Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

Everett Brashear (left), seen here with ann ouncer Mike Vancil, won 14 Grand National Cham pionship races between 1952 and 1960. J eff Sierck lets it all hang out while cutting exhibition laps on his 1941 Indian during Dick Mann's Dirt Bike Rally at Sandhill Ranch. 22 young kids a t tra ckside were goo gle- . eyed and a nxio us - th is was medi eval hi story come to life aga in. If you wanted to, you co uld step righ t u p to th e sho w and touch it. You co ul d shake a hand, pat a shoul der, as k for a quick photo smi le and pose, a nd get it back in spades. It was real a nd had a temperature. You could feel th e heat of it. _Bugs told it lik e it used to be, and the way racing is now: " It 's very different today. They are superstars . They don 't rea lly mingle with the fans because they can 't. There are too man y. In o ur day we were quite close to th e fans, and when th e race was over, th e pits were so full of people you co uldn' t move. I raced for 22 years, and I kn ow th ere were fans who watched before I raced a nd watch ed for 10 year s after I raced, th e same fans . The fan s were tight knit. In the Midwest they would take th eir vaca tio ns and th ey built most of the ir recrea tio n time aro und professio na l motorcycle racing. "T he differen ce in riders' person alities stood out in th ose days , and it's no t possibl e to ha ve it stand out the way it used to a nymore. You'll noti ce th at most of th e riders now are alm os t in an identical mold. They are almost all th e sa me size. They all have exactly the same style on the race tra ck, because all the ma chines are identical. All the seats on th e motorcycles are identical, and all the handl ebars are identical. The tires mak e th e race tra ck identical. It 's very difficult to have some body's pe rsonality come through. In the last 10 or 12 years, it seems like maybe one person a year is the cro wd's favori te, a nd that will almos t always be wh oever's number one. And in o ur da y it wasn 't that way a t all. "Every rider's style was differen t," recall ed Bugs. " Bart Ma rkel co u ld dominate a deep cus h ion, and he d id n 't look q u ite as good on a groove. Dick Klam foth was a master of th e groove race tra ck. Resweber was an exceptionally gi fted rider, not o nly a rider , but very m uch of a thinker. J oe Petrali was before my time, a nd the word th at I get from the o lde r guys say th a t he was a nother one of th e Leonard a nd Resweber kind. Kenny Rob erts fall s into that group, also. And maybe a co up le others wh o had sho rt careers, lik e Brelsford that we'll never kn ow. Gary Nixon was a no the r real hard worker, ma ybe he wasn' t th e kind of tri ck na tural th at L eo nard a n d Resweber were, but you can see by hi s determination that hi s career was excep tiona lly good. J ody Nich olas a t fir st was kn own primaril y because he was su ch a neat roa d racer wh en he was very young, a beau tiful roa d race style a nd he was very fast, bu t lat er on he got into dirt trac k and sho wed hi s prowess th ere, too. In my estima tio n Sammy Tanner had the ultimate half-m ile dirt tra ck racing style, I always ad mired hi s style a nd forin , and I cou ldn' t duplicate it if I tried. What stands ou t in my mind more th an anyth ing is th e way he actually sa t on the motor cycle and worked it - he was great. And there was only one J oe Leonard, he could do a nyth ing in racin g, a natural ability - us guys th at don't hav e it don 't know what it is. I don't think it's as possibl e any more, but you could work yo ur way aro und it in those days. I didn 't hav e a dominat e style. I sort of slopped around and , did all of it pretty good, and none of i t extra good. I th ink that 's probably why I had such a long career and limited success as far as wins go , but a pretty good success as far as my overall scor e." There is a thoroughly stra igh t-o n quality in Dick Mann tha t all hi s friends know and strangers are quick to notice. Som eone too casua l in ob servance might even think him naive. But not so. T he man Mann exp resses hi s life and lo gic at the core of hi s o wn pl ain livin g and doing it well, wh a tever it may be. If he were a politician, he would be the ideali st you hoped would wi n but go t too few votes. If he were a movie star, he would proba bly be a sma ller, quicker version of Ga ry Cooper. If he were your dad, you'd want to listen to every word he had to say. " If yo u worked harder ," Di ck Mann sai d of h is racin g pa st, " a nd fought better and stru ggled with eno ugh gri t, you co uld do well in thos e days. You co uld n 't, o n even terms, run with Leo nard or Resweber. You may fin ish a hea d of the m some ti mes, but basicall y you kn ew that you did some little thing