Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

---------------------------------------~ By Scott Rousseau longtime motorcycle racing fans, Dick Mann should need no introduction. Having earned ' ) ' his professional license in 1952, Mann made his mark in motorcycle competition on both dirt and aspha lt throughout the 1960s and 70s. He w as a two- time winner of the AMA Grand Na tional Championsh ip Series, capturing th e title in 1963, an d eight years later, in 1971. His career on the pavement was punctuated by back-toback victories in the Dayt on a 200 in 1970 and 71. After retiring from active competition, M ann al so ventured to th e International Six Day Trial at the Isle of Ma n in 1975 where he earned a bronz e medal. But at the age of 60, Mann still finds joy in racing, as he has bee n one of th e p rime p layer s in the AHRMA vintage motocross and trials movemen t. 0 You ' re remembered for your asso ciation with BSA throughout you r professional career. I rode for BSA for a good number of years, b u t I was also sponsored by...everybody (laughs). I rode for BSA, Triumph. I rode a Ma tchless, Honda, Suz uki, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Ossa, Paril1a and a Bullaco. You we re a s al aried ride r for all of th es e factories? Well, in those days a factory ride wasn't wha t you ' d th in k. A fac tory ri de in those d ays was a free piston or so methi ng . A factory ri de has only come ab out in modem tim es. But, yes, I was sponsored by those peop le for free p arts or wha tever the sponsorship ma y have consisted of at the time. By the time we got in with the Japa nese factories...yes, we were p aid . But probably, there were more seas ons th at I had sp ons o rs h ip from BSA than an y other. That was m y primary sponsor over the ·years. When did you retire from active competition? I think it w as 1974. And you had run in the top 10 on the Grand National circuit all those years you competed? I mi sse d it one year. I quit racing fu ll tim e and opened a store in Hawaii. I only raced about ha lf of the circuit that year . I forget w hich year it was, but there was one yea r that I was not in the top 10. Now you ' re in volved in vintage motocross and trials, and you're often credited with being the " father" of the vintage movement. How did you get started in that? It's nothing yo u could answer in a sentenc e. Basically, after I retired from professional racing, motorcycles were still m y hobby. 50 I started going to all of the spor ting eve nt s in Northern California and got fairly activ e in the old-timers series for the over 40 guys, but on modem bikes. When I was young, there was no motocross in the United States as we know it now. I rode British motorcycles and I read the British publications even more than I read the American magazines, an d so all of my heroes out of those m agazines were g uys li k e Jeff Smith and Bill Nilsson, the Swedes an d that w hole m otocross scene fr om the '50s. Because I was arou nd the d ir t trac k scene in Am eri ca, it wasn't that interesting to me; I was there, and I knew all about it. But I w asn't involved in the Eu ropean scene, and it was a lw ays a dream of min e to become a motocross rid er. But there w as no su ch thing in the Unit ed Stat es. By the time the motocross scene came about in the late '60s, I was too old . I was 38 or 39 years old before we saw motocross as it became kn own in the '70s. When it did come about I still got ent hused and did some of it, but n atu rally I wasn 't tha t competitive being that old and having all the bad dirt track ha bits and things carry over. I still had a lot of fun giving it a try. But the sp ort changed quite a bit in the late 70s, and even more in the late '80s. As we rode, we sort of noticed that it wasn't quite as much fun as it used to be. Something was sort of m issing . About the same time, I read th at th e British started the pre-'65 movement in England. In '81 or '82 I took a trip over there to actually see what was going on, h o w they d id it and w hat it was all abo ut. That's basically ho w it got started. Wh en we first started, we just had a few small events with 25 or 30 people. The amazing thing was that once we got back on the sho rt-travel bikes, it was jus t like I remembered. It was fu n again. After thinking about it, I felt it was very important to preserve a time tha t came and was gone, and that I think was the b iggest comp etition movement in the United Sla tes. It exp anded our sport ten fold in jus t a few years. Wh en you get right d own to it, it' s n ot a particular year that we're trying to preserve. It's th e era of motocr oss bikes tha t didn't h a ve the amount of travel that they ended up with. When they started to get the amount of travel tha t they have now is w hen th e sport changed from one form of the sport that I know and like to another sport that is still very exci ting and just as good, bu t it's very different. You're also now involved in the trials movement. You've competed in quite a few of them. . Yes , that was all part of the package when we first started to do the vintage dirt racing. Of course, the vin tage road racing movement had a couple of years head start on the dirt end of it. H ave yo u compet e d in any v i ntage