Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126040
Dick Mann looked up from his red wine & .- steak dinner. M 0.. < UWhat time is it?" he asked. "Quarter to seven," he was to ld. •. "Then they must be ra cin g in T o ledo now," he said. Qu arter to seven on a Saturday night in San Francisco bu t becau se of the two h ours difference it was a quarter to nine in Ohio where th e National rac ing tour had s to pped at Toledo . R aceway Park for the 17th ch am p ions hip meet of 1975. Dick Mann was not th ere. Seven st ates away at a sw an ky restaurant on the Berkeley Marina, he w as patiently explain in g to an ac q uain tance why after tw o and a half de cades he no longer wa s an active professional racer and also dispelling the curi ou s notion th at at 41 he wa s too an cient to cu t it. j "Vou think you gotta ge t old and feeb le and 'can't op erat e a motorcycle anymore," he said. "But y ou can, even if y ou r reflexes slow down. . "Reall y," he went on, "the age thing is nothing. Look at Mert Lawwill. He's 35 and still has as mu ch or more d irt track ab ility as an yone, bu t people are say ing he's . too old. He 's just had a co u ple o f bad years. "Mert's like me. He's over experienced. T oo much ex p erie nc e as a racer." . . In Dick Mann 's case it's an epic, possibly un equalled, 24 years wo rt h . And unlike many ve te rans who hang abou t for so lon g th at they finally o u ts tay their we lcomes . the wonderful " Bugs" was-always a winner or a t least a feared can tender. . "Most p eople," Mann was t old, " think th at all you r ye ars of ex perie nce was what m ad e you so good . It's why eve ry one thinks you co u ld st ill win if you were racing n ow. n Mann slo wly sh ook his head and sai d in a soft voice, "Th at's wrong. Fo r a motorcycle racer, all th e experien ces you remember ar e basicall y the bad ones an d th e mistakes y o u m ad e. As you get older each crash o r near-m iss, or over-shot turn, teach es you to be a little mo re cautiou s, a little more d eliber at e, and to think a little lon ger in a race be fo re y o u d o so me t hing. Pre tt y soon you lose a posi tion o n accoun t of that . "But t ake 'an 18-y ear o ld guy wh o 's racing - he doesn 't reali ze, doesn't eve n th in k abo u t, th e conseq uen ces of missing th e groove an th e last tum of a race he 's leading. 'Go ing fast is n atural to him. eve n if he doesn 't know why . Kids like th at are good . and part of t he reason is th at t he y've never bro ken . an ything. They don't realize how much time you lose getting healed again after yo u make a mistake. " Even before th e beginning of 1974 - which turned out to be his last serious racing season - Mann was con side ring re tirem en t. T he December de ath in New Ze aland of h is friend Cal Rayborn touched him deeply. And on th e Columbus hal f-mile the followin g summer. Mann saw a multi-rider spill developing in front of him. Unavoidably . he became involved in it . Another goo d frie~ d. Mark Brelsford, was so badl y chopped up th at the ill-starred former Number One never raced again. "Losing Calvin, and th en being in the last race Brelsford ever rode , took a lot of the 'go' out of me " said Mann. ' The . Columbus accident, however, was ~nl¥ on e of four ~ad e ~ pe rience s ~ 1974 that helped break t he spirit of this umque, unbehevably tough campaigner whose popularity remains unequalled and whose racing ac co m plishm en ts des erve to be bronzed. " A t four straigh t ra ces guys got me o ff by falling in front of me," Mann rec alled, smiling. "It was a different guy each week, at a different tra ck, and each time I was back in the middle of the p ack, trying to com e through with an uncompetitive motorcycle. Re ally, it go t pretty ridiculous ." The fourth fall, on th e sun-baked San Jose mile dir t track J~ly, m ad e something inside him snap. It was a bone m hIS fo o t bu t also, after all those racing summers his will. ' Mann unemo t ionally described what happened when J ames Rawls, th en 20, dropped his Harley-Davidson dead in fron t of him at 80 mph just as both o f them came p ounding o ff the comer onto San J ose ' s front straightaway . "I watch ed his e lbo w co me up wh en he gave the thro~tle a double-pump - too much gas - and st arted to ' lo se It. He spun the bike out righ t in fr ont of me. "I could either hit his bi ke o r hit him laying th ere on the track. I chose t he .b ike , but when m y front wheel r an over his back whee l. it put me airbo rne for a long way s. A long, long ways . . "~Vh en I c~e down agai n I w as lined up to hit the outside frence, o r step o ff the ' b ack of the motorcycle before it happened.. I ste p ped off. Th e motor broke the o u ts ide fen ce down an d I fo llo wed it on through th e fence ." Ten yea rs - even five years - earlier he'd have been racing agai n th e fo llo wing Sunday , stra in ing at to p speed, br oken foot or n o. Countless times he has raced whi le badly hurt. But th is t ime Mann hesit ated. " It jus t gets. harder to race," he admi ts, "whe n kids do dumb th ings jus t ahead of yo u. an d you can ' t avoi d them ." "Do yo u bear a grudge toward Rawl s?" UNo ." Man n said quic kly . "He 's turned int o o ne of the best y ou ng riders o n the professio nal tr ail to day. He ' s gOI a lot go ing fo r him and he's st ill yo un g." "But," l\lann was rem inded , "you said that age has little to do w it h d o ing good at racin g." "And it doesn' t , In mo torcy cle racin g it all co mes down t o t.o o lit t le or to o mu ch ·experi en ce. Say yo u had a pe rs?" I ~ prJ.so n., a person w ho'd never be en ex p osed to racl? g In hIS life. bu t wh o came o u t of jail at 35 determined 10 be a