Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/295587
CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE H ere's a hint to Vintage Racing organizers – bring back the bikes (and riders) of the 1980s if you want to spark a rebirth. For some reason there is a tremendous renaissance of interest in that pe- riod of American road racing. Perhaps it's the ag- ing baby boomers looking back at the peak of their years, or maybe it's because this was the time of American GP domination. For whatever reason, based on activity on the Web, nothing gets the hits than 1980s-era road racing. Take a Facebook Group that was formed re- cently - 1980s Motorcycle Road Racers-Photos & Memories. That page rocketed from nothing to over 2000 active members and growing in the span of a few months. It's one of the more active motorcycle related Facebook pages out there right now with hundreds of members contributing. When Cycle News runs a 1980s-era road racing photo on the web it always gets a great response and the National Motorcycle Museum's founder John Parham said he was shocked to see how popular bikes from the '80s were when they were first put on display. So there's definitely something about that de- cade that strikes a chord with American motorcy- clists. The thing that makes the intense interest in that decade over other decades somewhat unique is that in terms of the AMA road racing scene of the '80s, factory participation was relatively low. There were not a lot of factory seats in the '80s, espe- cially when you compare it to the zenith of the late '90s when there were a couple of dozen factory, or factory supported riders, many more races, TV and six and even seven-figure riders' salaries were commonplace. The most obvious reason for the uber-nostal- gia of the 1980s is because it was the decade of American domination of GP racing. Kenny Roberts kicked off the decade by winning his last of three World Championships and then it just seemed like America was a factory producing GP winners. Roberts was followed by Freddie Spencer and Eddie Lawson. Smack dab in the middle of the decade, Spencer put American road racing at its absolute height when he won both the 500 and 250cc Grand Prix World Championships. Yet consider the 1990s. Wayne Rainey won the first three Grand Prix titles of that decade and that was followed up by Kevin Schwantz winning a fourth title for Americans in that decade, with his '93 championship – not to mention John Ko- cinski's 250cc GP title in 1990. But that's when it ended. Americans won no more titles in the '90s as Mick Doohan took over. Since Schwantz in '93, America won only a single Motorcycle Grand Prix Championship with Kenny Roberts, Jr. in 2000. So perhaps Americans look as the '90s as the time when our domination came to an end and that's why the accomplishments of Rainey and Schwantz almost seemed to get clumped in with the '80s. The 1980s were also a time when grids swelled in both club and professional road racing. It was THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN ROAD RACING P130 The Baby Boomers came of age in the 1980s and they raced en masse as this photo from a typical 1980s WERA race illustrates. PHOTOGRAPHY BY LARRY LAWRENCE