road racing or dirt tra ck eve n ts? No, I haven't. That's not to say that I'm not going to. I don't know, but I basically haven't done much in the vintage deal tha t I us ed to do for money. The road racing and the d irt track is still very interesting, and hopefully it will be successful, but those are still a couple of segmen ts tha t I never really wanted to do. I'm still willing to give it a try . What do you do aside from competing in vi ntage racing? What other interests do you have? Nothing outsid e of th e sport. It's jus t basically my life, as it has been since I was 16. I didn't start ou t to do this, but what I' ve ended up doing is building competition bikes for AHRMA racing. I do sell a few things, and I do specialize in th e big Bri tish four-strokes for both mo tocross and trials. Before that I was in t he frame bu s ine s s, d o in g Yam ah a TT500 an d Hond a frames, but that business died wit h the advent of long- trave l single shock bikes. Then 1 got into working on gray-marke t automobiles, and I didn't enjoy tha t near as much as doin g mo torcycles. 50 now I'm back doing the same thing I did in 1959, and working on the same bikes in fact. How ma ny ol der bi kes do you currentIy own? Oh , abou t 100. Nobo d y h a s just one (laughs). Of course they're no t all ready to go racing. I have a lot of wha t I'd call "cores." I do have some rather exotic Sw edish-built Litos and Monarks th at were n ever seen in America or even England un les s there w as an international GP. In fact, I'm currently racing a re plica Monark. My tria ls bike is a 1960 Ma tchle s s 350, and m y w ife ri d es a handmade BSA 350 motocross bike. My other favorite bik e, which isn't together right now , is a 1953 BSA 350 Gold Star . BSA d id all of the development for the 500s wi th that 350 engine, and the 350 was almos t as fast as the 500. Then they put all of that development in to the 500 and came up wi th the big fin Gold Star that everyone is familiar with. What is your main role with AHRMA? I' v e been elected to the b oard of trustees . Wait, is tha t w ha t 1 a m (laughs)? I think I'm on th e b oard of trustees. It regards the rule making. An d I'm also a memb er of the committee for specialized ru les for the trials and th e assistant coor dina tor to the people who put on the eve nts. Are you surprised w ith the re sponse you've seen in terms of the amount of people who are coming out o f the woodwork to ride these machines? Well, I don't know if I' m surprised or no t. If you follo w any sport, there is a big movem en t in almost ev ery sp ort, like the Master s in golf or th e vintage car racing at Laguna Seca. In Eu rope, vintage ra cin g is very big. The re are more vintage trials events in England than there are modem ones; and almost the same nu m ber of vintage events in general as there are modern ones . I think the world lik es to remember an era o f t ech n ology - esp ecially with motor ve hicles - that people cou ld relate to . Not that it's bette r than m od ern because it w as never our go al to comp ete with m odern ra cing. Modern motocross bikes are abso lute ly fan tastic machines. They're very expensive, but y ou can tell b y lookin g at th em that they're w orth every penny. The problem is that the value disap pea rs immediately when you buy them. It (vintage racing) is just a facet of the sport th at people migh t enjoy. I think so metimes we're p er ceived as a th reat by modern ride rs because this end of the sport has been very successful. But we never intended it and will never intend for it to r eplace modern events. You ca n' t look to th e past for everythi ng. The re's a li ttle p iece in the AHRMA ruleboo k which explains that. Our goa l is to preserve, . u se and sh o w the machines and to preserve the sight, feel and sound of w hat it was like to ride those bikes. But we're also trying to preserve wha t the race tracks and tria ls sections were like at that time. I think that's very important. (Vintage racing) just happens to be a segmen t of the sp ort tha t a lot of peop le do enjoy, an d it ha s a totall y d ifferent altitude, ou tloo k and reaso n tha n modem racing. It just fits in to a lot of people's id ea of what hav ing a good time is. What in centive cou ld you offer to people who were thinking that they might want to give vintage racing a go? If y o u w ant to do someth in g , y ou should d o wh atever yo u want to do as long as it's within your means. And certainly any thing th at we d o is within peop le's mean s. Vintage racing can be a fairly inexpensive. It has been very, very sa fe considering the amo un t of ev ents we've run and the few problems we've ha d wi th that. And yo u can be as competitive as you want. AHRMA has classes for a nybody, even people who can barely find th e gearshift lever. And they're treated the same as th e fastest people we have. We have a very good sys tem of grading the rid ers ability. We have clas ses by the riders' ag e; class es by the age of the motorcycle, it' s a very complicated system that has a class for anybody w ho eve r wan ted to give it a try. How much longer is Dick Mann going to keep doing th is? . That depends on how much longer I'm going to be alive. (N

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