Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

.. o l ... .... CD ~ ~ w Z W ..J o > o By Ron Schneiders A few weeks ago I wrote an article on the subject of the selection of the ISDT teams. In it I criticized rather strongly the selection of Puch as the mount for the Vase "B" team. I was not surprised, therefore, when I received a call from Ted Lapadakis, president of Hercules Distributing Company. Ted's company distributes Puch in the Western states. I expected that I was in for a bad time. My fears seemed well-founded, at first. The second person I encoun tered at Hercules (the first was their pretty receptionist) was Paul Hunt, who was armed to the teeth with statistics showing that Puch had actually done quite well at the last Six Days, taking three gold medals and a first place in the 125 class. I countered with the fact that the Americans had fallen flat on Puch, with four non-finishers out of four entrants. Impasse. In my article, I quoted Don Woods as saying that only American Puch and Yankee offered to supply bikes and support for the Vase "B" team. This appears to be untrue. Ted produced a copy of a letter from his mes that was sent to the AMA way back in January of 1971 offering ISDT support. The letter was never answered. In fairness, Don Woods was not working for the AMA at that time and may well have been unaware of the existence of the letter. Nevertheless, the AMA did have at least one other offer. Ted 'was not concerned with my remarks about Puch. He wanted to discuss his ideas about how the American ISDT team should be managed. As will be eviden t that he is out of touch with some of the most recent developments. Neither of these points is important. What is important is that he has had a great deal of experience both as a sponsor and a competitor and has raised .ome critical question•• He has al.o sugge.ted .ome nove I and, in some cases, very worthwhile .olutions to .ome of the problem. we face. From a letter dated January 19, 1972, addressed to Mr. Dave Walsh, American Motorcycle As.ociation, We.terville, Ohio. Also, there is one other point that I would like to brin. to your ~ttention; th~t is, in the INst years we have been actively sendinl teams over ind pirticipitinl in the ISDT. Due to ,J,O over work lo~d plus a short notice, we were forced to not particip~te lut yur in the Isle of Man. However, we would apin be willinl to send teams over and participate in the Six Diys, ind would very much like to talk to somebody reprdinl the orpnizinl of the American Six Diys team for 1972. I will be returninl to the factories that we represent by the fil'Sl of February. They hive ilreidy committed to me rcgarding their willingness to ~rticipat~ in the Czechoslovakian Six DiYs. The only thinl is now thit I must notify them and give them enough time so they miY properly build some lenuine Six OilY motorcycles for our rid"rs. Besides their willingness to supply us with motorcycles, they ilso will bock us up with whitever assistance we will need in regilrds to parts, mechanics, vilns, and other help that might be needed. Hoping to hear from you, and will be waiting for your reply. Your trUly, HERCULES DISTRIBUTING, LTD. T. P. L,pidikis President RON: Let me get a little background, because you participated in three Trials, and those were in Germany ... TED: Well, actually in two Trials. I participated in the one in Italy, San Pelegrino, and the one held in Garmisch. Our teams participated in the one held in Spain in 1970. We didn't participate at the Isle of Man mainly because we were busy and weren't asked to participate. RON: What would you say was the most difficult Trial? TED: The toughest Six Days that was held was San Pelegrino. The rest of the Six Days in Europe were candy compared to the ones in Italy. You talk to anybody. AI Rogers rode that one and only lost four poin ts. He was the talk of the Six Days. He wasn't in any kind of shape and he got smashed for two nigh ts at the beginning of the thing, you know how he is, and he just walked through the damn thing. Bob Ewing, who was an older guy, did pretty well on that one too. At Garmisch, the guys were excellent. AI Baker lost his gold because his choke went on and he didn't realize it. He kept trying to start his bike and by the time he got it on, he lost two points and lost his gold that way. Preston Petty lost his gold by ma be a fraction of a point I:>o!Que 1l~_p;,1! THE ISDT Spanish Trial, Steve Hurd, Preston Petty and Gene Cannady lo.t their gold. by flukes. Cannady lpst his gold be.cause an East German delayed him at a checkpoint and he didn't protest it. He'd have had a gold if he'd protested in Spain. RON: Have you ever been to Czechoslovakia? TED: No. I might stop in this year and see what