a couple of years ago and I got the fust one that came in here and I rode the Jack Pine with it fout days later. I had about sixty miles on it. And I finished it and won my class. IT HELD TOGETHER? Yeh. DON'T YOU FIND IT KIND OF AWKWARD WHEN YOU GET IT DOWN THERE IN THE MUD AND ROCKS AND THAT TYPE OF THING? No not as long as the engine keeps running. CAN'T SEE HOW YOU COULD EVER GET IT OUT OF A MUDHOLE IF YOU EVER WERE TO GET IT STUCK? Ah, it's not as heavy as what you think. My new one weighs under 300 pounds. There's a lot more to. it than just going through the mudholes. There are probably only two or three mudholes that are bad in the whole run. DO YOU FIND THE WEIGHT OF THE BIKE TO BE A DISADVANTAGE IN TIGHTLY WOODED SECTIONS OF THE VARIOUS RUNS SUCH AS JACK PINE? I think we all got tired during the Jack Pine but it got heavy toward the end of the fLrst dey and heavy again toward the end of the second, but I· think anybody that rode a 200-pounder found that it got heavy toward the end of the day. DO YOU FIND AN ADVANTAGE TO. RIDING SUCH A LARGE MACHINE? I've got to get something tha~ I can keep with all the classes not just trying to ,,'in one particular class. This size bike, borsepower for the weight distribution, seems to be good. When you get something that's got another 30 more horsepower into it, everytime you touch the throttle you spin the rear end and you don't have any control Something that has less horsepower for the weight, then you don't have enough horsepower to get up the hills with it. This one here seems to work out pretty good: you've got a good amount of torque and the horsepower is right. You ean get up the hills whether they're greasy or not. It's a little heavy in the mud if you get it stuck, but if you do just pick it up and set it over in another slot and take off. HAVE YOU MADE ANY ALTERATIONS ON YOUR MACIDNE? Every rider will make certain alterations to go along with his individual styie of riding: his handlebars he might want longer or shorter, cut 'em off, raise them or lower them. The same thing with his seat; he might want to change his foot pegs or something. I made a couple little changes on my new bike, on the 305 there were a lot more changes. The new one they came out with a couple months ago, the light one, it's pretty good like it is. I made a couple changes, I got different tires on it, a skid plate on the bottom of the bike, a chain guide, gear shift and brake levers have chains welded on from the lever to the frame to keep things from getting stuck between them. DO YOU FIND ANY DISADVANTAGES TO RIDING SUCH A LARGE MACHINE? I don't know, some people say the weight's a disadvantage. DO YOU THINK THIS IS A DETERMINING FACTOR? Have you ever ridden down a choppy road in a Volkswagen and then in a Cadillac? Which would you rather ride down a bumpy road in? CADILLAC. You see a Cadillac is a lot heavier. A small bump doesn't affect it the same way it does a light one. The only disadvantage is maneuvcring it. Where you lean off to one side of a light bike by throwing your weight it may only take twenty pounds off center to change the bikes direction, but with a heavier bike that same twenty pounds has little effect on it. YOU PRETIY MUCH HAVE TO LEARN TO RIDE ALL OVER AGAIN AFTER RIDING A LIGHT BIKE THEN? It's pretty hard to go from a light to a heavy bike but it's easy to go from a heavy to a light bike. WHAT DOES YOUR WIFE THINK ABOUT YOUR RIDING? (Moment of silence then a laugh) She says there are too many runs. IF THERE WERE TO BE CHANGES MADE IN THE NATIONAL CALENDAR FOR NEXT YEAR WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY SHOULD BE? I think that the number of ..nduros should be limited to about ejght nationals per season. COULD YOU TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOU AND YOUR FAMJLY? I'm married and have three girls, ages I year, 4 and 5. I don't have any boys yet. No boys to start riding. YOU'LL HAVE TO START TEACHING THE GIRLS TO RIDE. Yeh, they would like that. The wife and the girls, they go with me sometimes. My wife enjoys watching, not riding. DOES YOUR WIFE THINK THAT ENDURO RIDING IS A DANGEROUS SPORT? ·No. Enduro riding isn't dangerous. DO YOU HAVE ANY PLANS TO RIDE THE SIX DAYS? Oh, I would like to ride it. I was too busy winning the National Championship title this year to go over. IMPRESSIONS OF THE JACK PINE? For a national event I don't think that it should have been a closed course and that's what I would have considered it. Riding it the one way the fltst day and the opposite the day after. If you go to a national I don't think you should have to do that. It was laid out pretty good, J think we were all complaining at the end