Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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VOLUME 58 ISSUE 30 JULY 27, 2021 P125 was on Saturday. Plus, they had a trade show. To go to Houston with the double national and the trade show, anybody who was anybody was there. I remember one year even hanging out with Bob Hannah after the races." Houston had atmosphere. "Now with these super domes they have, everybody takes them for granted, but when you walked into the Houston Astrodome for the first time, it was like going to another planet," Hateley said. "You walked down the ramp and walked inside, and there was this beautifully groomed short track and TT with this dirt that looked like it was made in a test tube, it was so perfect. There were grandstands 360 degrees around. Everyone stood around in awe." Houston had competition. "To qualify for the TT was tough enough, but to qualify for the Short Track, everybody was on the same second. You had one flying lap to qualify, and it all came down to hundredths of a second—every- body was on the same second. One little bobble, one little mistake or wrong choice of gearing meant the difference between one guy qualifying and the other guy load- ing it up to go home." Hateley said he remembered something on the order of more than 200 attempting to qualify for the TT and between 300 and 350 riders attempting to qualify for the Short Track. His first Houston experience—a good one—came as an amateur in 1970. "I actually finished second to Terry Dorsch on a stock-framed '65 Triumph that my dad [Jack Hateley] built," Hateley said. "The following year was my rookie expert year. I made the TT final, led the start of the national and actually was running in the top four or five, but every time I went over the jump, the bike kept bottoming the front end out. The reason it kept bottoming the front end out was because I had a set of standard, generic Betor forks on it that, from the whole trip L.A. to Houston, were compressed down. It basically sacked the springs out, so every time I landed off the jump, it would bot- tom out and bend the handlebars down. I went from leading it to hanging in the top four or five to where the bars were bent so far down. I think I ended up sixth or seventh. Then in '72 there was the first national I ever won." Hateley recalls that he was al- ways able to come to Houston in good shape after the off-season because he never really had an off-season. "In the off-season, I rode Indi- an Dunes, Hopetown Grand Prix, all sorts of stuff," Hateley said. "If I wasn't at a motocross, I was in the desert or off-road. I had my own little practice track. And another reason that I used to do so well at Houston was because I would go out to Indian Dunes a month or two before and ride my dad's stock 650 desert bike on the International and Shadow Glen courses. I remember I used to pull in to get water, and people would be stopped and be amazed, first of all at 'What is that thing you're riding?' and second of all, 'How do you ride something that big that fast?' But the Shadow Glen and the Inter- YEARS TO THE DAY "That was a highlight of my career, having to work my butt off to get third." – John Hateley