Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

" Par t II: ¥oungRoger's passion 10 motorcycles points towaril his des The early morning hours of June 6,1944 hile a llied troops po ur ashore on the coast of Normandy; as B-17 bombers leave their fields in Enlan d to cross t he Belgian sky en route to ta rgets on the R hin e to yield their be llysful of high explosives; during W th ose days of yearning for the freedom lost years before to the German occupier; a young married co uple, A lbert and Florence DeCoster (nee Mommaerts) , settled into the apartment above the burchershop on the roadway to Gand , a subu rb of Br ussels , Belgium to await t he birth of their first child. The child , who proved to be a big baby boy, . arrived August '28, 1944 . He was baptized with the Christian name of Roger . In 1945, the DeCoster family moved to a house o n the Rue England in Vede, Belgium, ' whe re Roger, in a family environment that provided a reasonably good life for post-war Europe, took his first steps. Soon , however, he was not a lone in filli ng the DeCoster ho me with in fa nt cries. In 1946 , twin boys were born: Andre a nd Luc . In September of 1949 . a fo urth son , Daniel , came into th e world . Finally in April of 1952 , as Roger anticipated ce lebra ting h is eighth birthday , the last of five boy children , Armand , madehis trip to the baptismal font in the church of Vede. The boys had, as they grew , a bui lt-in set of playmates , b ut the DeCoster boys ' games always included the numerous buddies they attracted all of them racketing noisily around the house in Vede . Roger was sti ll attending the Rue Bo urden primary school in Vede when the first symptoms of an 'irresistible passion for two-wheeled motor vehicles began to appear. A day of total happiness came for him when , right near his house at the Cafe de la Montague , a checkpoint for the " 24 Hours of Schaerbeek" was set up . T his was an event counting towa rds t he national motorcycle rally championship . He did not intend to miss seeing this event for anything. And it was , of course , impossible that he shou ld go to bed d uring the running of the "Schaer beek 24 Hours ." Young Roger watched, fascinated , as the riders came in to get their route sheets marked all d uring the day and night, and as they roared off to t he next ch eckpoint. And it was Roger , with 5F on his number plate , who m a de it through the section in the shortest rime .Lan d without making a foot-down "dab ," Such were the beginnings of his caree r in m oto rcycle competition. By the time of the actual trials event, Roger was standing at the observed section when the first riders came through . He stayed the re, never dreaming of abandoning his vantage point until he saw the last rider make it through the section . It was a wet , bitter day . Ra in and snow fell intermittently, driven by a steady wind. Roger stood stoically in the weather, rooted in place , entranced by the efforts of the riders traversing the section. When ca lled .for the mid-day meal, the major eating event for Belgin families , Roger did not go. He .didn't want to miss even a minute of observing his first trials. Roger, still sitting behind the desk in Belgian primary school, dreamed more 'a nd more of motorcycles and their famed competition riders; a lot more than he co uld get excited over grammar , arithmetic, history, or geography. His young passion for two-wheeled ra cing machines began to grow eve n more rapidly when his father became the owner of a motorcycle, which he used to ride to work . When Papa DeCoster went on the night shift, first that "Sarolea, " machine ; then a British Norton; followed by a Belgia n FN were Roger's all day . ·H e spent m ost of each day studying and fiddling with t he succession of motorcycles, like a lluring yet still , inaccessible ripe fruits . At least from this point on, it became certain that young Roger's life could foll ow only one path. When he was 12 years o ld, he wangled a job as one of the helpers around the garage of Joseph Leick, loca ted on the road to Waterloo. After they were repaired or tuned up , Roger wou ld road test the motorized bicycles common in Belgium. It was here he earned the privilege, becom ing equal to his older friends in sta tu. and abilities , to straddle the little bikes as he putted over the nearby paths and byways on test runs . " W ith these machines, I was lying on the ground more often than I was up on two wheels ," Roger remembers with a grin. "It became the most common sight for my parents to have me come into the house with my clo thes torn to r ags , bruised and generally battered . It was evident that I ha d fallen off a motor \bike, but my parents didn't know I was /test- riding the velos out of the Leick garage, or ,tha t I was riding my friend's bike. "The big sec ret couldn't last fo rever. One day, it was a Wednesday afternoon, I got my father's FN from the alcove where he kept it and rolled it out on the street. A fewseconds lat er , I had the motor running . I couldn't just sit there ; the temptation was too strong. But I hadn't covered m ore than 50 yards of ground before I lost control of the machine. It was the first full-size m otorcycle I'd ever been on and I co uldn't keep it balanced. "My father ju m pe d out of bed and ra n out of the house. I sti ll remember the beating I got. I (Above) Roger won his first motorcycle competition on March 25, 1962. The winning machine was DeCoster's pieced-together Itom 50. DeCoster's distinctive style comes from his " body-english" trials days. (Below ) Roger got his first CZ ride in 1964. Here, at the Belgian auto-moto show, he sits on Joel Robert's bike as Robert (right' and the Belgian CZ importer look on. . His days of happiness were doubled when the Observed Trial of Lonkebeek was run. For this skill event, in which riders try to negotiate especially difficult terrain sections (called traps) without putting a foot down, the organizers ran one of the observed sections riglu o utside the wa lls of the DeCoster ho use . . Fo r days before the event, and for weeks afterwards, the neighborhood was filled with the sound of you ngsters imitating m ot orcycle engines as they charged u p and down the dirt and rock pi les like the grownup tria l riders. There were , of course, crude paper "nurnberplates" attached to the handlebars of their " trials" bicycles. Roger pu lled his b uddies at every opportu nity to the observed section of the trial by his ho use where he organized an impromptu bicycle competition. 25

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