Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

;;; ':>- " '" e, '" .... C!> M ~ r-~ .~ « '" ;;: UJ Z UJ ..J U >- U Our Only Hope for a Wodd Champion? MARTY TRIPES By J im Gianatsis It seems that no one had ever heard of Marty Tripes until his overall win at the Los Angeles Coliseum during the Inter-AMA Series last year. He had just become sixteen years old and it was his second AMA Professional race. Marty beat the best American motocross riders plus Hakan Andersson, T o rlief Hansen, Torsten Hallman and Arne Kring among the Europeans. From the time after that ra ce until the 1973 Florida Winter-AMA Series Marty failed to do impressively in any other races . The people who had called the Yamaha factory rider a boy wonder and said he was among America's best cha nces for a future Wor ld Champion soon changed their opinion of him and began calling his Super Bow l win a fluke . We s at on the 'm o tel balcony overlooking the blue Atlantic Ocean in front of Daytona Beach. It was Sunday morning and in an few h o urs the Daytona 200 Mile National road race would begin. Marty's race had ended the day before when he had done an endo during the Daytona National Motocross and had to be taken to the hospital for x-ray s. It was a rare mistake for the level headed and usuall y c o n s i s t e nt youngster. Lu ckily the x -rays had shown h e was nothing worse off th an brui sed. Pierre Karsrnaker won the Daytona Motocross as well as four other of the races in the Florida series. The other two ra ces in t he seri es , Orlando and St. Petersburs, were won by Marty. At both races it had ra ined and Karsmaker's Yamaha quit on him, but still Marty beat the best American riders, among them Brad 'Lackey , Jim Weinert and Bob Grossi. The bike he did it with was basically a stock CZ that was significantly heavier and less powerful than what the other teams were using. 1 had been wanting to do an interview with Marty for a long while because as famous as he had become, th ere seemed to be very little anyone knew about him. When I had app r oa ch ed him at the track on Saturday about doing an in terview for Cycl e News he had j ust returned from the hospital . His father George Tripes, who works for HRL 'Lub rican ts, was wi th him and before Marty co uld answer me his father was say ing, " Yes, when do you wan t him," in a way that so unded like a command. At first I was taken b ack a little b y this but then I remembered th e things I had heard about George Tripes being a dom ineering father an d a strong inn uence over Marty '5 career. \\'ord had it that it was George Tripes who had pulled Marty off the .Yamaha · factory motocross team when Yamaha had s w ij c h e d Marty from the 500 International Class and put him in the 250 Support class during theTrans-AMA Series. He didn't want his son to be racing as second string on a factory team no matter what the reason. The fact that Marty looks like he's twenty years old, is 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 200 pounds makes it nearly impossible to comprehend that he is still a sixteen year old teenager and needs a strong p aren t to guide his career. Marty's involvem en t in motorcycles began muc h like a lo t of other kids'. When he was eleven years old he had a small Honda which he rode off the road. It was a year or so later before he began racing. Yamaha wasn 't t he first factory to become interested in young Marty; it . was Stan Ch urney of Western Jawa-CZ who gave Marty his first support when he was o nly fourteen. Stan was responsible for helping other upcoming riders like Brad Lackey and John De So to. S tan sent Marty over to Czechoslovakia to attend the CZ factor -' ,- -

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