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"He was really a hero of mine, but he became a good friend. My dad and I would stay at his house when we were back east. It wasn't a large, fancy house by any means, but it was full of some great racers: John Hateley, Don Castro, Dave Aldana and a lot of riders would be staying with Gary and his family. He showed us the ropes, coached us and helped us in any way he could." Nixon and Emde were members of the powerhouse Triumph/BSA team of the late '60s and early 70s. But the sudden collapse of the British bike industry left both he and Emde scrambling to find new rides at the end of 1971. "We were 90 days out from Daytona," he recalls, "and that wasn't much time to find sponsors, build new race bikes and so on." Emde fared well, landing a Mel Dinesen-sponsored ride on a Yamaha 350 on which he won the 1972 Daytona 200. Nixon, meanwhile, struggled his first year on the Kawasaki. The talent was there, and he even won the first leg of the Ontario 200. But he crashed in the second leg and broke down in most of the other races throughout the year. If there is any truth in the say - ing "you make your own luck," then Gary Nixon decided to make 1973 his luckiest year ever by forming what would become a longtime partnership with famed tuner Irv Kanemoto. Together, the two men helped give Team Kawasaki one of its most suc - cessful race seasons ever. With maybe just a little more luck, Nixon might've won even more in 1973. At Road Atlanta, he was out in front in his heat race when a connecting rod snapped in two. At the sea- son finale, he finished second in both legs of the Ontario 200, challenging Duhamel in the final before settling for second. According to Emde, second wasn't a place where Gary Nixon liked to live. "He might've been the first guy to ever say 'second place is the first loser,'" Emde says. "He truly seemed pissed off when he didn't win. He just re - ally had a drive to be on top." "Gary struggled with life when his racing career ended," Emde adds. "He was born to be a racer, and I think that was really all he knew how to do." Nixon continued to win races over the next several years for both Suzuki and Kawasaki be - fore finishing his career aboard a Yamaha TZ750. He had a brief stint managing a dirt track rac- ing team, as well as running a catalog order business. Gary Nixon passed away in 2011 at the age of 70, but before he left, he gave race fans one more chance to watch the fiery redhead do what he did best. It was in the early 90s; Nixon returned to racing with the BMW Battle of the Legends series, where he would win at Daytona one more time! "It was all for show, a promo - tional event for BMW," Emde says, "but Nixon took it very seri- ously. And when he won, he was smiling again. "He was just like his old self." CN CNIIARCHIVES P134 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives "He might've been the first guy to ever say 'second place is the first loser.' He truly seemed pissed off when he didn't win." – Don Emde The title says it all.

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