Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

R Doughty ick I there is common misconthe ception Angthinkbeou t therea thal teve nbanquet is goi to an a n nua t. I think so me people may be hangin g back and if they hea r that it's cool, then they'll make plans to go next year. But there is not going to be a next vear. This is a one-time shot, a once'-in-a-lifetime event. Th is isn't an event that should happen every year. With some of these riders.we're getting 40 years out of their era. Some of these riders probably won't have the inclination in their 70s or SOs to want to do this again. To take the his tory of motocross in the United States and lay it out, well, this is really the most opportune time to ge t it done. Are th ere any heroes y ou h aven't been able 10 locate? I A Un fo rt una te ly, yes . Brad Lac key r~a nd Danny "Magoo" Cha nd ler are two w ho come to mind immed iately. If there are any ot her heroes ou t there who we h a ven 't co n tac te d w ho wa nt to a ttend , a ll th ey have to d o is ca ll u ~. Cu rre n tly we ha ve almos t 50 invitees: bu t the more the merri er. '" How has the event been received by the vintage commu nity in general? - -In a word - en thus ias tically. Ma ny of the competitors have said it was high time we had a special event to look forward to, while othe rs are glad to see the lack of hair-splitting rules. The best comment I have heard is tha t this is goi ng t o be the " Wood s tock of Motocross." I would ag ree, bu t we su re could do without the rain. A By Pa ul Ca rruthers matter your age, the upcoming Ironmen of Motocross banquet and mo tocross has a hero for you . It ma tters no t the era, they' ll all be there: DeCos ter , Mik kol a , Ha nnah, LaPorte, Ward and even a few Johnsons, or [onsso ns. The list is impressive - and long, with close to 50 of yesterday's and toda y's motocross giants expected to attend. The even t will be hel d on October 31 a nd Nove m ber 1, beginnin g with th e Ironmen of Moto cro ss Ch ar ity Banquet on Halloween night. The followi ng day, many of th ose Ironmen w ill take th e ra ce track in th e Vin tage Ir on World Championshi ps a t Glen Helen Racew ay in San Bern ardino, Californi a. The man in charge of putting all this together is Vintage Iron In terna tio na l owner Rick Dou ght y, himself a vin tage racer of note and the man who sta rted t he Evolu tio n cl ass in vin tage motocross. 1;Je caught up with Doughty re ce n tl y to discus s th e upcoming "Woodstock of Mo tocross ." N 'rR 8 ~ ~ 00 0\ 0\ ..... "::1" ..... l-< 0,) .c o ..... u What is the hardest aspect of Ihis u ndertaking? Ensuring that it is a quality event. It wo uld be easy to jus t put on anot her vintage race and be d one with it, but we wa nt this to truly be so mething specia l - so a ttention to detail is essential. The big p ro blem co mes in when you consider that we (Vin tage Iro n and its gro up of vo lu nteers) are doing this for the love of the sport and nothing more. We have no budget to hir e all the add ition al staff a regular fo r-p rofit promoter ma y have. As a consequence, everyo ne invol ved is wearing a number of d iffer.ent hats. Luckil y, we have qualityindividua ls with ex traordina ry capacities . The or ganization /administration of the event sho uld be one of the best around, but it doesn' t come wit hout a grea t deal of sacrifice and commitment. o 52 A How is the gathering of th e riders coming? H e re a gain , we are for tunate to hav e enlisted the help of a few very ca p a b le and well-connected p e ople. Roger DeCoster is coordinating the European contingent , while Lars Lar sson is working wit h the Swedes. I have been working on th e Americans with the help of guys like Jody Weisel, Scott Wa lle nberg, Eric Johnson, Dick Miller and others . Finding the guys wasn't as difficult as I wo uld have though t. Once that who le thing started to gain mom entum, it ki nd of also becam e magneti c and peo ple started to becom e attrac ted to it. We might have one guy w ho three mon ths ago was go ing to mak e it an d now ca n't - a nd we ha ve th ree guys waitin g to tak e his p la ce. It h as go ne from th e lro nmen of Mot ocross to the history of motocro ss. I think this will be th e motocro ss pa rt y of the milleni um, We have riders from the '60s, 70s, '80s and we're now d iscussing bringing gu ys in from the '90s. Q HOW will the race da y unfold? It to basically along the lines of motocross A go is goingrun runPre-'chron ology . We are ing to a 65 class as the first race of the dav and we'll 'have an Evolution class - which is any bike that is pre-d isc brake, pre- water-eooling an d pre-ri sing-rat e rear sus pension - to be the las t race of the d ay. Then there will be everything else in betw een . There are basica lly