CN
III ARCHIVES
BY LARRY LAWRENCE
D
ave Roper was racing vintage bikes be-
fore there was even a class for them. "I
just raced old bikes against modern bikes,"
Roper said.
Throughout the history of vintage motor-
cycle racing in America Roper has been
on the scene and consistently one of the
top competitors. If there ever was a Mr.
Vintage, Roper is it. He's still riding and
winning today and such is the appreciation
of Dave in vintage racing circles that he
was honored at the recent Barber Vintage
Festival with a painting of him racing the
Isle of Man by Gregg Bonelli. His fellow
racers gave Roper a standing ovation
at the presentation. It's plain to see that
Roper is a cherished icon among the
vintage racing crowd and when you hear
his story it's easy to understand.
Roper grew up in Darien, Con-
necticut. "I'd go up to Lime Rock Park
to watch the sports cars and always thought I
wanted to do that," Roper said. "It wasn't until
kind of late in high school that I got introduced to
motorcycles and I did a complete flip and lost all
interest in four-wheelers and became obsessed
with motorcycles."
Roper didn't take up racing until after he got out
of the Army. Roper's brother went to high school
with Rich Schlachter and the three of them used
to hang out together. Schlachter and Roper's
brother had Kawasaki H1s. Roper, who was by
then living in Old Lyme, Connecticut, saw a poster
for an AAMRR motorcycle road race at Bridge-
hampton.
"We went on the Ferry and went to Bridge-
hampton and that was our first race," Roper
recalls. "It was Memorial Day, 1972."
At that first road race weekend Roper had
planned on just spectating, but found out there
was an endurance race on Monday.
"I kept bugging my brother to enter the endur-
ance race and finally he said, 'Why don't you en-
ter it?' Schlachter had seized his H1, so we took
the front end off of his bike and put that and his
number plates on my Kawasaki Big Horn, which
I'd turned into a Café racer. We took the front
end off Schlachter's bike because the brakes
were so bad on mine."
Unfortunately the Big Horn seized after just
three laps and sent Roper over the bars. He
spent the night in the hospital, but he said in
just three laps of road racing he was hooked.
He raced the Big Horn the rest of the year and
then moved up to a Yamaha TD3 the next year.
He suffered a big crash in the AMA Road Race
National at Dallas that next year and suffered
bad injuries.
MR. VINTAGE
P114
