T
he early years of Superbike
racing in America were known
for racers with colorful personali-
ties and builders with innovative
minds. Originally called "Super-
bike Production" racing, it didn't
take long for the builders of these
powerful 1000cc Superbikes to
forget about the "production"
part of the name. And one of the
primary innovators of the early
Superbike era was Udo Gietl. He
helped transform a gentleman's
touring motorcycle, the BMW
R Series, into a championship-
winning Superbike.
Preferring to be a behind-
the-scenes kind of guy, Gietl
somewhat reluctantly became a
celebrity of sorts in Superbike
racing. His name was one rea-
son: Udo—it had a certain ring to
it and was easy to remember. But
more than that was the coverage
he got on the pages of Cycle
magazine for turning a mild-
mannered touring machine into a
Superbike. Rider Cook Neilson
and tuner Phil Schilling and their
Ducati 750SS were competitors
against Gietl's BMW crew, but it
was a friendly rivalry, and Gietl's
very trick Beemers got a lot of ink
in the pages of the very influen-
tial Cycle and other motorcycle
magazines of the day.
Gietl was born in Germany,
but his family immigrated to the
United States when he was just
10 years old. In the 1950s, Udo
went to high school in Daytona
Beach and was a spectator at the
Daytona 200 on the beach.
"Watching Dick Klamfoth win
the Daytona 200 was the very
first motorcycle race I ever saw,"
Gietl remembers.
Interestingly, Gietl's grand-
parents owned parcels of land
where Daytona International
Speedway was eventually built.
Gietl started riding a Zundapp
scooter for basic transporta-
tion when he was 17. Eventually
he took up the rising sport of
motocross in the 1960s, and
Gietl held his own against well-
known motocross area racers
such as Jimmy Ellis, Joe Bolger
and Jimmy Weinert. In fact, Gietl
was good enough that he was
a factory-supported rider for
Bultaco and might have gone on
to become a National motocross
racer had it not been for an un-
fortunate accident on the streets
of downtown Manhattan.
"I had just finished restoring
an R/25 3 and it was absolutely
cherry," Gietl says. "It was a total
P108
BY LARRY LAWRENCE
Udo!
Udo Gietl proved that BMW
wasn't just your dad's brand
of motorcycle.
III ARCHIVES
CN