of the day. Itwas rougher than last year but everything was rideable. There wasn't anything that would have eliminated you because you couldn't get through. Mudholes, water crossing, or anything like that. Jack Pine four or five years ago were noted for that. They'd put ya across a river, half of them would come up the other side. Or Spring Hill. They'd put 600 at the bottom of the hill and cnly 200 would come up the other side. This used to be quite common. That's how they eliminated half of them. This year if you didn't finish it, either your bike broke down from abuse or you just couldn't ride it. You just got so late that you wc.re finally an hour late. WHO DO YOU THINK WAS YOUR ROUGHEST CONTENDER DURING THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP TITLE? Oh, Bob Fusan was this year. Bob's a good rider: There are a lot of good riders. Ron Bohn is a good rider, Bob is a good rider, Johnny 5tapleford, Norm Ford, there's a lot of good riders around. ARE YOU PLANNING ON CAMPAIGNING NEXT YEAR FOR THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP TITLE? No! I'm just going to go to a couple of them that I like. There are a rew around that are laid out well, organized real good, the checks are run real good and then there's a few of them around where there doesn't seem to be too much preparation for _them. The courses aren't marked very well, the checks aren't run very good and it isn't worth driving 1000 miles to some of them. I liked Sandy Lane, Little Burr, unlike Nebraska they were well marked and well run. Out in Nebraska there wasn't o:~r ten arrows out for the whole run. All you went by was red streamers hanging down from' the trees. And they had half the course run back up the same trail and I was number one rider. So by the time I got back coming up the same trail again I was passing all the bikes that were anything higher than 50 going the opposite way. So every corner you have to pull off and look around the corner before you go around cause your gonna run into 'em. Every hill I'm going down they were coming up. And it just wasn't laid out too good. I wouldn't go back whether it was a national or not. ENDD NUM ON DO YOU THINK ENDURO RIDERS SHOULD RECEIVE A PURSE FOR THEiR EFFORTS? No! That would take the sport out of it. That's one of the reJlSQns why I am going to quit now. It's not like it used to be. You used to go there just because it was fun riding against the other guys but anymore there's so many of them it's becoming so professionalized. There are a lot of factory riders, I'm shop sponsored, but there's moIC Shop 'sponsored even now then there was before .and there's factory sponsored riders in the enduros.. It's almost a protession. If they want to have fout nationals on the east coast and four nationals on the west coast, or eight out there and eight here it would be different but not for them to have twenty nationals or more. That's one every week. It's just too much. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF WOMEN RIDING? I don't complain. I THINK YOU ARE ONE OF THE MOST POLITE RIDERS ON THE TRAIL (SO STATED AN UNIDENTlI'I£D RJDER) I WAS RIDING IN FRONT OF YOU DURING THE PENN STATE NATIONAL AND YOU NEEDED TO GET BY: AS YOU PASSED YOU YELLED THANK YOUUUU ... I like to treat them the way J like to be treated. I always try to thank people when I go by. It's hard to get it out sometimes. They don't have to let you by but they should. A lot of them don't. When you get up behind them they turn around and look and when thcy see who you are or that somebody's behind them they try and race 'em. They speed up maybe 3 or 4 miles an hour and race down the course just to try to stay ahcad of you. Usually it isn't the girls that do this, it's the guys. Especially when they sec who's behind them ya know! I'm sure John, Bill Barrage all thesc guys have had the same problem. But they see somebody behind them and they know who it is they like to try and race 'em to see if they can stay ahcad of them. And then it just makes it dangerous for both of us. But most of them are good sports: Most of the riders arc good sports and they'll pull over. I'll pull over if somebody wants to go by me. I'm glad to let them go by. TALK ABOUT STANDARDIZATION OF ARROWS. The tu.rn arrows could be standardized a little bit more. There are several AMA rules but none of them arc followed. All the arrows for the nationals arc supposed to be AMA standard arrows or approved by the AMA and I don't think they send a lot of them in to get approved. WHAT DO. YOU THINK OF JOHN PENTON'S RECENT RETIREMENT? DO YOU FEEL HE WAS A THREAT TO YOU o.URLNG YOUR CAMPAIGN?

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