Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 7 FEBRUARY 19, 2014 P107 [Sakakura] asked me how the new tire felt and all I said to him was, 'It felt okay.' He was looking for more feedback from me and maybe I was just too nervous or hadn't really thought about it enough, but I think that hurt me." Another issue was Williams's shyness. It often came across as aloofness or even arrogance. "Dale [Newton] used to get on me about that," Williams admits. "I mean there were times when fans would come over to talk with me and I would totally blow them off. I just passed it off as being too focused on my task at hand, but in retrospect it had to do with my extreme shyness. "I'll tell you how bad it was. You know when you had to go signup for the race? I would absolutely dread that. Someone was going to try to make small talk with me and I just couldn't bear it." When Williams didn't get the Yoshimura ride he was told to keep racing as many different places that he could and gain experience. Williams figured in- ternational experience would help him so he went to Britain to race 250s in their national series and run the Isle of Man. He raced for Mal Carter in the Brit- ish series and ultimately finished 22nd in the Junior TT in '81. During his time in England Williams got a call from the states again for yet another test opportunity with Yoshimura. This time it didn't go nearly as well. "For some reason I decided to take my dad with me," Williams recalls. "He wasn't into my racing, but I thought having him see me run on this factory Su- perbike would be exciting. I learned a big lesson in life that even your own family can be a saboteur for your success." Williams had planned on getting to Willow Springs for the test a day early so he could rest and be ready, but his dad kept putting off their departure from Northern California with business he had to at- tend to. They ended up not leaving until midnight, the night before the test. Williams drove all night, ar- rived at Willow Springs totally exhausted and "need- less to say the test didn't go well." With his factory Superbike dream crushed and sponsorship in America drying up, Williams took an offer to race in South Africa. This was during the end of the apartheid era and it was controversial for any American performers or athletes to even go to South Africa, but Williams was offered a paying ride and he went. It turns out his presence as an African-American racing in South Africa, may have done more than he could have dreamed in breaking down barriers in the racially segregated country. "I think a lot of people were surprised," Williams said. "I think it changed the minds of a lot of people on what black people could do. I remember at Ky- alami all the spectators, all the participants were white. The only blacks there besides me were the people picking up the trash." Williams remembers catching the eye of one of those workers and he a detected a smile. While stopping short of saying he became a hero to blacks in South Africa, Williams did become some- what of a celebrity in the country and was on TV a lot during his three years of racing there. He met a beautiful aspiring actress there and got married. He didn't want to raise children in South Africa so he moved back to America and started his life away from racing. He'd figured he'd gotten the racing bug out of his system, but in 2002, now in his 40s, Williams bought a Yamaha TZ250 with the idea of just doing local races for fun. "I ended up doing the entire AMA 250cc GP season," he says with a laugh. Today Williams continues to have fun occasion- ally on Supermoto machines. His son followed him for a while in that form of racing and actually got an invite to do the Red Bull Rookies. Williams looks back on his career now and finally has the distance from it to start to grasp his significance in the sport. "On one hand I look back and am proud to be the only African-American to have won an AMA National road race," Williams said. "But as proud as I am of James Stewart in motocross, I have to say I am a little disappointed that no one else has emerged to be a contender in road racing since then." CN THE BERKELEY BURNER: PART 2 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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