CN
III ARCHIVES
BY LARRY LAWRENCE
D
anny Eslick's victory in this year's Daytona 200
must have put big smiles on the faces of a lot
of people in Hinckley, England. That's the home of
Triumph Motorcycles and while the company has
been going strong for years now, the victory in the
Daytona 200 truly marks that the Triumph is fully
back in American racing. 'Win on Sunday, Sell on
Monday' the saying goes. If that's the case the Tri-
umph Daytona 675 should be a popular bike on
showrooms this spring and summer.
Triumph had a proud tradition of racing in Amer-
ica, including a stellar decade at Daytona in the
1960s when three different riders rode Triumphs to
victory in the Daytona 200.
Triumph is best known for getting involved at
Daytona starting in the 1950s, but riders began
showing up and racing on the beach on Triumphs
as early as 1939, the third year of the event. The
first recorded finish by a Triumph at Daytona was
turned in by a rider named Raoul Mikes, listed
from Miami. Mikes finished 35th giving the Brit-
ish marquee its first Daytona result. Mikes was
one of two Triumph riders in the field that day, the
other being Saginaw, Michigan's Junior Muehlen-
back who finished 46th.
The number of Triumph riders doubled to four in
1940 with Red Lemery leading the way with a 17th-
place result. Entries doubled again in 1941 to eight
Triumphs, with Rex Miller from Atlanta the top rider
in 30th. And that was it for the Coventry-built bikes.
World War II came and the town of Coventry was
virtually destroyed by German bombing. Tooling
and machinery was recovered from the site of the
devastation and production restarted at the new
plant at Meriden after the war.
When racing resumed at Daytona in 1947, Herb
Groves of St. Petersburg, Florida, earned the dis-
tinction of becoming the first Triumph rider to fin-
ish inside the top 10 of the Daytona 200, when he
scored an eighth.
TRIUMPH IS BACK
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Thanks to the efforts of Johnson Motors, Tri-
umph first became widely popular on the West
Coast during the 1950s and many top-notch rid-
ers began racing the British machine. San Jose's
Phil Cancilla gave Triumph its best finish to date in
1948 when he finished sixth.
You can point to 1950 as the year Triumph re-
ally started making headlines on the track and
began exploding in sales. That's when Ed Kretz
made the switch to Triumph and by 1951 riders
like Walt Fulton, Sr. and Jimmy Phillips were win-
ning other AMA Nationals on Triumphs, although
Daytona remained elusive. Hollywood's Tex Luse
gave Triumph its first Daytona 200 podium result
in 1951. By 1953 Triumph was rolling on the East
Coast too. Ed Fisher won Laconia on a Triumph
