Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

TIME REMEMBERED By Kent Taylor eam Bultaco's Doug Grant hadn't T w on the race, wasn't even close to the leader. But he had won th e admira tion of a rowdy JF!< Stadium crowd by picking himself up after a crash, tuckin g the sna pped end of his ha ndl ebar un de r his leg so that he could still twist the throttle and somehow hang on until the checkered flag. In the pit area, Grant climbed off his Pursang, took off his helm et and ha nded the d eho rned Bul to Butch Johnson , a buddy w ho had come along to serve as h is mechanic . "Look at the crowd , Doug," Butch sho u ted . "Man, th ey're cheering fur you!" For a moment, Doug Grant took it all in. For a mom ent, every a rm chai r athlete in the stadium seemed to und erstand why a "My racer races and why, w he n he s ta r ts a race, he fe el s so damned d et ermined to finish it. And then th e moment was complete, so the two men loaded the van a nd pointed it north . toward the se ries ' nex t round in Ontario, Canada. Exhila ra ted a nd exhau sted, Doug climbed into the passenger seat and fell asleep. And then, while dri ving d own the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Butch fell asleep, too. "I remem ber the race," Grant recalls. "Sep tember 29th , 1973. It was the second round of the old Trans-AMA Series, an d it was one of the first indoor races, long be for e it was called supercross. I remember breaking the handlebars after la ndi ng fro m a big ju m p; I remember the cro wd, an d then I remember gelting into the van . After that, there's nothin gI d on 't rem ember a ny th ing else that hap pen ed ." By th e ti me Doug ca me ou t of hi s coma one month lat er, a lot had happ en ed . He had undergone ex tensive surgery for a brain contusio n and other injuries, the van was totaled, the TransAMA Series wa s over - and Butch John son was gone. It would require the passage of lime - more than two decades before one of the m ost talented motocross racers ever (d u bb ed " th e hard-luck kid " by one magazine) would climb back onto a motocro ss bike and line up behind a starting gate. Every successful sport need s a generation of pioneers to blaze a trail for the unborn. In 1898, "Wa hoo" Sam Craw ford and his teammates played baseball for wh atever could be raised from passing a hat amo ng a sprinkling of spect ators. Doug Grant never made more than $500 for winning a motocross race, bu t Ricky C arm ichae l, Kevin Windham and Ez ra Lu sk w ill all be milliona ir es because of guys like Grant, Mar k Blackwell and Tom -Ra pp, who rod e motocross because it was a fun thing to do. "I loved racing. I d idn ' t do it for any othe r reason . My inquisitive mechanical mind was put to wo rk, try ing one more ga dg e t to mak e th e bike go fas ter. I to learned about pu shing my bod y to see if it could hang on and go a little bit fas ter jus t a little while long er. And I loved the camaraderie of the folks who kn ew about these kinds of thin gs insi de the ir he arts. If I ever thought that I coul d d o it for m on ey o r to becom e famo us and do any of the things Ihat I ever ultimately di d, it p rob abl y wo u ld ' ve sa bo taged ev erything. My plan was to race motocro ss because I loved it The success was just an accidental byproduct." Born in 1951, Doug Gra nt grew up in . Redondo Beach, California. It has bee n . said tha t if you remember the '60s, then you re a lly we ren't there; swallowing a nd shooting ill egal dru gs became a recreat ional pastim e for the ' 60s' psychedelic seeke rs , bu t wh ile other teenagers we re turning on and dropping ou t, Dou g Grant was saving up. Wit h $75 of his own a nd a $10 birthday gift. from his concern ed mom and pop, Doug joined the tw o-wheel ed set on an Allstate moped. "It was actually an Austrian-made Pu ch , but it was so ld in th e states by Sears . I rode the bike all over my grand father's ranch, putting abou t 4000 miles on it the first year. My paren ts w er e lust barel y su p po r ti ve; my father was an avocado farmer a nd plan was race motocross because I loved it. The success was just an accidental byproduct." r-, 0\ 0\ ...... N N ;... OJ .g ..... u o 34 archaeologist /Writer who authored several books on Native American art. He never d id rid e a mo to rcycl e, but he could see that this was what I wanted to do. "Later on, I bought a Hodaka, w hich for a kid w a s a lm o st a ra ce bi ke, although there really was no motocross to speak of. There w as desert racin g, and some guys were into so me thi ng called hare scra mbles. I remember read ing abou t dirt trac k ra ce rs like Dick Mann and Gene Romero in Cycle Neuss, so I star ted doing some local TI races, and I got hooked , not only on racing but every as pect of it. My fri end s and I wo u ld lo ve to ti nk er, take th e b ik es apart and put them bac k together. We started to wonder what we could do to mak e them faster: bob the fender, take off the kicksta nd . That was fun ." "Eventually, a friend wh o was int o desert racing sold me a '68 Bultaco Pur. sang, which really was built to be a race bike. I raced that for abou t a year, still doing mostly TIs and some scrambles, whi ch ha d s ta r te d to evolve in to motocross." By th is lime, Dou g's p assi on a nd mechanical intu ition helped him snag the dream job of every mo torcycle brat: a job in a real cy cle s ho p. H e w orked for r at Pedicord, owner of Suzuki of San ta Barbara. Pedicord was also a dealer, No rton wh ich by as sociati on m ade h im a d ealer fo r AJS , a I British reissue of a classic b ra nd of the 1930s. The motor cycle was essentially a partsbin special with a 35-yearold engine d esign. But suc h motor cycles were good enough in 1970 and Grant sna tched up the very first AJS 250 Storme r sold in the United Sta tes . He entered and won hi s fir st actual motocros s race and quickly found a hom e in this new sport , progressi ng from novice to amateur to expert in just six months on his one-u p, thr ee-d own Albert John Stevens race bike. N orton-Villiers (AJS's paren t company> took notice of th at . Th e factories were beginni ng to lend support to some of the fas ter Ll.S, riders and when Jim West, AJS' top rider, took a rid e with Hu sqvarn a, Doug Grant was read y. "With a lot of su pport from Pat Pedicord, 1 was picked to take the job. West was the very first factory AJS rider and I was the last." At this point, the spo rt of motocross was bein g handled in mostly run-andgu n fa sh ion; sma ll motor cycl e clubs were pr inting flyers, laying out tracks and putting on races. Then, Peter Starr's "O n Any Su nd ay" motorcycle movie came out and s udd enly mo tocross was lum ped in wi th the mo re es tab lis he d forms of motorcycle racing . Doug postponed his college plans, sidestepped the military draft board (" I knew that they wouldn't want to mai ntain a soldier with expensive mouth work, so I had braces pu t on my teeth!" ) and became a professional mot ocross racer. "The re w as no mon ey in ra cin g in 1971. I wo n a T rans-AMA Sup port race a nd AJS sent me a b onu s chec k fo r $50! But I had a van with my name on the si de a nd a ne w w orks AJS 370 Storm er in the A] S ba ck . Be ll gave me a helmet , Bates gave me my le a thers, a nd I made enough to pay fo r gas a nd living e xp en ses to ge t to th e next show. What else could a 19-yea r-o ld w ant? Th e y d idn't have to pay me - I would've been do ing it anyway!" Th e yo u ng spo rt was begin nin g to separate the elite and the also-rans. Bob "a im) West was the very first rider facto ry and was the last."

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