Cycle News

VOL. 52 ISSUE 3 JANUARY 20, 2015 P111 you'd have just one or two shots to ride the hill and that lasted just a few seconds," Ted recalls. Having grown up in Columbus he knew the big name racers of the area well, such as Jim Davis and Joe Gee. He rode with those guys and they encouraged Lew to give enduro racing a try. Atkinson tried it and loved it. Instead of 10-second blasts up a hill, with the enduros you'd ride for hours at a time. One typically thinks of elite enduro riders as lean and highly-trained athletes; it wasn't so much the case in the earlier days of the sport. Atkinson wasn't the picture of typical motorcycle racer. He was bespectacled and stout. "Dad had a pot belly," Ted explained. "And he didn't work out at all, but when I was in my 20s we'd wrestle and he was as strong as an ox." The other thing that Atkinson developed over his years of riding off-road was being an excep- tional trail reader. He seemed to have an innate ability to look far ahead and instinctively see which way the trail went. "A lot of riders would end up lost by taking wrong turns or false trails," Ted said. "But dad rarely took a wrong turn and he very rarely fell." Those riding traits served Atkinson well and he began winning a lot of enduro events. He became so good that often times he would intentionally throw races just to give other riders a chance at victory. "Back in those days enduro racing was a lot more casual and you might have only 50 or 60 riders show up for a big enduro event," Ted explained. "They'd get ticked off if the same guys kept winning all the time, so dad would pull off the side of the trail and just sit there and let others go by before the final check." When the 1961 Jack Pine came along Atkin- son was at the top of his game, in spite of being 46 years old at the time. That year's Jack Pine was muddy and fallen trees were everywhere from a strong storm that had come through the area shortly before the race. Another factor was Atkinson's secret weapon, a timer mechanism he'd converted from a pay phone. It was an early computer and helped him zero in on checkpoints with uncanny timing. When the two-day event was said and done, only 62 of the original 389 starters finished the race and it was Atkinson coming out on top the overall winner. "It was a big moment," Ted recalls. "I remember John Penton had won the race the year before and presented my dad with the Cow Bell." Enduro racing was a much bigger deal in the overall spectrum of motorcycle racing in those days and the Jack Pine was right up there in the level of prestige along with Daytona and Laconia. Even though Atkinson made magazine covers and was featured in big ads after the win, there was no financial gain and his son doesn't remember anyone treating him any differently at the enduros. "He got an inscribed pewter mug with a glass bottom from Triumph," Ted said. "And maybe a little silver cigarette box. He got some posters too that Triumph made up for his win. Years later I met a guy who actually still had one of those original posters." Atkinson continued competing casually in endu- ros until he was in his early 60s. In the mid-1960s he bought a friend's Honda/Triumph dealership. It proved again to be perfect timing for Atkinson since Honda sales were just about to explode. He owned the dealership until 1981 when he decided to sell the business. Lew passed away in 1986. He was 70 years old. The Triumph that Atkinson used to win the last Jack Pine Enduro National Championship still exists. His son Ted, who also became an enduro rider, has for years tried to buy back the machine, but the family who owns it is reluctant to sell, especially when they learned of the bike's rich history. "I have a lot of the original gear that was used on the bike and I'd love to restore it to the way my dad raced it in '61 and donate it to the AMA museum," Ted concluded. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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