Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

GALOOK BACK ~F By Joe Scalzo Photo by Walt Mahony irst Ricky Graham shrinks himself by 15 pounds, favorably altering his po w e r-to-w eight ra tio. Ne xt he employs the art of pugilism to physically sha rpen himself. Via merciless off.... road grappling, he eleva tes his own racing to the godly levels of Chris Carr and ~ Scott Par ker. The n he patches together a networ of small but dependable spon$-I Q) so rs to finance his stable of rar-idly agin g Hondas. By the climax of Graham's plunge to the championship of Q) th e Grand National series, Carr and Parker ana their y -Davidsons have all become dea and Graham has brought down 0 team of the world 's mo cturer of motorcycl Ha rl e been laid three tim ham aga in, - in 1963 by symbolic sored Nati gulf of 30 Mann, the d ifferenc onships. Perseverance, acceptance of fate, and self-reliance all characteriie Graham, a nd it w as the fiercely inrlependen Mann who was ari originator of sucH s tan da rds . And, although h e was obsessed with Winning his champ ionship, Mann, throughout that odd 1963 season, never expected it to .financially enrich his life. He was not wrong about that, motorcycle racing being even then an un d erfmanced occupation; Graham's own reaction was similar. Inform ed that for 1993 Camel wouldn't be p ayin g its cus tomary Sl 00,OOO bonus, Graham had immedi ately and dourly predicted tha t now he was certain to win ilie champi onship . Just turned 34 yea rs old, Gra~ ham hasa melanchol rfulness mu ch like Mann's. Th were ern eage oi.the ''Amerlc orcyc s Association tournament; Graham at the Los Angeles Co unty Fairground s a t Pom ona and Mann's ben eath the ligh ts of le g end-in fested Ascot Pa r k . Fo r Mann, it was the culmination of an epic 14-Na tional battle forcing him to pit his b ra ins, tenaci ty a nd w ill agains t the we al th, m an power , and technological kn ow-h ow of H arl ey-Dav id son. H e couldn't afford - nor would he have tolerated - mechanics to help him transport his BSAs and Matchless back and forth across the continent while getting little rest between races. Outside of his friends and admirers, all he had were his motorcycles and tools, a maxed-out gasoline credit card, and an open Ford Ranchero p ick-up for traveling and sometimes sleeping in . So, upon winning his championship under, such impossible conditions, he was permitted to whoop it up in celebration. He didn't. The reasons were two-fold. Being half-dead from injury, almost as usual, Ma n n was physically incapable of moun ting a ya-hoo! wheelsta nd lasting for a straightaway as Ricky Graham did at Pomona. But the second reason is that Man n is cons titu tionally incapable of wil d emotion. Emotion of any kin d is bad form for him. For tuna tely, the Ascot Pa rk grandstands were not as reticen t. The Ascot of 30 years ag o had been a haven for the rebellious, the ou t-of-step, and the fanat ical since the days o f the orig inal BSA Wrecking Crew, and still was home to the most war-like and radically antiHarley-Davidson forces alive. Mann's rup turing nine unbroken years of Mil- o ~ :> o Z 28 Time Remembered waukee stranglehold was wi tnessed by quite a mob - partisans w ith BSA'regalia who had finally tasted bl o od , plu s Sammy Pierce and his Ind ian diehards, Bruce Welbaum and the outlaw unio n named Motorcycle Race rs Inc ., Shell Thue t t and h is embittered Royal En fie lds. Everyb od y cheered. Many peo ple got hammered . Anybody no t of th e H a rl ey-Davidson faith was welcome. It was quite a celebration. AIl of Mann's familiar contradictions were on displa y throughout 1963. There he was, eaSlly the most versatile professional motorcycle racer in the country, the only one capable of winning all five competition forms , And there Mann also was, among, the mos t accident-p ro ne and self-destructive men of his time. It was a terrible mystery. Mann was never delib I reck less, yet few in the ca reer managed to break This was accompanied by, eq ually al cap acity ing but di .rig ph' d an abhor r d oc d s took racin enses aw Mann, how ever, didn'f1i¥playing thiS up. Late one night,!however, he'g admitted, "I may have been one of thc first gu ys to get into tHebuildfug of my own casts for broken bones." The he'd hastil dded, giving credit where Jt was due, "No. That was me and Neil Keeri, together." He had a terri fic nick name, "Bugs," but not a colo rful story to expJain ho w he'd come by it. It was real ly impossible for him to blow hi s own trumpet. He refused to posture or pose. He wouldn't even speak out in praise of motorcycle racing. Asked one time which of the five second wife, the winsome Susie; and the misan thropic Al Gunter, who as a ges tur e of affection for Mann once ru shed across the Grea t Plains to sp ring Mann, wounded again , from a barbaric hovel of a hospital on the d esolate p rai rie of Kansas. Some of these fascinating people later contributed to Ma nn's 1963 championship. Family tree and geogra phy de termine character . Mann's father, before walking out on the family while Mann was a toddler, led a hazardous subterranean existence working the quicksilver and quartz mines of the southwest . A bold study in self-relianc e herself, Mann's mo ther, p ickin g u p th e slack from her husband's d epartu re - it happened on the eve of the Second World War - moved the family to the bay area of northern Californ ia . Then she did heavy-duty wo rk in the defense industry, wielding a wel de r, torching pla tes of! compe titions he enjoyed mo st, his answer was no ne of th em. This was widely misunderstood. What he really