better, but you didn't o utride them. You could still fin ish ah ead of people who were much better than you if you did things just right. " Most of th e ra cers today are in Leonard' s a nd Resweber's league. And it's hard to tell because not on ly does th eir personality and their style no t come across to the crowd, it doesn 't come across to me either. It's very diffi cult to pick anyo ne. And th ey are all fantastic - all the new young rid ers are great. But it's rea lly difficult for them to show us th ey are because it 's just very difficult to show. " Also, con tra ry to what everybody th inks, being a professional motorcycle racer is not fun. It's not fun to rid e mil e dirt tracks and half miles. It 's very hard and dangerous work if you 're gonna win or do well. Winning was never everyth ing with me - the guy that said that is dead wrong. Playing th e game to win is wh at it 's all about. If winning was everything nobody would be playing, because only one guy wins. And nobody else would hav e a ny fun playing. But it wasn 't a thing we did for fun. We might have enjoyed being a professional athlete, but ri ght down to the very physical ac t of racing a motorcycle is very hard work. You bet it is. The vintage guys on Sandhill 's dirt track proved it that afternoon at Dick Mann 's Rally. Horsing those machines around was a real gas , but manual labor, also. And there were riders out there who'd been born with an iron shoe. And others wh o knew no groove. There were times when the turn-hugging crowd totally disappeared, vanished from sigh t in th e wild dust rooster tails of high wall sliders. England's Adrian Moss, Dick's visiting friend and organizer of one of the biggest vintag e events in the world, British Bike Bon anza , sh owed how th e Brits do it in th e grass - on dirt. Bugs had jok ed earlier with hi s Brit pa l Adrian th a t, for th e English , " Dirt is wh a t fall s behind ca ttle, so th ey call it'grass ' track there." And now Moss went o u t and showed us all wha t real dirt riding is. Oh, yes, th is ma n is an English gentlema n - and former Briti sh G rass Track Champi on , too. Then it was Bugs' tu rn o n the d irt oval. T he solo laps everyo ne had waited for. In th ose red a nd white lea th ers tha t seemed to dominate on ly yesterday, o ut he rode into th e Ca lifornia sun o n hi s bright Gold It Star. It was th e same late 50s-built BSA dirt tra cker o n which Mann had won hi s first National number o ne pl ate riding back in 1963. Twentysix year s ago th at was, and Dick tod ay was still looking better th an mo st track riders' wildest dreams of wh at doing it right is all abo ut. But, of course, he looked a t it the way Di ck Mann does. Later he sai d, " Down in my heart I kn ow I ca n' t opera te like I did years ago. But it's still fun to do." Just wat ch him. The following week, that Sunday after an agon izing sem i-reco very from the tragic Bay Area eart hq ua ke, th e yesteryear bikes were again at Sandhill Ranch for Dick Mann 's Annual Vintage Motocross. It had rained th e day before, and that a nd the quake had thinned the sta rt ing field , but they were there and doing it, a nyway, carryi ng on the heritage of motorcycle love and bringing new people into the vintage sport. Dick Mann commented: " When I deal with any kind of vintage competition , som e of th e most en th used people are you ng riders. Tech nica ll y, when they say yo u hav e a motocross bike tha t weighs 350 pounds and only has 4 in ches of wheel travel they just fall on their kn ees laughing. And wh en they see that no matter how big and heavy it is, we are having a really good time with it, and the competition is as close and good as it is with the most high-tech 12-inch travel bik e there is. They're amazed. The younger riders who get into it are probably the most enth used in the whole group. " So this is what Dick is doing. And loving it. Lov ing the past and th e way things were, a nd bringing it back into th e present for everyone 's everyda y enj oyment. When ask ed about th e tomorrows of motorcycle racing, Bugs smiled and sh ifted a bi t uncomfortably. And then he answered th e way yo u kn ew he would. " I'm more into history th an I am th e future," Dick Mann said. "I don 't reall y have a handle on the future." T ha t's it. Except for wh at Everett Brah ear offered abo u t his racin g pal Bu gs before th e silent cro wd at Sandh ill Ran ch. " If it wasn 't for Dick Man n," sai d Everett o n the P. A. spea kers, " We wou ldn 't have the pri viledge of ge tti ng all these guys together. I thi n k we all o we him a big han d. H e not o n ly was o ne of my favor ite race rs and frien ds, but the guy earned everythi ng he ever won . No o ne rode harder than Dick Ma nn. " H ear! H ear! •

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