Cycle News

CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE H is story has largely been lost to time, but Ray Seymour had quite a story to tell. One of the factory stars of the first decade of motorcycle racing in America, Seymour was around during the infancy of the sport. He witnessed its rapid growth, was the sport's first racing prodigy, raced in the first race ever held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, earned the equivalent of six-figures a year in 1911 and 1912 and later was shaken to the core and eventually left racing after being part of perhaps the worst motorcycle rac- ing accident in history. Thanks to newspaper archives being digitized at a steady rate, more and more information is com- ing available on motorcycle racing's earliest stars. Seymour is just one of the riders whose career is gradually seeing the light of day via the information superhighway. While the uncovering of Seymour's racing career is well underway, it's still a mystery as to what happened to him after racing. The last reports of him in motorcycle magazines show he was a Sales Agent for Indian Motorcycle Company in the mid-1910s, but after that his trail goes cold. Stephen Wright, noted author of the "American Racer" books, was quoted as saying, "[Ray] was a fast rider, but he just wasn't a very glamorous guy. That may account for his relative obscurity later in life." Motorcycle racing in Seymour's time was ac- tually not a bad profession to choose, speaking strictly in terms of moneymaking power. The sport was fresh and new, people were excited about it and showed up in droves to watch and there were dozens of American manufacturers clamoring to get top riders to race their machines. In a retro- spective on his career in a 1913 edition of Motor- cycle Illustrated, Seymour said his race winnings for two seasons (1911 and 1912) totalled no less than $8000. That was $4000 per year at a time when an average workingman's salary was less than $700 per year. Of course the riches riders could make during this era came at a high risk. It was an era of motor- cycling where motor technology far outstripped the strength of frames, tires and wheels. Not to mention the tracks were just brutal. Horse racing tracks had no such things as haybales lining the outside rails and, of course, racing on the high- banked board tracks was even more of a risk. Seymour began racing motorcycles in Los An- geles in 1907, when he was just 16 years old. He won the first race he entered – racing a Read- ing Standard at a three-mile dirt track novice race where he reported he had to "ride my head off against two other boys." It wasn't a complete sur- prise that a teenaged Seymour scored the victo- ry; after all, his day job at the time was working as a motorcycle mechanic, earning $15 per week. Seymour recalled that the Reading Standard he raced in that first event was 1 ¾ horsepower model. He continued racing the Pennsylvania- SEYMOUR SAW IT ALL P88

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