it's like. It should be a little more difficult than the Isle of Man. It should be more like Garmisch was. Not so many rocks, but a lot of mud and roots and things like that. Nice trail•. RON: Hi.torically, when our riders have gone over to Europe they haven't received much .upport from MZ, CZ, and so on, have they? TED: You're ab.olutely right. They haven't. Our Hercules people never gave us support, our Puch people never gave us support, Husqvarna never gave us support; CZ never gave us support; MZ never gave u. support. They gave us their worst equipment. I told Hercules and Puch last year, "I'm through with that kind of business. If I put a team together, I want the same kind of equipment that your riders are riding." They agreed to do it this year. Puch said we'll give you the same equipmen t that our riders are riding. DKW said we'll build you special bikes for the Six Day. for your riders. We could have entered two factory-.upported teams with the best equipment that's available, but we didn't qualify. Our offer of help was ignored by the AMA. What kind of a Six Day team do you think you're g.oing to have unless you get support from manufacturers? RON: Well, we've got a good team in the Pen tons. I think that with the possible exception of Carl Cranke, we've got some of the best riders in the country on that team. TED: They're good riders. RON: The Husqvama "A" team is probably as good as we're likely to get, given the existing situation. Granted it would be nice to have MZ and those guys, but they aren't goint to give us support. • TED: No, they aren't. RON: So we're left with Husky that will support. And Yankee. I don't know what kind of support Puch is going to give us this year. TED: I don't know either. That's all John's (Penton) stuf£. The last two years John's made up the Puch team. That's all his doing. We haven't been involved in it. In fact, I've recommended that they don't participate, but he's made up this year's team. He made up last year's team at the last minute because we rejected it. Last year the Puchs were just stock bikes. There was no reason for riding them. They shouldn't even have heen on those bikes. No reason to be on them. The factory didn't begin to prepare them. It was a last minute thing and they threw junk in them. That doesn't do anybody any good. They go over there and waste their time is all. These American riders get on these bikes and do so hadly and then you turn around and see who won the 125 class last year. Puch. Who got second and third in the 175 class? Puch did. They just about dominated the small bike category. Then all of a sudden our riders' are on this other stuff and you know damn well they didn't have anything worth a darn to ride. They gave them old, used bikes that were worse than stock bikes. This year they told me (recently) that they were going to prepare bikes just like bikes that their f DlPo' just not organized and not ready to participate this year. Bu t John again has en tered another team on Puch. RON: He's had really excellent support for hi. Pen ton team in all these qualifiers, but the Puchs that he's sponsored have done zilch in the qualifiers. So, I don't know why he's got a Puch team in there. That makes no sense to me. Ted - I don't understand why he's doing it, either. RON: If you got a team next year, would you mount them on Sachs or on Puch? TED: DKW's, probably, and Puch. It depends how many guys we sponsored. We might make a split team of it. RON: Was Hercules invited to participate in the 19711SDT at all? TED: They did call us at the last minute and ask u. tg furnish bike•. That fellow from the AMA, Mike Vancil, called us. But it was too late to prepare bike. at that point. You've got to give your factories a lot of time to prepare these bike. for the Six Days because they're not production bike•. You can't take a production bike and adapt it. It's pretty difficult to be competitive over there at best, and you should build special bikes to be competitive. Another thing, we can no way be competitive in the way they're picking the riden. RON: Would you describe the way that you feel the teams should be selected? TED: Okay. First of all, you've got to understand that the Six Days i. a professional type of event. We might be amateurs here in this country, but in no way are the people from the Iron Curtain countries amateurs. They're all professional people. They work at this every day of the year. They're trained and they come prepared with the best equipment. They come prepared with bands and teams of helpers and service areas so that if the bike breaks down out there they can completely service it, which, incidentally, is illegal. But the cheating goes on amongst everybody. Not only do you need a