CN
III ARCHIVES
BY LARRY LAWRENCE
T
he 2010s have proven to be a pretty
poor decade to be a motorcycle racer,
literally. Very few riders make money from
racing motorcycles in America today, in
fact, except for the few factory riders out
there, most racers today end up in the red
by participating in the sport. It turns out
that's the way it's been for most of the
sport's 100-plus year history but with a
couple of notable exceptions.
It's an especially tough pill to swal-
low for some of the veteran racers of
today, who were able to enjoy, at least
the tail end of one of the golden eras
of motorcycle racing in this country.
For a decade-long period from roughly
the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s there
were actually quite a few pro riders
making a very good living from rac-
ing. Talking to riders and managers
in the know, during that time frame
there were several dozen riders
across disciplines who were making
six-figure incomes from racing and
associated sponsorships, with a
few of the elites making even more
annually. It's safe to say that riders like Jer-
emy McGrath, Ricky Carmichael, James Stewart,
Mat Mladin, Nicky Hayden and Miguel Duhamel
were likely the highest paid riders in the history of
the sport in this country.
As it turns out those salad days of motorcycle
racing from the late '90s and early 2000s were an
anomaly. Other than that period, and the Ameri-
cans who made massive paychecks in grand prix
racing, there was only one other period of motor-
cycle racing where riders made a hefty salary and
surprisingly, that was the first decade of motor-
cycle racing.
From the mid-1900s up to the advent of World
War I, being a motorcycle racer in this country
could be a lucrative profession. There were a
couple of dozen American manufacturers bat-
tling it out at the time and they paid top dollar for
the best riders. We know this in large part due
to the writings of one of the racers of the era,
Arthur Chapple, who laid out in straightforward
fashion, the pay scale of motorcycle racers from
his era of board track racing.
In a 1913 article in Motorcycle Illustrated
Chapple spoke of the plight of the Class B or
WHEN DID RACING PAY?
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