Cycle News

VOL. 55 ISSUE 23 JUNE 12, 2018 P117 business, calling races, is I can't see the numbers. I can't hear the director, and I can't remember the leader's name. At that point, you really need to stop. It's time to be retired. So I'm just bask- ing in the glory of being grand marshal today." He's only just retired so he's still getting the feel for having free time on his hands. And what does he do with his newfound freedom beside letting his hair grow out? "Trying to keep all my motor- cycles serviced and running," he laughs. "I've sold a couple so I think I have nine now, and several more for sale. So, if you're looking for a slightly-used Gold Wing with 130,000 miles – it's been to Springfield many times – I'm your guy. I try to ride every day, but I have a lot of motorcycles that just don't get ridden. If you're not going to ride them, get somebody else to ride them." Thankfully Dave says he is enjoying retirement. "Absolutely. It literally got to the point, the last couple of races I worked, it was really un- comfortable because I just didn't have it anymore. When you get to that point you need to stop. How many guys do we know that have retired from racing that stayed too long or tried to come back and it went badly. You really need to know when it's time to just pull the plug and be happy with whatever you accom- plished. I got no complaints." What many folks don't real- ize is that Despain was one of the biggest advocates of getting motorcycle racing on TV. And he knew the people who could make it happen. There's a lot of motorcycle racing that got cover- age thanks to it being Despain's first love, both as a fan and even a competitor. "My goal from day one was to have a motorcycle show," said Despain, who once worked as communications manager for the AMA before he got into TV. "I ended up twice with motorcycle shows, and both times for com- plicated reasons those shows did not survive or did not survive with me as host. I kept getting "promoted" into the auto racing world because in the television world that's a higher priority. Why would you want to do mo- torcycle races when you can do car races? Well, because I like motorcycle racing better than I like car racing. That message never registered. So, I went to Speedvision. I left ESPN after five years and went to Speedvi- sion to do a motorcycle show called Bike Week. It was just wonderful. It was the most fun I ever had." Turns out the powers that be at Speedvision (later simply called Speed) knew what they had in Despain and they also didn't want him simply doing motorcycle shows so that led to him hosting one of the premier shows on the network. "What they really wanted was for me to do a talk show about all kinds of racing, and that was Wind Tunnel. So that ended up having an 11-year run, which was pretty remarkable by almost any standard. I don't think anybody expected it to have that kind of life. Then they shut down Speed channel, and suddenly we were without an abundance of racing. That was when I went to Mav TV and finished out my career there. So, I hit most of them. I worked for NBC, CBS, ABC. My first television show was Wide World of Sports. Not many people can claim that. Then I worked most of the cable channels that covered racing. I came at a good time and I was very lucky." And what was it like for De- spain to return to Springfield, one of the races that helped shape his career? "It frightens me a little bit because so many of the people that I remember are not here anymore. But that's just the way the world works," he says. "If you stay away 15 years and then come back, faces are going to have changed. Fortunately, the essence of it doesn't change. It's the same. It's dirt and you need a miracle worker to prep it, so it's as good as this racetrack always is. Then you need heroes to go out there and do what they do. It's just spectacular. It's every bit as spectacular now as it was the first time I saw it. " CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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