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front of me, I was actually about 15 seconds in the lead. I didn't know that, though, and I was riding as hard as I could to catch Spiegelhoff. At about the 180- mile mark, I came flying into the south turn and pitched the bike in hard. Two slower riders were going through the turn, and I just drifted out wide and hit one of them, and lost my rear brake lever. I came into the north turn and thought I had slowed down enough, but apparently, I didn't, and I crashed out of the race." He came so close to victory in his debut but would end up wait- ing until the next season to earn his first national win, and it was a unique one, to say the least. It was August 1948, and the site was the Lakewood Park Mile in Atlanta, Georgia. It was the AMA 10-Mile National, and the race came down to Hill and one of his racing heroes Billy Huber. "Being such a new expert rider, I didn't know much about drafting," Hill said. "Billy sure did, though, and he drafted right be- hind me and, at the last possible moment, zipped underneath me, and we crossed the finish line side by side." The massive sold-out crowd went nuts as the two crossed the finish line. AMA officials quickly huddled to compare notes to determine who came out on top. Heads shook, and finally, the judges declared the race a dead heat. Mike Benson, president of the fair, announced that both riders would receive first-place money. More cheers greeted the announcement. "We both got the same money, but Billy got the trophy," Hill recalls. "Back then, there was a little prejudice [favoring] Harley riders, and they gave it to him. Three or four months later, they made up a duplicate trophy and gave it to me. "That race pushed the AMA to get a better system to decide fin- ishes. Up to then, they just had a referee standing at the line to call the finish. I think they eventually got high-speed cameras. After that race, I always looked under my arm a little bit coming out of the last turn." After winning the national title in 1951 and 1952 by way of the winner-take-all Springfield Mile, Hill finally earned a victory in the Daytona 200 on his eighth attempt in 1954 riding a BSA. Since the AMA Grand National Championship Series was inaugurated in '54, his Daytona victory earned Hill the honor of winning the first-ever AMA Grand National Series race. In 1959 Hill decided to retire. He said he could still finish consistent- ly in the top five at most nationals, but a newer generation of riders like Carroll Resweber, Brad An- dres Dick Mann and Dick Klamfoth was taking over. Hill was 37 at that point and felt it was time to focus on family and career. He stayed involved by building engines for other racers well into the 1960s. There was a period in the 1970s and '80s where Hill said he and many of his fellow riders from the 1940s and '50s seemed to be for- gotten. It was an exciting period in racing of new machines and races, television coverage, and more significant money. But then, in the 1990s, a period of looking back on the sport's history began. Spurred on by popular television announcer Dave Despain, who of- ten featured these old champions on TV and events he helped pro- mote, along with the AMA forming the Motorcycle Hall of Fame, and generally just a newfound inter- est in vintage machines and the men who raced them, brought Hill and other riders of his generation back into the spotlight. During the AHRMA event at Daytona in 2004, Hill was part of a contingent of riders brought back to honor BSA's racing heri- tage in America. With hundreds of fans seeking autographs and the interview sessions where these guys got to relive racing stories of their youth, you could just see the joy on their faces. Like Bobby told me years later, "It was won- derful to find out that the current generation of motorcycle people didn't forget us after all. We were fortunate to have the opportunity to come back and see the appre- ciation of the fans one more time." The family said that donations may be made to the Daytona 200 Monu- ment to honor Bobby's memories. For more information, visit www. daytona200monument.com. CN CN III ARCHIVES P124 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives