Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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VOL. 53 ISSUE 18 MAY 10, 2016 P131 non-factory riders. And even those privateer or support riders of the board track era made pretty decent pay. Only in comparing them with the Class A rider, the factory guys, did their pay look small in comparison. How much did a factory racer make in 1913? Keep in mind the average American made $15 per week in 1913. You could buy a nice house for $3000 and a car for about $500. According to Chapple, Class A riders normally signed a contract with race promoters to receive a guarantee of $50 per meet, and there were often three meets per week. That means from guarantee money alone a factory rider could make $150 per week, 10 times the normal weekly pay of an average American. And the top riders could race nearly year-round by going to California in the winter months. So just on guarantee money, riders made roughly what would be equivalent to $10,000 per week in today's money. And that doesn't take into account the prize money a rider could win at an event. The average Class A race paid four places with the winner get- ting $50, second $30, third $20 and fourth-place $10. So if a rider got on a hot streak they could substantially increase their pay above the $50 guarantee per event. The support riders (or Class B) only made $10 guarantee show money and they only had the chance to earn $25, $15 and $10 for the first three finishing positions. Still a Class B rider was making at least double the average American in guarantee money, although Chapple points out in his article that with that money they had to keep their machine in racing condition. Interestingly the board track promoters were the ones really making out like bandits in those days. Chapple estimated based on crowd size and ticket prices that promoters at the smaller board tracks typically cleared $1600 per meet and at the bigger tracks about $2200 per, and that was after paying all their expenses. This was huge money, roughly a little over $50,000 per meet in today's money and they earned that three times per week during the racing season. And in the pre-organized labor days, the promoters need pay nothing to riders or track workers should there be a rainout, so the risk was minimal. Chapple wrote, "On this basis consider the returns for a season of racing and you'll find that the track promoters have had a pretty soft thing of it. With the riders getting next to nothing and the track owners free to handle the boys about as they are inclined to, it is not strange that there has been a scramble for F.A.M. track franchises during the last few months." While it appears everyone involved in board track motorcycle racing in the 1910s were clean- ing up, it should be noted that riders were lucky to survive the brutal conditions of the boards, which often were oil-slick from the open-valve motors, with riders hitting 80 miles per hour with no brakes and only massive splinters or worse to greet them if they should tumble. And track own- ers weren't immune from peril. Several tracks suffered major damage when a bike caught fire, or worse and if they crashed through the thin boards separating the bikes from the spectators. So risks were everywhere. The dangers of the sport meant it attracted the kind of personality who liked to live fast and spend freely. While the Class A board riders of the era often made big clumps of cash, you can rest assured most of them weren't meeting every week with their investment managers. Instead many of them blew their earnings as quickly as they made it on wine, women and song, as they artfully put it in those days. The loss of life was a dreadful part of the sport in that era, but with the money being paid there was no shortage of riders willing to play the game of two-wheeled roulette for fame and glory. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives