Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1394357
VOLUME 58 ISSUE 29 JULY 20, 2021 P111 cium chloride," Murrell explained. "We do that to see how it holds the moisture. Most people have decent soil... they just don't know how to treat it. With our experi- ence, we can look at the dirt and tell them what to do with it." There was the occasional mis- fire: At the infamous 1979 Oakland Supercross, the track was so sandy that Jimmy Weinert won the thing using a sand-dune tire on the rear of his Kawasaki. That was Murrell's track. But for the most part, Harold had a knack for mixing just the right ingredients to make a track hold together. He was renowned for building tracks for indoor stadiums. Murrell prepared courses at the Astrodome in Houston, Kingdome in Seattle, Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, and the Olympic Sta- dium in Montreal. When Japan held one of its first Supercross Invitation- als in Tokyo, Murrell was flown in to build the track. Lifelong friend Doug Wilson said he never saw anyone who worked so hard. "That dirt had to be out of the stadiums, and I saw Harold work 30 straight hours to get the job done," Wilson remembers. For all the talent Murrell had at building Supercross tracks, he was perhaps the proudest of his flat tracks, specifically the San Jose Mile. San Jose became one of the premier Miles on the AMA calendar and many attributed that to the nice racey surface that always greeted the rid- ers every year. San Jose gave riders multiple racing lines and often produced some of the closest finishes of the AMA Grand National season. According to photographer Dan Mahony, Murrell always had a few riders out on the track on the day before the Sunday National to check out the track's surface. One of the most interesting pre- rides came in the mid-1980s. The Harley-Davidson factory team was there, and Mark Brelsford, then 10 years retired, pondered about how the XR750s handled (they were still struggling with the new motor when Mark retired) with the then-new wide Goodyear tires. Somebody said, "You wanna take a spin?" and Mark jumped at the chance. So, with no practice, no leathers, and not even a steel shoe, Mark borrowed a helmet and promptly cut some laps within sight of the track record. Chris Carr, who was just com- ing into the sport during that era, remembers San Jose as being perhaps the best-prepped track of the season. "San Jose wasn't that wide to begin with, but Harold always man- aged to make a groove that was a mile wide," Carr said of the famous Mile. "Those tracks were table- top smooth and everyone always looked forward to racing there." Murrell worked until cancer made him too sick to continue and he passed away in 1999. Before he died, Harold was asked about the work of digging in the dirt that seemingly chose him, instead of the other way around. Murrell approached the question with a sense of humor. "I don't particularly like it," Murrell said of his job. "It's work. And it's hard work. Heck, I can remember when I was almost an executive, and all of a sudden I got in the dirt business." CN This Archives edition is reprinted from the June 2, 2010, issue of Cycle News. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor SULTAN OF SOIL Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives begin with, but Harold always man Murrell learned how to operate the grader on the job.