five-yea r increments w he re motorcycle d esign changed sig nifica ntly eno ug h where per forman ce was grea tly enha nced. For exa m ple, the pre-'65 era was. one of British d ominance; the pre70 e ra was when the European tw ostro kes took over; p re-7 5 was the Japa nese invasion; and p re-7 8 was the onse t of the sus pension rev olution . The Evolution cla ss is really w hen they go t the sus pens ion to g eth e r and it r eally bumped up against what we ha ve toda y in mode rn mo torcycles. th e op Q WiII spectators ha veege nds oportun ity to s ee these l f the sport actually racing? We asked them to attend the Abenefithave which Thea charityren Founbanquet, is banquet to the Feed Child dation. We've also asked them to come out and do some au togra ph signings on Sunday - so that is where the bulk of the legends wil l be. We have not made it a req u ir e men t of the m to ra ce beca use many of the m, for va rious reasons, just d o n 't ride a nymo re an d th e y a re n 't interested in racing. If we had mad e that a requis ite, th en maybe th ey wouldn' t have show n up for the banquet. Having sai d tha t, there are probabl y a good 30 pe rcen t of the guys wh o still rid e, who still feel competitive and want to go ou t and be a part of th e program. We a re go ing to have one sepa rate moto just for th e cele brity rid ers a nd th ey ca n rid e w ha tever bike they feel comfortabl e on . So for the fa n who mai nly wants •to do a lit tle be nch -racing with his or her hero, th e banquet may be th e best bel Tha t's where we can guara ntee tha t they wi ll get to see a lot of th ese gu ys - and withou t their helmets on. Fans will have the opportunity a t th e banquet to walk up and tal k to these g uys. And th ere will be at least tw o h01.!rs when these guys will be brought up on stag e to talk abo u t their ra cin g, their lives, etc. All the gu ys will be there for the banquet and w e're hop in g th e majority of them will come ou t to the race track on Sunday. Q Is Feed The Children a ch ari ty tha t you've sup ported in th e pa st, or is th is new for you? I have always wanted to tie motor1. cycling in with some sort of charitable orga nization. It's great to put on an eve nt, it's grea t to be a parts su pp lier, it's gre at to be involved in mo torcycli ng, but I wanted to do something that benefited something mo re than ju st mo torcycling . I wa ited until we had a prim ary sponsor, and in this case tha t's Yamaha. Then we checked wit h them and th ey we re already tied in with the Feed The Child re n Foundation - so it made it a na tural connection. Can we exp ect th is banq uet he ld annually? 10 be H OW the Evolution racing Q come didthe classes we generally about? I know differs greatly from it associate with vintage mo tocross. We are in the third yea r of a threeyear plan wit h Evo lution racing . What we esse ntially did was to want to bridge the gap between pre-75 racing which is kn own as vintage - and modembike racing, because there 'was a big gap there. If you look at the sales figur es for mo tocross bikes in the United States, the hig hest sa les figures wer e in the latter part of the 7 0s - not the early part of the 7 0s. That' s one reason . The second reason for Evolution racing is that for gu ys who are en tering their 3Os, their association is not with pr e-7 5 motorcycles. It's with post -7 5 mot ocro ss b ikes. It' s for those guys and those ma chines that we decided to put together this class of racing. We wa nted to ma ke it absolutely as sim ple as possible . O ne of the things I thin k has happened with vintage racing is tha t it is so overr egu lated by the current bureaucracy that is controlling it that it boils down to too mu ch hair-splitting. Guys go to the races wi th a level of anxiety about their bike eligibility - and they never should have to. What we' ve said is sim ple: If it doesn 't have a radi ator, if it doesn 't have disc brak es and if it doesn't have a rising -ra te, sing le-shock rear suspensio n - and the Yama ha monoshock prior to 1982 did not - then you can ride it. We don't care if it's a pre-'75 bike - we just u se these simple param eters and we just want to ge t th e em p has is ba ck -on riding and havin g a good time. That wasn't really well-received in the vintage wo rld and there wa s a lot of controversy abou t how th o se pos t-7 5 bikes were go ing to tea r up th e tra cks. We fou nd tha t to be a red herring, because it just doesn't happen. ' Ano ther thing tha t the vin tage community thought wa s a downside to Evolu tio n racin g was th a t those riders in th ei r 30s were going to be aggressive . They we re going to come into ou r semisedate sport and ru in the field . We've A

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