properly trained rider in good physical condition, but you also need a machine that's properly maintained. Then you also need a good pit crew that can cheat real well to win the Six Days. This is an accepted thing I think you probably know about. RON: I think this is pretty common knowledge. TED: This is something that I really object to in the Six Days. I don't think it's righ t. Either follow the rules and don't cheat, or lay it open and let the. guys repair their bikes as' they break down. You know, like we do here in the Baja. You break down, you have a helicopter flya a part in. That's part of the team effort. RON: To play devil's advocate, it seems like qualifying rounds would be the natural way to select your best riders, to simulate the actual event and see who comes out on top. TED: Here's what's wrong. First of all, qualifiers are not the just way of doing it because primarily all our riders are amateur. Our country's do damn large and you have all these qualifying even ts. How does one rider who's working, who has a family, who is a weekend enthusiast who can probably scrape enough money together to go to the Six Days, how does that man hit all these qualifying events? Who supports him in all the qualifying events? Who's going to give him a special bike just to qualify in these events? RON: Again playing devil's advocate, there are at least tWQ riders who only made the events in their area and are ..". 'tbet~ TED: Yeah, right. Now this brings up another point. Originally the riders had to hit all these even ts in order to qualify. They didn't say that all you had to do was to to one event to qualify. Consequently, a lot of guys didn't even participate in the qualifiers. The announcement of the qualifications and you would qualify and what you had to do to qualify wasn't clear to everybody. I think the reason some of these riders who only went to one event qualified is because the qualifications were a complete failure. Nobody showed up to ride. Many of the good riders didn't go to these qualifying events. They didn't support the qualifying events. RON: Well, we did have rather substan tial support from Penton, Husqvama, and the Yankee team. TED: Yeah, but Penton, Husqvama and your Yankee teams are your weakest teams in the Six Day•. The .trong guy. at the Six Day. are CZ, MZ, Fichel-Sachs of the Hercule. work., Simmons, and Steyr-Daimler-Puch. These are the .trong guy.. Husqvama has alway. failed at the Six Days. Their bikes haven't been righ t. Penton just last. year qualified flarly well at the Six Days because they got fourth overall. But you know damn well they'd never got fourth overall without rebuilding Lars Larsson's bike. They had to give him a bike to go around a couple of time. while they rebuilt his bike. You know that as well as I do. I grant you that Penton has got a couple of good riders on his bikes and their bikes are good bikes. I'm not .aying anything again.t them. But, in the past Six Days the frames have been breaking, they've been falling apart, and they had to have a complete service garage out there. That's the only way they're ever been able to finish. Husqvama at San Pelegrino never did anything. At Garmisch they didn't do any good, not only with our riders, but with the European riders. In Spain they didn't do any good. This is a team effort and the people that really do well are MZ,Jawa, and the CZ people. Puch has done excellently and Hercules at the Nuremberg works (who in the past were the Sachs-DKW-Hercules group) haven't done too badly. Now, individual performances have been put in by certain riders like Lars Larsson riding a Busky and maybe a rider will come ou t with an Ossa and do well and the individual private entries on Bultacos will do well. But you look back at the results of the last few years and you'll see who the gUys are that have been winning. _ In the information that came over here this year, fot instance, all we heard about was Penton, fourth overall. Okay, that's fme for our team, but there's no information as to who really did well of each country really. I mean, it wasn't in any depth. RON: CZ is one of the tops. We've got a CZ team over there this year. TED: Three of our DKW ridrs: Preston Petty, Steve Hurd, and Gene Cannady, are on CZ. RO I: With Cannady, Hurd, and Petty, you've certainly got one of the best teams that has been put together. and with a promise from Hercules that they would build you bikes, wouldn't this...?' TED: Yeah, but we didn't know they'd be qualified. We didn't know we'd be picked. RON: You didn't know ... ? TED: We didn't know what was happening. We didn't know whether Steve Hurd was going to go up and ride /f'ffSe tur~ to PI' 44)

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