Cycle News

National was moved 20 miles south of Belknap to the new 1.6- mile Bryar Motorsports Park in Loudon, and the race gradually became known as the Loudon Classic. Gary Nixon dominated the races at Loudon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1972, Gary Fisher won the race his father had 19 years earlier. Loudon hosted a slew of club races every summer, and the locals got very fast. Loudon club racing heroes such as Rich Schlachter, Nick Richichi, Mike Baldwin and John Bettencourt burst into national conscious- ness by winning at the Loudon Classic. Boston-area rider Dale Quarterley made one of the greatest passes in AMA Super- bike history at Loudon in '84 in the last turn on the last lap of a heat race when he stuffed his Kawasaki inside Fred Merkel, neither giving an inch as Quar- terley nipped the factory Honda rider at the line. The partying that went on at Loudon was legendary. It seemed that half the attendees at the old Bryar Motorsports Park barely knew there was a race going on. The crazies up on the hill on the back side of the track had impromptu hillclimbs on their street bikes. Who could forget the guy in the early 1980s on a new Honda CBX urged on by hundreds of shouting on- lookers blasting up the hill in a drunken haze in the middle of the night and crashing through a bonfire well past the impromptu finish line? Or the bottle-rocket fights that escalated until com- batants broke out actual com- mercial display fireworks—the kind you see in big Fourth of July shows—and fired them through the woods at one another. It looked like something out of the movie Apocalypse Now. And then, of course, there were the obligatory sticks of dynamite that would go off and shake the pad- dock at all hours—day and night. It wasn't just the spectators that partied hard at Loudon. The riders seem to get into the spirit of the place. Late-night rental-car races on the short track were almost as entertaining as the motorcycle races. Kenny Rob- erts, who raced for Goodyear at the time, once shot down a giant floating Michelin Man at Loudon with a 22-rifle shot from inside his motorhome. Jamie James won the final race on the old Bryar Motors- ports Park circuit in 1989. Bob Bahre bought the decaying track and built a big NASCAR speed- way in its place with a unique road course that traveled outside the oval section of the track. Long-timers claim that Loudon was never the same, but the crowds still came, though they were slightly less rowdy. The locals, who honed their skills club racing there, also still gave the national riders a run for their money every June. Unfortunately, things at Loudon ended ugly. Rider boycotts, track owners shouting threats at AMA officials, and too many career-ending injuries rang the death knell of the Loudon Classic. In 2001, Eric Bostrom won the final AMA National at Loudon in front of nearly empty grand- stands on a Monday after the race was rained out on Sunday. The Loudon Classic lumbers on today, featuring a club race. A shadow of its former self, the money brought in by the once- enormous crowds that filled local businesses' coffers dur- ing Loudon's Bike Week has dwindled to chump change. The track makes too much money off its NASCAR dates to worry about making expensive changes for the motorcycles. It's a shame because, warts and all, you still felt the history, the excitement, the importance of the race every year when you went to New Hampshire in June. CN This Archives edition is reprinted from the October 24, 2007, issue of Cycle News. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to pre- vent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still plan- ning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor CN III ARCHIVES P110 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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