Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

I ~ E l"""'4 00 0'> l"""'4 l"""'4 l"""'4 ..r::: u .... t'I1 ~ I Gina Bovalrd, tbe first woman to qualify for tbe Daytona 200, talks about berself, racing and being a woman wbere few otber women tread. Tbls Is ber first Interview since returning from tbe Suzuka Elgbt Hours In Japan, wbere sbe broke ber band. By James T. Thoma 20 What were you doing in Japan? Riding a Moriwaki Kawasaki Formula One bike. I was racing in England when I received a telex from john Ulrich, of Cycle World magazine, who had tracked me down to Brands Hatch after three weeks of looking. His telex said that Mamoru Moriwaki--who is a close friend of john's--wanted me to ride one of his bikes in the Suzuka Eight Hours, and that he Oohn) would be my co-rider if I accepted. The first thing I thought when I got the telex was 'Gee, this really sounds great.' I mean this was my first sponsored ride. It was sort of like a dream come true. You just come to a racetrack, sling a leg over a bike and go. The bike was prepared for me, the mechanics were there, they had just taken care of everything. It was lovely. I didn't have to worry about shipping the bike. I didn't have to worry about any of the liule details. I could just worry about riding. It makes you ride so l1)uch better if you can just worry about one thing--riding. But this was it. It was a really good opportunity for me, but then again, it was a really hairy move. I had never ridden a four stroke, never been in an endurance race. A lot of people said that I wouldn't be able to ride a four stroke and couldn't last eight hOUTS. Riding the bike was different. It was a lot heavier than my TZ5oo, and you can feel that weight up high, when you're flipping it imo a corner. It doesn't stop nearly as well, and it doesn't go as fast, but it accelerates. One thing, when the bike hits you, it hits you. That extra 40 kilos really gives you a good swat. It flipped me off awfully quick. You're talking about your crash, of course. How did it happen? 1 went out in practice early in the week, and started out doing 2:42 laps, but ended up doing 2:32. That's the way 1 usually like to approach a circuit, especially a circuit 1 don't. know, like Suzuka. I start out at a slow pace, check the course for oil or anything the [rrst lap and warm up the tires, Then, every time I go through a comer I say to myself, maybe, if 1 take a little wider line there, maybe I could go through a little faster next time. And I try it the next time. I always have to know what my lap times are when I come in, even if it's pouring rain. I always want to know because from that I can judge how much time I'm gaining and I call tell if I'm making up a little time here and a little time there. I work on things to try to make the lap times better. But the crash? The first thing I was thinking was, 'How did that happen?' Because there was just, there was no warning and there was no reason it should have happened. It just did, The next thing I thought about was Moriwaki's bike. Naturally the first time you ride someone else's motorcycle you certainly don't want to throw it down. But that's the way it goes, too. If you don't push it... 1 mean, I could go out and do 2:50 laps all day and never crash, but if you don't push it, what's the point? Wasn't the situation similar to the one you faced at Daytona, where there were some people who said you couldn't do it, you couldn't ride a TZ500 after only riding a TZ250? Some people said that you shouldn't try to ride a four stroke lOOOcc at Suzuka, that it was too big for you, Once you had fallen down, did you worry that they would say 'I told you so'? No. That doesn't have anything to do with falling down. Because I fell down . doesn't mean that I'm any less of a rider. Wes Cooley fell down during practice for Suzuka, too. Does that make him less of a rider? No. It just means that he made a mistake and didn't get away with it. A lot of people have made mistakes and gotten away with it. 1 heard, though, that the first thing Wes said to john after I crashed was 'I told you sol' That seems a little antagonistic, but you've seen that before. Is it true that some riden were actually betting money that you couldn't ride a 500 at Daytona? Yeah. Well, maybe I would have gotten imo the betting too, because it was a big jump. 1 know that I am a very determined person, and when I decide to do something, 1 can usually pull it off. But entering Daytona was a pretty hairy move on my part, just to jump into it. A 500 is a very difficult bike to ride, and it goes very fast on the straightaway. A lot of people-men-·don't belong on the 250s at Daytona, let alone 5005. A lot of the things that happened at Daytona made me go as well as 1 did there. One of those things was that a lot of people said that I just couldn't do it. It egged me on a little bit. There was something 1 had to prove. The first time I wem onto the banking, I didn't want to hold the throttle open either, but there was just so much pressure behind me, so many people behind me, that I just did. Carter Alsop, the fint woman to get an AMA profCSllional license, has said in public that you got the TZ500 she sbould have been given, free, due to a mistake made at Yamaha. How did you get your 5OO? To get the 500 all I had to do was come up with $14,000. I had to make a lot of phone calls to Ken Clark. First he said he was going to give me one (sell me one), then he wasn't. Finally i told him that 1 was going to be racing in Europe, and 1 guess that he decided that Europe was a good place for a 500 to go. Coming up with the money... well, I just spent every penny 1 had. I'm a very impulsive person. I get an idea in my head that I want something, that I have to do something, then I usually just go berserk until I do everything I can to get to that goal. That's also what happened when 1 decided that I wanted to run the expert race, the 200, at Daytona. I just got the idea into my head and I wasn't going to let it go until it happened. It took a lot of phone calls to the AMA. They had held only three races the year before, so there just wasn't any way to accumulate enough poims to advance in three races. It wasn't a fair system. They cancelled two races. I finally badgered them into doing a recommendation thing. It turned out that a lot of people got recommendations who should never have been experts. But you know, a lot of people probably say that I shouIdn:1 be an expert, either. But I think that I did very well at Daytona. You have to start somewhere, racing against experts. The 500 went fairly well there, but I was very nervous because 1 wasn't sure whether I was going to be able to do it, and I had never ridden a 500 before. I always had doubts. Would I really be able to go out there and do it? I asked myself that all the time. The only way I stopped getting nervous, the way I approached it, was to have target lap urnes every day. I

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