Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

..----------------------------~--------- With Ricky Graham at Willow last week. preaching pavement. Keith Code. teaching speed at 1982 California Superbike School. FroRi shoe Rlan -eo Road Racins Guru: Kei.h·Code By Dave Edwards What do Liberace's shoes and road racing have in common? If you guessed Keith Code, you're right. Before Code became a racer, and before he started his overwhelmingly successful California Super-bike School, he manufactured high-fashion platform shoes. 22 Besides Liberace, he fitted Elton John and Diana Ross. Over 5000 riders have gone through Code's California Superbike School. Each paid $150 and spent half a day at a road race track; instruction, bike, leathers, boots, gloves and hel met provided. Besides the basic California Superbike School. Code holds advanced courses for club racers, usually with guest instructors. In 1982 Eddie Lawson was the guest instructor; in 1983, Wes Cooley. Code also instructs individual riders; he coached Wayne Rainey for 18 months, before and through the 1982 season. Rainey, who hadn't road raced before Kawasaki hired Code to teach him, went on to win the 1983 Superbike Championship. Code wrote a book about his techniques, with an introduction (and endorsement) written by Rainey; Eddie Lawson wrote tips and comments that are printed in the margins throughout the$14.95 book, "A Twist of the Wrist." Over 9000 copies have been sold in the U.S.; a Japanese translation is in the fourth printing, with 18,000 copies sold. "I decided I didn't like the people in the shoe-design business," says Code, 39, "so I sold my factory and went racing wilen I was 28. Before that, I had entered two or three club races, when I was 16 or 17, riding a Ducati 200. In the meantime I was a 'canyon crazy.' "I had a terrific time riding; I liJ:.. ,-l ,JIf started racing because it was fun. The Superstreet class really floored me, so I started going to the races. I wen t to the Nationals, got interested in Superbikes, did good and all of a sudden there I was. "I got some sponsorsh ip from Racecrafters and Kerker; before that I rode for Yoshimura. That was before Wes Cooley started riding for them in 1977. It was then that I made thealltime mistake of my career. "I decided to build my own Superbike, and work on my own Superbike. That was pretty much the end of it right there. "Pierre DesRoches said 'Hey, I'm going to build a Superbike and we can build two for the same price as one.' Of course that's a joke; but I started working on my own machine. "I also started riding for Mel Dinesen, riding his TZ250 and TZ350. It was great. I had time to really work on my own riding when I didn't have to work on my bike at the track. I started jotting down things that I noticed about my own riding, and I began to ask the other riders about their riding, not how they did things, but more what their point of view was, how they felt about certain things. I began to develop a set of material, and I was using it to supervise myself and [bega.n to help other guys with their riding. I called itthe Keith Code Rider Improvement Program. "It was a little two-day, $250 program, and it helped quite a few people. One of my first students was Dennis Smith; another was John UIrich.lthink a couple hundred people took the course,. Some of them are still racing and some aren't. il- I !I ~j I I i I I I 1 . 1 ": • I )1 l J ~ Shoe designer. 1973. "I began to talk to Kawasaki they had been helping me with some parts for my Superbike - about doing a rider school. Atthe time, the industry was in good condition. Motorcycles were being sold. None of the manufacturers felt that any unusual method of promotion were' needed at that time, so the yet-unborn Superbike School did not come into being. "I continued racing. In '78 and '79 I did better, with Vetter company sponsorship: Reg Pridmore and I were a team. Reggie won the championship. I showed up at all the races, working Oil myown bike. I was in the top 10; I think the best I ever did overall was fifth place. "Occasionally I'd run with the fast guys. I was developing my riding and I was having a hard time. The mistake is trying to work on your own machine and develp your riding at the same time. I knew I didn't have year.s and years and. years to spend at this game, so at the end of '79, I decided to retire. "I was 34 then. I began in earnest to push the school idea, and my partner, Richard Lovell, came over from England. He had worked at a school that operated over there, the British Motor Racing School. "He told me that it wasn't really all that difficult to run a school. I began to push on Kawasaki again. Rom Lovil was the public relations manager. I pestered him mercilessly for a year until one day I was finiilly able to corner him. I realized then that he didn't know what I was talking about; the concept was completely new in the U.S. So I put it to him in clear, concise terms, gave him a definition of what the thing was going to be. He just clicked; he said 'Is that what ypu're trying to do?' "I told him that the Superbike School could go nationwide, that we could have thousands of people come out and r.ide Kawasakis.1t would bea terrific public relations activity. "So Lovil finally said yes, as did the rest of the people at Kawasaki; Chuck Larson, Dave Dewey, basically the same people who come up when you talk to Wayne Rainey about his racing career, the same guys who chose Eddie Lawson and moved him into his road racing career. There was a very interesting group in the hierarchy at. Kawasaki at that time. "I was in there trying to get whatever we could get from Kawasaki. I was selling a product, the California Superbike School, and I figured the product could do certain things. I knew it wasn't going to happen overnight, but each one of the things that I said would happen has in fact happened. "Kawasaki agreed to supply motorcycles, which made it possible for us to put the Superbike School into action in 1980. Every year since than it has increased in size and scope and number of students and it's performing the way it was set up to perform. Kawasaki is happy with it, we're happy with it and the rest of the sponsors are happy with it. "Last year was our biggest year, and we covered 12 tracks. We added Portland, had Pocono, did Texas World. We had already been running Elkhart Lake and Loudon, and we did more schools at Willow Springs; Willow Springs seems to be getting very popular. Racing Instructor. 1984. "The thing that's neat is that when we first sta.rted everybody who came to the school was a street rider. We ran Riverside only, except at the very end of that first year, when he picked l,Il?,aJ ~afli ,a,t I,.ag4~a~¥fa, .~~t. ~h~

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