racer. He co uld d o it. You could have a 35-year old rooki e ru nnin g right over these 18-v ear ol d fi rst -year Ex perts. if he had the will and the d edi cati o n and no exp erien ce. And he cou ld keep it up un til he was 5 0." ~at at . least is one of Mann 's pet theories , an d P?sslbl y hIS a!one. But Dick Mann has usually been different. not Just be cause he chose to co nt inue racing lon ger than anyone else , hut in wha t he says and feel s. . He has be en an o u t-o f-wo rk, ex -facto ry Triumph racer sme 1972. And today th ose who ou t of affec t ion and lo yalty wish that Dick Mann still raced on the Nati onal trail are m i. sin g th e point. Motorcy cle racing the way he s d id it for so long is no more. ". Man n re~izes it. " M y system," he says thoughtfu lly, Jus t doesn t wo r k anymo re." He's a tw o- t im e Nu mber One, an d a full-blown motorcycle racin g legend. The term " legend" am uses him, h ow ever , He's a legend. he po int s o ut , more fo r memor~es ,,!f grea t past wins th an for an y ex pec ta t ions o f great wms In the future. And yet becau se he is wh o he is, he's not in teres t ed in payin g his own bills, or sponsorin g himself as a racing privateer. He's a professional. !" "For me to take one of my own bikes and go to one of those Nationals against all the factory jobs would be like taking a pocketknife to a gunfight. Better I stay home." But Mann adds th at he 's virtually unemployable on a factory team like Vamaha or Harley-Davidson. "No racing team, especially a factory one, is very intereste.d in the things I have to offer anymore," he says . "T imes have changed." 1!'e things he has to offer include designing and testmg new racing componen ts, doing main tenance and hop-up work on the motorcycles himself - in effect running the entire show as rider, designer and mechanic/tuner with an outside sponsor covering his ex penses. .But Vamah:, and Harley-Davidson today employ skilled, v:ell,paJd personnel who take care of everything for the nder. Only rarely do they need to solicit a rider's help or advice. In the new look motorcycle racing of the seventies, all a contract rider does is race. "!t's the same reason why Mert, like me, almost was out of work," says Mann. "Men, Chuck Palmgren and myself were some of the last guys still going racing the old way, doing the engineering and actual building of the bikes. Now Mert and Palmgren are two of the last Ones doing it. " The old way is not the better way, he adds hastily. " But I've been racing motorcycles the old way for too lon g to change over, or want to chan ge over. " His professional career started in I 972, meaning that he is the survivor of numerous racing eras. He is old in that sense. He also has a daugh ter of 17 and a son of 12. But comparing th e eras to determine which one was "best" is fruitless. says Mann. "When I first got into motorcycle racing, all the old gu ys of the period told m e how goo d it used to be," he says. "With .anything you do, there always seems to be those who were there before, saying that the old times were best. Noone can really agree when the best times were!' . Vet when he does permit himself a b ac kw ard glance he will say, when prompted, th at for him, "The best ra cing years were roughly from 1957 through 1964. People seemed more personally involved then. "It was still goo d into the seventies, but there aren't an y ch aracters among th e top riders an ymo re. No individuality. Pull guys off a tr ack today , and all of them s~em the sam e. Stars are made quicker, but they disappear faster too ." "It 's not just th e riders who ar e so much alike, but even the tracks, " Mann says. "The top dirt tracks are all pretty much the same, and if yo u don't remember the old ' tra cks I guess yo u don't mis s the difference. But I can still remember the good old cushio n .dirt tra cks over in Ohio - Ronnie R all tracks - be fore the y go t overraced. ' Peo ria," he said, " is th e on ly race track from the old ~ys th at hasn't :eally changed. It 's th e only tr ack left wit h th e excep llon o f San ta Fe - which is ano ther ma tter - w he re regul ar top riders don' t always wi n. "But one thing abou t racing to d ay is that it's the mo st competitive ever. Today there are a t leas t te n goo d ri ders foll owin g th e tr ail , and every on e of th em has a dece nt bike under them th at can win." lie offe rs no so lu tio n for the present ro ad racin g cri sis of limited races and r idicu lo usly high speeds. " The best years road racing ever had were 1970 and 19 71," he beli eves. "Not ju st be cause I won some races t~ ose years. bu~ because t he en gin e formula was jus t right. All the b ikes. for some reason. were equal. The 75 0 four str o kes were co mpet it ive with th e 500 Suzuk i an d Kaw asak i two-strokes and th e 35 0 Yamahas, It wa s a gr,:a t formula and there w er e so me great ra ces." (Such as hIS m arvelously entertaining duels with his friend and keen rival Kel Carru thers at Lo ud on , Kent, and Po co no.) " \Vhat race," he was asked, "do you consider the best-rid de n of your career ?" Mann frowned an d thought for a while. " 1 don' t know," he said. "When you win a race it doesn't ne~essarily mean .th at you rod e exceptionally wel l. I can th in k o f lo ts of t im es when I rode welI bu t di dn' t fin ish. . Maybe m y best r ace was o ne of th ose." lI e th ou ght some more, then sa id: " 1 guess one of my best races would be o ne proba b ly no one remembers. It wa s th e 1972 Daytona. I didn 't win. Bu t th at was as . go o d a race as I ever rode - my overall best. "1 was on a three- cylinder Triumph , starting on or near the back row; with alI th e fast two-strokes up front.