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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the top speed of the bikes at 95 mph, a considerable feat consid- ering they were running on oiled gravel. Harley's Red Parkhurst won the 200-miler in three hours and six minutes, averaging almost 67 mph in front of a crowd of 12,000 spectators. The race was a coup for Harley-Davidson, which swept the top-three posi- tions, with Ralph Hepburn and Otto Walker taking second and third. Hepburn even broke a chain during the race, put on a new link himself and still finished second. The Motor Company trumpeted the Marion results far and wide via two-page magazine advertisements. The Motorcycle and Allied Trades Association (predecessor to the AMA) shamelessly exag- gerated the race. A statement by the M&ATA's W.H. Parsons proclaimed, "It was the greatest motorcycle race ever held in the history of the motorcycle trade. We are greatly pleased over the results, and if the people of this community will support it, we would like to make the Interna- tional Championship Motorcycle Race an annual event in Marion." The race did return for one more year. In 1920, the build- up was considerably less than it had been the year before. All the factory teams were back, and Harley-Davidson retained the International Road Race crown with Harley-Davidson Wrecking Crew member Ray Weishaar winning over Indian's Leonard Buckner. To show you how quickly motorcycle technol- ogy was advancing at the time, Weishaar chopped nearly 20 minutes off Parkhurst's winning time from the year before. The second year, the news- paper only reported crowds in the thousands, which was a sure sign that the paid attendance was down considerably from the first year. Later articles revealed that officials found it impossible to police the vast five-mile course and locals simply walked through farm fields to watch the race without paying. It was also said that just watching motorcy- cles zip past on a straight line at 90 mph and then speed off into the distance not to return for an- other four or five minutes wasn't a great viewing experience for the fans. Additionally, it became confusing in the three-hour race to keep up with who was running where in the race. With major losses, the Marion businessmen and politicians gave up on hosting the race after the 1920 Cornfield Classic. The track is still there south- west of town. The grandstands are long gone and the course it- self has been converted to coun- ty roads. Today the occasional farmhouse lines the five-mile course. I talked to one resident who lived on the old course, and he'd heard that Marion once hosted a big international event way back when but wasn't aware that his farm sat on the south- west corner of the old course. It would be 19 years before Marion would host another National-level race. In 1939, the AMA National TT Championship, predecessor to Peoria, was held in Marion. The race lasted there until 1946, interrupted five years due to World War II. The Marion TT was a humble event com- pared the former international road race, never drawing more than a few thousand fans. It didn't succeed for the long run, but for two years in the post-World War I era, the little gas boom town of Marion, Indi- ana, hosted the biggest motor- cycle road race of its era. CN This Archives edition is reprinted from the June 30, 2010, 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 P124 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives A statement by the M&ATA's W.H. Parsons proclaimed, "It was the greatest motorcycle race ever held in the history of the motorcycle trade."