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/126409
Why did you become involved in speedway racing? " Beca use 1 liked racing; I never really thought at first rha; it was going to be a money maker. In the beginning I thought if we could put 1500 people a night in the grandstands it would be a big deal. Someone from Cycle News , during our first ever practice at Costa Mesa , said 'How are you going to draw people when a short track can't?' I said , 'We are going to appeal to a nonmotorcycling group, we hope .' It worked out that way , fortunately . The original idea was to provide entertainment rather than motorcycle racing. D id the fact that J .C. Agajanian was drawing the motor cycle people to his Friday night half mile show at the time have anything to d o with your idea? " Yes . Aggie was drawing real well for the half mile in those days, but no other form of motorcycle racing was, and motocross hadn't really got going yet. I felt there was entertainment value rather than motorcycle value in speedway racing." You seem to have been right. "Yea h . Well , people told me at first that it was just a three-year cycle ,that it would go three years and just die, because it always had. Now we are starting our l l th year. "Some of the tracks which have come along in recent years have grown faster than we did in the beginning as they have had the advantage of experienced riders who knew what the show was and how to put on a good show . They kn ew they had to keep their leathers clean and how to keep their bikes in top shape. In the beginning we had the old JAPs and some bikes that had been dragged out of the garages where 'they had been stored." ". . . they (British promotets} arejust ripping offour good warm zes bo di . . . " Just wha t is the entertainment valu e in speedw ay t hat h as ca u sed it to grow a nd or ma intain en ough fa ns to justify a wee kly sh ow? "What I hear from the fans who are not necessarily motorcycle enthusiasts, which is the key , is that we provide non-stop action . These fans are people who go to the movies once in a while . They are just people and their families who are looking for entertainment. "We run 26 races in less than a two hour period . There is always something going on - the fans aren't sitting there watching some guy drag the track half the night. You 're not there so long your butt starts to hurt from sitting on the wood seat. You 're there two hours, and then you 're gone , and you've seen 24 to 26 races. You've seen an awful lot jammed into one short period of time, and I think that's the key to it. In many other types of racing , not just motorcycles , spectators are hung up on delays , restarts and caution flags . They just don't get the non -stop action speedway has to offer." How much does the "star rider" con ce p t as o pposed to the brand competition in most oth er fo rms of motorcycle racing have to do with the success of speedway racing? " Since we don't have a bra nd competition , we almost have to hav e a personality competition . You get showy riders vs. just competent riders who ra ce on the pole so the fans develop favorites . A big appeal is to go to the races to see " you r guy" ride. If you have never been to speedway, after you are there for 20 minutes you've got "your guy." You've already figured that one out. That's the first thing you do figure out when you go to the races is which rider you like. You may only know him for a month or so as the guy in the orange leathers; you might not even know his name - but that's the guy you watch for . Then you have second and third hero and right on down the line . That is tremendously important to the sport. "It's a help that everything is so close to the spectators. They can see the riders' faces and their expressions , then you can go ta lk to them in the pits afterwards and find out that they are. pretty nice guys. The riderlfan relationship is a very important factor in the success of speedway. "We run 26 races in less than a two-hour period . . . the fans aren't sitting there watching some guy drag the track all night. " What was wrong with the team racing concept? Why didn't tha t wor k ? " T h e concept was perfect everything was super - it just didn't work. It didn't work because of the previous discussion about the 'sta rs .' The fans were used to seeing all of their heroes each week . Then , when we went to team racing, maybe only one of their heroes was on one of the two teams racing that week at that track and two of their heroes were on teams who weren't even there that night. All of a sudden we had taken some of their heroes away and on ly given them two per week, and maybe they had Jive. "If we had started in the beginning with team racing, it would have worked super. Bu t we didn't. Instead of moving the- sport forward , we took people's heroes away from them . They felt cheated. They felt we had taken part of the show away from them . "T he team concept works when you can give the fans all , or almost all , of their heroes together against a team from some other place , like the match races we hold each spring , the U.S . vs. the World ." The past tw o years seem to have been more co n tr overs ia l th a n many others with the riders' strike in 1977. then the pro and con O xley war which occupied much of t he Cycle News letters page last season , "Actually, controversy has been part of this sport since the beginning. We've had noise problems with the city (Costa Mesa) . In the early days , we had crowd control prob lems . We've solved our problems as we went along. "T he easiest thing about promoting speedway is running the race. That's the absolute easiest. Hardest is the politics and all the other ---- you hav e to pu t up wit h . If it were just going down and turning on the lights, fixing the race track and running the race, it's a piece of cake. But somehow along the way all kinds of strange things happen to you, and after 10 years, I've had almost all of them happen . "Probably the worst thing. the most traumatic and the hardest thing I've ever gone through as a promoter was the rid ers ' strike. A lot of the riders who went on strike had ridden for us for eight yea rs: You get to know them real well , they're your pals, and you are close to them , and then there was a split -up . They think they deserve more ; we think we want more. You know you're right , they know they're right. You're just butting heads on th e thing, and in the case of the strike, the promoters had nowhere to go . "W e couldn't increase our purse; our purses are on a percentage, so they do increase as the crowd increases or as the ticket price increases. As there are more dolla rs. the riders make more money . They wanted an increase in purse which we couldn't provide and Oxley presents a $500 bill to two-time U,S, Speedway Champion Rick Woods. while veteran speedway announcer Larry Huffm an loo ks on. the riders felt we were telling them a story, that we could in fact provide it 'ca use everybody knows that all promoters are fat and wealthy. Everybody knows that all promoters over the world are that way . "T he (team racing) concept was perfect everything was super - it just didn 't work. " "It was just kind of an impasse and it worked itself out. but it worked itself out the hard way . I think it left some bad feelings between - well , at first - the riders and myself, but now I've forgotten any bad feelings that I had, with the riders really. You have to forget it. " A majority of the riders are not too well experienced in business, as such, and they don't understand some of the costs and some of the problems that we have. They understand that when they go to the gas station to go to the track they b uy gas for their tru ck and now it is 80~ a gallon , and it used to be 40~. They understand that a piston that used to cost them $40 is $68. Those things they do understand because they are directly affected by them . But they don't understand that our costs have multiplied at the same or a much greater rate than theirs. We're all in the same boat. Neither the rider nor the promoter is coming out financially as well as they did six years ago. Now , about the letters in Cycle News last year - it is subject I wanted to discuss . I don't remember ever answering a letter in print. I just don't believe in firing- up a controversy: one letter leads to another which leads to another. When a person presents their personal point of view in a letter to a newspaper, as soon as it is printed , it kind of becomes fact . So, if they say you are a dirty guy and you send a letter and defend yourself, you sure aTe a dirty guy and you are trying ro make excuses why you're not. So I sort of shine the publicity, good or bad. I read it , but I feel that discretion is the point of order on replies to po ison pen letters and that sort of thing, in the trade papers especially." A frie n d of yours recently made the comment that one of th e reasons he feels you a re so successfu l is your a bility to let all t he flack an d h a rassment that arises roll off your b ack. "Well , a guy told me a long time ago - this is one of those ' a n old man once told me' stories - well , this old man told me that when you 're pointing your finger at somebody , remember you got three pointing back at you rself. Yeah , try that. I always thought it was a good lesson . "T he easiest thing about promoting speedway is running the race . . .Hard est is the po litics and all the other ---- you have to put up with. " So, if you run aro u n d an tell everybody that I'm a dirt y guy , a nd th ey bel ieve you a nd I'm reall y not , p re tty soo n they'll find it ou t for th emselves . Then yo u are the one th at 's on the hook . So I try and let it 17