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VOL. 54 ISSUE 32 AUGUST 15, 2017 P145 up," Roberts said of his perfor- mance in his first event. "But I had fun and it was exciting." Between desert races Roberts honed his skills doing scrambles that were held all across Southern California. "You didn't have to go very far to find a race in those days," Roberts explained. "Then I turned my little 250 Scrambler into a 350, lightened it up a little bit and started doing real good, beating a lot of 500s in the Open class." Roberts raced his Honda with good success until Husqvarna came along in '66. He bought one from a dealership in Burbank. "They gave me a break on it, but at that time I think they were about 600 dollars," Roberts remembers. "I got on the Husky and started winning right away. Next thing I know Edison (Dye) got ahold of me and gave me a new bike." With backing from Husqvarna, Roberts became one of the elite desert riders in the country. His training methods were definitely old-school. "I got into the movie business in '65 building sets," he explains. "After working all day, I'd get in my truck and drive home with the windows up and just sweat. That was my training until I got home to ride my bike. We didn't have all the weights and bicycle training that the guys do today. I just rode my bike a lot. "I knew when I went to the desert I was in shape and even if I didn't get a real good start, be- cause there were a lot of guys that were a lot quicker starters than me, I knew I'd eventually get 'em. I'd usually get to the smoke bomb maybe somewhere from number five to 10, something like that. I think maybe a couple of times I got to the smoke bomb first, but not very often." Roberts was winning in the des- ert at a time when the sport was at an absolute peak. Check out the numbers Roberts talks about! "The biggest race was always Barstow-to-Vegas," he said. "The first time I raced that I think there were 2000 entries. The last time I raced it there were something like 4000 entries! But even with that many riders, just like today in motocross and supercross, there would usually only be four or five riders who could win the race and those were the guys you raced against." At his peak in the late '60s and early '70s Roberts was just about unbeatable in the desert. Tracy Husqvarna, the Burbank dealer- ship which sponsored him, kept track of his wins. "I remember one year he had it up there that I'd won either 22 or 26 races," Roberts recalls. Roberts raced Husky profes- sionally nearly his entire career. Only briefly did he park the bike. "Once Edison thought he was paying me too much or something and didn't want to renew my con- tract," Roberts smiles. "I got on a Weslake BSA and won right away. When Edison saw that he wrote my contract back up." Roberts never got rich from desert racing, but was probably one of the few who made decent money at the sport. "When I won a desert race Edi- son would pay me 250 dollars," Roberts said. "When I won one of the big races I'd get my prize money, plus 500 dollars. I was making $3.27 an hour at a union job, so that was big money back in those days!" Surprisingly in all of Roberts' racing career he stayed mostly injury free, never suffering much more than a broken collarbone. Eventually Roberts began working as a Hollywood stuntman and was traveling so much that he gradually backed away from his heavy racing schedule. But he never quit and still races veteran races to this day. Roberts now owns a cattle ranch in Montana, where he has a 20-mile riding loop. He's an inductee of Motorcycle Hall of Fame and is also in the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame. Roberts stood atop the field in desert racing during a golden era and will forever be remembered as one of the all-time greats of that form of motorcycle racing. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives