Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

26 in g as a color commentator for the event. With Penhall leading the way, he and Sigalos pressed on th rough the remaining qualifying rounds , along the way teaming up w ith three other A mericans to captu re another World Team Cup title at London 's White City Stadium. Finally , on A ugus t 28, 1982, Penhall became the firs t A merican to wi n the World Individual Cham pionship two t imes, in f ront of h is own ado ring A merican fans at the Los A ngeles Mem orial Coli seum . A nd non e other th an Sigalos stood at his side on the podium after tallying a third-place fin ish. It was there on the podium , with Sigalos at his side and his speedway racing dreams fully accomplished, that Penhall announced his immediate retirement fr om the spo rt. There was an acting deal on the:table at the time, a way to earn good money without the possibility of being used by someone else for traction in a turn. But perhaps there was more to it than that. Penhall's character had been called into question by speedway fans eve ry w here wh en he all egedly " threw a race" at the 1982 Int ercontinental Final so that more American riders could make it to the World Final. To make matters worse, his ha t e/hat e relationsh ip with Eng lan d's Kenny Carter had been heating up contin uous ly f or two years. It had reached the flashpoint at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Penhall immediately got off to a bad start in his title defense by dropping a point to England's Les Collin s in heat fou r. He countered by wi nning the next two heals, but Carter was atop the leaderboa rd wi th a perfect score through the first three rounds. If Penha ll had any hope of retaining the Wo rld Champions hi p he had worked so hard for, then he would have to win. heat 14. Carter was in it. Penhall quickly dispat ched Peter Collins while Carter go t caugh t up in traffic , but Cart er was soon posing a serious thr eat to the champ's lead. They roared down the front straight, banging handlebars the whole way and then raced into turn one wi th Penhall on the inside and Carter on the outside. The two were close, too close. Depending on who , you talk to, Penhall either knocked Carter down or Carter ran into Penhall and fell down. One thing is certain , Carter did go down , and through the fence to boot. A restart was called for, and Carter was excluded. His we/l-documented pleadings to the referee were to no avail. Penhall went on to win heat 14 and also his last ride to earn unprecedented - albeit tarnished - glory. " We took a v ideotape of th e even t to MGM Studios and watched it over and over again , frame by fram e. I know for a fact that I did not hit Kenny, but if I had known then what I know now about what he ended up doing (Carter murdered his wife and then committed suicide some two years later), I would have put him five or six rows up into th e stands . I say that because he left behind two beautiful children in a small town like Halifax. Their parents were well known there, and they will have to live wi th that for the rest of their lives. "But I hadactually made the decision to retire a week before the World Final," Penhall said. "I was in the mountains with my manager. We had already tested, and everything had gone well. I told my manager that if I won , it had always been a dream of mine to retire on the podium." Penhall called it a day, and many insiders believe that speedway has not been the same since. 12 p.m. : High noon, and I feel a sense of deja vu as I return to Great American Concep ts and round the corner to the transporter. I'm surprised to see that the boat is hitched up and it looks like we 're almost ready to go. As a matter of routine, the team hooks up a water hose to the cooling system so that they can test-fire the Scarab's twin, fuelinjected, 597-cubic-inch Mercury engines, which were recently rebuilt. There is an ungodly explosion of sound as Sigalos prods the starboar d engine to life. Once it is at a reasonable operating temperature, Sigalos blips the throttles and studies the gauges. Everything appears normal, sohe shuts her down and repea ts the drill with the port engine. That's when the real trouble begins. With his gritty third-place fin ish at the World Final and Team USA riding a crest of popularity at home and abroad in 1982 , Sigalos, too, had an epic y ear. He helped guide Team USA to a second straight World Team Cup title as well as a second straight World Best Pairs title. In 1983, Sigalos expanded his competitive horizons by racing Formula cars as we/l as speedway. But on two wheels, he continu ed to be a dominant player, placing eighth in the World Speedway Championship at Nord en, West Germany , that year. And just as all the speedway ins iders believed that Penhall would capture the World Final gold in 1981, they just as fervently believed that Siggy would be the man in 1984. His dominant run early in the season made him the hands-down favorite to win the Championship in Sweden. deliver full amperage, but it appears that no spark is reaching the plugs at all . A phone call is placed to the team 's engine builder, Paul Pfaff Racing Engines, and technician Gordon Jennings' hustles over to lend a hand as does Penhall and Sigalos' crew chief Kevin Hart, who has been waiting for us at the docks all morning. But that dream was shattered by a broken ankle suffered at the 1984 American Final. The injury prematurely ended his season, and for the most part , it signaled. an upcoming end to his Speedway career. Sigalos did attempt to return to England in 1985, however. "In my first race back, I was in another bad crash - racing for third place," Sigalos recalls with a trace of disgust. "I wanted to . do really well, but I was out of shape. I went to go around the outside of another guy and . (a pursuing rider) went outside of me, and my footepeg got stuck in his rear chain and took me through the fence. I said, 'That's it, to hell with this , r m going home: I had a contract , so I had to finish out the month. Then I sold my bikes, my cars, my house, and I split." 12:30 p.m. : Repeated attempts to get the port engine fired are in vain. The crew has spent the last half- hour charging the boat's batteries in an attempt to 1:30 p.m, : The problem still hasn 't been solved, and time is working against us now. Penhall and Sigalos decide to save a little time by fueling the boat before we head out, something tha t they're hesitan t to do because of the stress that the weight of the fuel will place on the hull during transport. Fueling is a snap, as the team semi can carry some 350 gallons of fuel and has its own pump. 2 p.m. : After more than an hour and a half of ru n ning checks on the port engine, it looks like the test session will be scrubbed. Team owner and Sigalos' father Tony Sigalos has arrived on the scene to monitor the situation. Even if the team can diagnose the problem, they ma y not have enough time to get the boat to Sunset Aquatics in time to launch it. The Travel-Lift that launches and lands boats will be shut down at 4 p.m. Penhall is clearly frustrated. Sigalos watches patiently, but all moods are grim. Just for a grin, I climb into the

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