A
milestone: it's 40 years
since a two-stroke rac-
ing motorcycle won the
premier-class championship for
the first time. It is also 14 years
since the last time.
The honors went, fittingly, to
two of racing's greatest names:
Giacomo Agostini for Yamaha in
1975; Valentino Rossi for Honda
in 2001.
The era ended in willful mur-
der, by persons all too well-
known. Motorcycling, and not
just racing, has paid the price
ever since.
It's an apposite moment to
reconsider what happened, to
recall what we have lost, and to
wonder if there is any hope of
miraculous resurrection.
The loss has been great, af-
fecting people inside and be-
yond racing. Not least the tuning
gurus; a generation of hands-on
engineers with a special and
highly personal affinity to this
most subtle of engines. Like Erv
Kanemoto, who used to spend
time trackside, brows furrowed,
listening to the exhaust notes.
They told him special secrets
only he and a small handful of
others were able to understand.
Another was the Austrian
Harald Bartol, a long-standing
two-stroke guru whose last role
was with KTM in the days of two-
stroke 125s, the last survivors
of the breed. Bartol once said
ruefully to me: "The trouble with
two-strokes is that they smell of
poor people." A statement of
great depth, revealing the snob-
bery that caused their demise.
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
CN
III IN THE PADDOCK
TWO-TIMING THE MOTORCYCLE
P118
