Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 4, 2014 P89 made motorcycles for three years. "Motorcycle races were not very plentiful in those days," Seymour said of the earliest years of the sport. Even the riding hotbed of Los Angeles hosted only one race a month before the popularity of the sport took off late in the first decade of the 1900s. Reading Standard sent Seymour to Indianapolis in 1909 to race in the big FAM meet at the newly completed Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The track's racing surface wasn't ready to handle the speedy motorcycles however and Seymour, like most of the factory riders, needed only one race to let them know that further riding wouldn't be possible. Nevertheless, Seymour proudly recalled that he finished third in that inaugural event at India- napolis on his Reading Standard, even though he was racing against factory specials on what was a mainly a stock machine. Even though Seymour made good money in the latter years of his short racing career, he said there was little money to be made in his years as an "am- ateur," but he found a way to cash in by selling his prizes. "Most of the prizes I won were in the form of orders for merchandise," he said. "I promptly turned them into cash." When board tracks began springing up across the nation, the money for riders began to ratchet up. By 1910 Seymour was making enough to quit his mechanic job. And he was mentored by the most popular racer of the day Jake DeRosier, and through DeRosier, Seymour was signed as an In- dian factory rider. At that point he began racing all across the country, including going back East for the first time. The boards took their toll on the bodies of the racers. Seymour was reported in the Bicycling World and Motorcycle Review in 1912 to have won a Two-Mile Special Pro Race on a board track near Oakland, California, while "swathed in bandages." No explanation was given as to his injuries. Per- haps none was needed. Seymour was popular enough to be used in ad- vertising for Goodyear Tires. An ad featured "An El- oquent Appeal to Common Sense" with Seymour and fellow racers Charles "Fearless" Balke, Earl Armstrong, Al Ward and John Albright telling street riders that Goodyears were the "strongest, safest, speediest motorcycle tires made - bar none." Seymour made his name as a teenager and race promoters continued to play up that an- gle. At the famous Point Breeze board track in Philadelphia, the promoter advertised him as a "17-year-old boy wonder" even though by that time he was 19. It was at Point Breeze where Sey- mour earned his greatest victory, scoring an FAM National Championship, over Merkel mounted Morty Graves. Seymour credited coaching from DeRosier for giving him the edge he needed. Seymour raced in the infamous boardtrack tragedy at Newark, New Jersey, on September 8, 1912. He was leading the race when Eddie Ha- sha crashed into the outside rail and slid at high speed along the rail hitting numerous spectators along the way. Hasha's bike then shot down the steeply banked track into fellow rider John Al- bright. The tragedy ultimately took the life of both Hasha and Albright and six spectators. Three of the dead were young boys 12-14 years old. The debacle caused a public outcry and board track racing was never the same and eventually died off altogether. Another victim of the crash was Seymour. Even though he was ahead of the carnage and said he was "lucky to be spared a view of the accident itself." Seymour was still greatly affected by the tragedy and although he didn't do it immediately, a few months later he retired from racing and re- flected, "I didn't worry about going down in a mix- up on the track; at least I never did until the day of that Newark accident." CN SEYMOUR SAW IT ALL Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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