meant, it turned out, was that his preference was to be off cowtrailing across the Oakland hills. None of this should have translated into heroism. But the singu lar manner in which Mann tom ported h is lonely, underdog racing was found to be inspiring and moving. Consequently he had frien ds and allies prepared to interrupt their own lives and do an ything to help him . His major supporters included many of the brightest names around . Some of who m had been introduced to mo to rcycles by Mann: Gary Nixon, a do uble cham pion of the future who had dev iled for Mann while still an impoverishe d Okie urchin from the Dust Bowl; Dic k Dorr esteyn, m ag icia n of the TT steeplechase; polemical Neil Keen; the brave an d careless Jan Opperman who e ventu ally pa rticip at ed in the Ind ianapolis 500 but who claimed the hardes t racing he ever saw was with Mann in the infamous hill country behind Oakland; the ageless Indian Scout winner BilI Tuman; Mann 's own decea sed well as reinvent hidebound AMA rules and regulations - ultimately he enjoyed great success a t this - and was also an ag gressi ve conversationalist who believed all Competition Con gress members were morons and pointed ly told the m so: "I would love to engage you in a battle of wits," he once told one of them . "Bu t I see you are unarmed." Gu n ter, who got on ev erybody 'S ner ves , wa s absolutely the worst for attacking the status quo. He saw himself as brainier and more enlightened than anybody . Stand up for what you believe in! Fight back! Be ind epend en t! Those were the values that Gunter espoused, and Mann, who went on his very firs t professional sor ties with G u nte r, absorbed them too . This impu lse for nonconformity dictated the sha pe of his career. Between 1959 and 1972, Mann wo n 24 full National ra ces, Gun ter won seven, and Keen one, yet the talk of the time was how many more they migh t have won had all three on ly played the go-along-to-get-along game and put on the Harley-Davidson colors. It wasn't that Harley-Davidson d idn't try and solicit their services. Ov er various seaso ns, in fa ct , Mann and Keen and Gunter all were hired. But none of them stay ed - they preferred continuin g to figh t Milwa ukee ins tea d . In Mann's case, it wasn't that he d idn't ad mire the pro fic iency of th e Harley-Davidson effort, but he worried tha t life on a factory team would be constraining. Maybe he 'd no longer be permitted to be in charge of his own bikes: to invent his own valves, grind his own camshafts, heat-t reat his own custom tires. This stuff was at the heart of Mann's racing. In any event, Mann sailed th rou gh his entire p ro career wit hou t winning a single National on a Harley-Davidso n. Th irteen vic tories were on h is ow n 3SAs. Eight occurred on a curiosity of a G50 mod el Matchless, a mount loaned to him by the dying Indian Corporation while Indian was try ing to d is trib ute ch less a nd make it a commercial ~:lt failca ./ Bu t Mann's GSO did ers Uor'h is 'Own career, did' won......-' . *. or mot mg, and won is wat Championship. e prio 962, was Mann's th as a pr ona on the tour. Since 7, he'd neverfmished outof the top in the stan!;1ings; but never had interted the Harley-Davidson dominance either. That dominance was not a fiction. Ho wever, things were not qu ite what they seemed . Outwardly, the late Fifties an d early Sixties were campaigns of con tinu ing battles between the . H arl ey-Da v idson champ ions; Joe Le ona rd , Carroll Resweber and th e e tra ordinary newcomer Bark Markel conduct e d th em sel ves on t h e same pret erna tur al levels as Carr and Parker tod ay, But the Harley-David son riders themselves knew different. They feared Dick Man n as much as they did each other. H e wa s th e last opponen t they wanted to be chasing, the last face they wan ted to find sta ring balefully at their backs ides as a National wa s w in di ng down. Everybody talked w ith amazea bo u t Mann as .th e Spring field f 1961. First Mann h ad nearly esweber, and then had ultiy-:'d eadhea ted Marki+ for second p ace, after ra cing most·ofthe 50 laps ar und the Springfield M ile with a flat . e. AndthllJollowing yea r, 1962, swebertem por arily cr ip pled ken wrist, Mann' and his rnavactually took qver the lead in the p'oin t sta n di ngs . 'Tea m Ha rleyDavidson te nsed, b u t didn't pa nic. Mimn nex t committed one of his frequen t acts o f self-destruction - he smashed his and against a guardrail and even with Resweber fully out of commission Markel came back to preserve company glory. The prosecution of the 1963 champions hip was d ifficult for Harl ey-Da vidson . Resweber was forever gone, and his replacement, the able George Roeder, was having a dubious time find his way with Resweber 's former iron. And the remainder of the team's great fighters were doing a particularly blooming job annihilating themselves and their brothers . Ralph White smoked his wr ist before the season officially started - yet managed to win the 200 miles of Daytona anyway. The new hope Ronnie Rall cap tu red two 'cru cial dirt track Nationals, then took his collarbone to pieces on a meaningless short track . Mo st d isma y in g o f all w as the incr easin gly erratic behavior of Reswebe r's successo r, Mar kel. At Springfield he took d own himself and two others as luck would ha ve it, they were his own team mates Da rrel Dovel and Dick Hammer . Then Markel got going again. This time, with more unwanted aggression, he again toppled himself as well as an enemy BSA Gold Star. It subsequent~:;,,,,,,,,,,:.,,,,,. :\ .::"" :::":::': : .,

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