Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/914766
CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE C ycle News East associate editor Gary Van Voorhis was up against it. He was covering the AMA Grand National Short Track at the Santa Fe Speedway in a suburb of Chicago. Action was hot and heavy with riders swapping the lead nearly every lap. Gary V, as friends like to call him, had a Nikon camera in one hand, another one hanging around his neck and a notepad and pen in the other. Like the riders on the track, Gary V was establishing a rhythm—shoot with one camera one lap for Cycle News East, scribble a couple of quick notes and then grab the other camera to click off some frames for Cycle News West. Gary V had all of 16 seconds to execute and repeat this process, the time it took for the riders to com- plete a lap around Santa Fe. After the checkered flag he was on a trot to the podium to get quotes from the top three. On his way back out to his rental car maybe he had just enough time to get a few quotes from guys who dropped out early. Then it was a mad dash off to the O'Hara International to find the local DHL office to overnight ship the film off to the Cycle News offices, then back to the hotel to start hammering out the story. Such was the life of Gary V nearly every week- end of the racing season when he worked at Cycle News East from 1972 to 1985. During his time there, Van Voorhis earned the respect of nearly all the riders, mechanics and team owners he did stories on over the years. Also in his role of coordinating coverage of dozens of races per week, Van Voorhis gave many aspiring race report- ers their first chance at covering races. He also helped mentor many of these young reporters by giving them valuable advice on the best ways to go about their jobs of getting the story in print and on film. Van Voorhis grew up in rural upstate New York. Motorcycles weren't a part of his life until he was in the Air Force. "I was stationed in Belgium and there was a motocross track nearby and I started attending races. It was at that point when I first became interested in the sport." Back home in the States, Van Voorhis had friends who raced and he began going to local flat track races at the half-mile track located in nearby Middletown, New York. "I bought a camera and started taking photos at the races," Van Voorhis recalls. "I started sell- ing prints and making some money, so I thought, what the hell, let's keep doing this." During this period, Van Voorhis' photos also began being published in the local weekly news- paper. It was his first taste of being a photojour- nalist. He then went down to Daytona for the first time to watch one of his buddies race and was P94 A Life at the Races Former Cycle News East associate editor Gary Van Voorhis always with a pen and notepad in hand (and, of course, a couple of cameras).