Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Thousonds of motorEy.li* rode to the Don Brymer.promored Loudon Closri< in lhe mid-I98os. Thir phoh from 1986 5how5 q porlion of rhe bikes porked in rhe front lot ,A ARCHIVES From the Garden to Loudon on Brymer's successful promotion of motorcycle racing in New York's Madison Square Garden put him on the map in the world of motorcycle racing. Everyone sat up and noticed when Brymer, with back- ing from Yamaha, packed the Garden in 1971. One per- son in particular who liked what he saw in Brymer was Keith Bryar, owner of Bryar Motorsports Park in Loudon, New Hampshire. Bryar's twisty linle 1.S-mile road course hosted the historic AMA Road Race National, which had moved 18 miles down the road from Laconia in the mid-1960s. The LaconidLoudon Classic was one of the oldest and most popular laces in America and the week-long rally, which dated back to the l9l0s, drew tens, if not hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts from New York and Boston. Things tumed ugly in 1965 when a conflict between "bikers" and cops got out of hand at weirs Beach and a riot ensued (although some who were on the scene said the reports blew the incident out of proponion). The result was that local law enforcement became harsh in the 1960s and '70s, and the old race and rally drew fewer and fewer fans. Bryar saw in Brymer a person that had the knowledge and the connections in the motorcyclinS industry to potentially help revive the dying national at Loudon. "Keith watched me for years," Blymer said. "ln 1976, I rode a motorcycle-cross-country nrn in a bicentennial ride with a Sroup of folks that included Chuck and Sharon Clayton of Cycle News. We rode to Plymouth Rock for the bicentennial celebration and then up to Loudon. I was a guest of Keith Bryar's. lt was my first time to the race and lgot to see what it was all about." By the late 1970s Brymer was promoting four or five AMA Nationals a year. One of them was the Syracuse Mile in New York. ln 1978 Bryar came to Syracuse, saw the huge crowd and was finally convinced that Brymer was the right man to promote Loudon. They made a handshake deal, and Brymer took on the task of revital- izing the Classic road race. By the late'70s, Bryar Motorsports Park was falling into disrepair, and Brymer's first order of business was to spruce up the place. "l got out there with a paintbrush and started going to town," Brymer recalled. "l painted the place, cut back the brush, built restrooms, got asphalt and patched up the track, worked with the local politicians and police, and went out and promoted the race." For Brymer it was a fafiily aflair- His wife, Lulu, was an artist who had once designed the Rose Bowl Parade poster. She designed and painted all the track's signage. His daughter, Camby, came in to handle PR. She set up media tours in Boston and New York City to promote the race, All the hard work paid off The race turned around and started bringing back fans in droves. Loudon had wooded property surrounding the track on one side and it became the place to camp and hang out, and the action up the hill in the campinS area was often a bigSer show than the races. To describe Loudon in the 1980s, imagine.a mix of Woodstock, Daytona and the movie Apocolypse Now. At night the hill would light up with bonlires (some- times fueled byJapanese motorcycles). Campsites would battle one another with what started out as bottle-rock- et fights and soon moved up to full-on fireworks battles. An occasional explosion would rock the track with shock wave. Turns out, half stick of d)namite were being blown up- lmpromptu hillclimbs would rev on through the night. At one point, the track actually erected two tall fences on the border of the woods to act as a buffer zone to protect the paddock- Some of the rowdies began shooting bottle rockets and other assoned flre- works into the paddock to see if they could score a maior hit with something - like a drum of racing fuel. Brymer had a security crew that would go up into the woods to try to maintain some semblance of order. "Mainly, we were just trying to keep people from killing each other or themselves," Br),mer admitted. "One time I pulled a 8uy out of a campfire. He was so drunk he didn't know what was going on. His clothes were smolderinS." But the campers weren't the only ones partying late into the night. Brymer liked to burn off steam as well, and one of the wap he did it was by opening up the track's small oval to the racers to hold what was called the ''Rental Car Nationals.'' "l think Bubba Shobert drove it in a Lincoln one year," Brymer recalls. "We had some pretty good rental-car races on that liftle track. ln one of them, my car ended up on the tire wall, and we had to get the front-loader out to get it down." Under Brymer's direction Loudon be.ame more than a race, it was a hoppening. Upward of 30,000 fans crammed into the facility by the mid- 1980s. Brymer liked to treat the riders well. He'd pay good pu6es, throw parties, take them to din- ner and hand them some extra bucks for helping do promotions. He was well liked by many of the racers - somethinS that was rare for a promoter to pull off. "Don was one of the last of the oldJine pro- moters," said former racer and promoter Steve lYcLaughlin. "Today, you don't have promoters, you have track managers, but back then Don was a one-man show. He would put out the hay bales, do a TV interview, sell the tickets and then hope like mad that it didn't rain-" While Brymer sometimes made good money from his races, he'd pour much ofthe profits into making the next race bigger and better. While an outstanding promoter, managin8 money was not always Brymer's strong suit. "l figured as much as we were spending on airline tickets that I miSht as well get my own plane and fly to the races," Brymer said. "We'd land and go to lndiar reservations in Arizona to buy rhinestone jewelry and sometimes when money ran low we'd have to sell the iewelq/ to bq/ gas to make it to the iaces," Brymer promoted races all over the country, some such as Loudon and Syracuse were very successful, but most, if not all of his deals, we.e done with a hand- shake and that proved to be his undoing. "l had a verbal deal that would have made me fairly welloflwhen Bqrar Motorsports Park was sold," Brymer claims. "But none of it was formalized, and I got screwed in the end " Bryar l'4otorspons Park was sold in the late 1980s and it was converted to a NASCAR oval to become New Hampshire lnternational Speedway. Brymer was no longer involved and the motorcycle racing once again went into decline as the owners focused on the more lucrative stock-car events. ln 1989 Brymer suffered a rain-out at the Syracuse Mile, and decided he no longer had the stomach or the pocketbook to take the losses, "You had to be a like a gambler to be a good promot- er in those days," he says. "lt got to the point were I was getting older and I didn't think I had the time to make up Ior the bad events." He bought a small racetrack in Oregon and tried to make a go of being a track owner. Unfortunately the track was in too remote of a location. and it never attracted a strong following. Today Don and Lulu live in a small desert town in Nevada with mountain ranges in full view out the front and back windows of their house. On a day when the temper- ature is 96 degrees in the desert, the mounains stand malestically nearby with vMd v/hite-snow pack contrasted by a clear blue sky. Now in his 70s, Brymer is enioyinga life of semiretirement. While he couldn't be blamed for being bitter for some of tlrc deals gone badly, Brymer preferc to focus on the successes he had during his heyday of promo- tion. He proudly disphp framed posters of the races he 'promoted in Hadison Square Garden. "Of the hundreds of races I promoted, I think Madison Square Garden was the highlight of my career," he says proudly. "l'd love to get with Yamaha again and do a 35th anniversary of that race." CN 92 MAY 24, 2006 . CYCLE NEws By l^Inv Lrwr:xcr Don !-ryret t o \ I

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