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/126629
(A bove) Four-time W orld Chemp Sergei Terebenko (5 ) hes e heet race leed pretty well iced up. (A bove right) Wheelspin is little trouble; wheelies ere en occupetionel hezerd. (Below left end bottom) Mechines use Jewe 500cc singles of speedwey type. They elso burn methenol. Slleedway. racing on ice No quiche eaters in this bunch! By Hanny Ray Abrams Fi rst impressions are quite ofte n misleading. Your reacti ons are more visceral than ra ti o n al, bu t, given tim e, yo u often re-th in k yo ur original im p ression and come to see th e Ii h t gTh' fi . e irst nrne Y0t.l; saw ~enny Ro bert s manhandling hIS T Z750 dirt tracker on the foot-wide 10 black marble strip at Syracuse you doubted his sagacity. So did he. You might question Da le Singleton's one foray onto the Isle of Man where he was going about a hundred mi les ~n hour in fog so thick you could boule u , So he did. Andjust watching the P ar is-Da kar rally on television, where the sandstorms are so fierce that you can't tell if you 're moving or standing still, makes you question the sanity of the riders. BUI they're mostly French, so you understand. Such is the case with speedway ice racing. The competitors are mostly from the north, where winters are lo n ger than summers and riding a 60 -h orsepower methan ol-burning si n gle-cylinder machine around a q uarter- mi le track o f ice is co ns ide red socia ll y acceptable. There is a lo t of ceremony in this sport of ice speedway. The twenty riders that have qualified for the twoday meet are paraded out onto the front straight with their team rnanagers , mechanics, and £la g girls. Each rider is introduced to the 6,500 or so fans here at the F~ank~urt I<;e Sport Ha ll and greeted In hIS nauve lan guage. . . . . . . To Britain s first-timer Martin Goodwin, th~ annou~c.ersaid, no: he demanded, In television, heavilyaccented English, "Welcome to FrankIurt. Good luck. May the best man win. We enjoy to see you here. Have a good race." Yes, sir. After the introductions, they all load up on a flat bed truck for the o bligatory lap of honor; some of them m a y nOI gel around the track this smooth ly a ll night. Then. it's showtime. • The first heat features four-time World C ha m p io n Sergei T a ra ba n ko of Russia, West German champ Helm ut Weber, Norway's T ore Fa h lstrom, and al ternate P eter Neider. Like. reg u la r speedway, the rid ers , . . . .' . are assigned by helmet co lor to their place on th e sta rt ing grid and as soon as they're set up the ribbons go u p and they're off for fou r laps on the six-inch th ick, 400-yard long ice oval. A minute and six seconds later it's over and you feel a chill on your chin which has dropped to the ground from what you've seen. Taraban ko, sim ply put, is a machine. At 33, an age considered old in many motor sports, his reflexes seem amazingly sharp. He doesn ' t watch the ribbons at the start, he keeps h is eye on the mechanism that releases the ribbons and seems to brush his aged open face he lmet on the bottom ribbon as he invariably is first into turn one. You watch him and think you've pegged the winner. Goodwin is in the second heat. Bu t why would someone who has ridden trials, speedway, lo n g track, and scrambles do this? "Ir's something different, Something to do. It's a completely different sensation from any form of racin g. The first time that I'd been on the bike was around Christmas and that was in a TV studio. We went up to Sweden for a couple of weeks training, but this is my first race. Once you get over the fear of pitching the bike over in the corner and the spikes it 's quite a nice sensation," Goodwin said. The spikes. O n the front 23-inch shaved speedway tire there are about " .. .. Continued to e 12 .. t , .