Brad Lackey
By Shawn McDonald
It is a privilege to introduce a man who broke down the European myth that an American could never be a world champion – that the golden prize trophy would always remain locked tightly in the Swedish and Finnish halls of Valhalla, or closely guarded by the Belgians in the medieval city of Namur.
Brad Lackey set the path for all American motocross racers by constantly challenging himself to reach for higher goals that were just barely out of his reach. He didn’t follow the path set by others; he blazed new trails for others to follow. Whether it was the young long haired rebel with the peace dove on his crossbar or the wizened man with full beard who knew exactly what lay in front of him and attacked it. Brad has never taken the easy path in life, the path on which money and adulation awaited him. He has always taken the road less traveled, and has always been his own man in his views and his decisions. Look to the stars of today and see if Carmichael’s work ethic is no different, or if McGrath’s rebellious nature does not share its roots in the trailblazer.
What I found in these conversations was best stated by Shakespeare in the play Henry V “For, though I speak it to you, I think the King is but a man, as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me: the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but human conditions.” Brad, in all his comments, is a common man as you or I, a man with a good sense of humor, a strong family and challenges still to conquer. Yet he is different in that he set idealistic goals for himself even though no others can see his path.
Others took him for granted in his early years when his hair was long and the peace dove flew high on his handlebars. What they did not see was the young man who dreamed of one day being the King. Brad not only dreamed but also had the fortitude to follow up those dreams with years of relentless hard work. If that’s the case then Brad is a true American.
Bench Racer: First question would be how old are you?
Brad Lackey: Not as old as Pomeroy, but I will be in 2003 on July 8.
BR: When did you start racing?
BL: I started racing CZ motorcycles back in 1969. I continued racing CZs up to mid 1971. I rode a factory Kawasaki and a CZ in 1971, so I guess I had a dual sponsored citizenship between Japan and Czechoslovakia back then. No one has done that for a long time, having two different factory rides at the same time.
BR: Does the name Buffalo Breath mean anything to you?
BL: Buffalo Breath is my good friend Bob Briner. Bob just started a new company, called Colt Tronics, with his son – who happens to be named Colt. They deal in all kinds of the sort of flashing lights you might see at a rave, the kind where you swing them around while taking ecstasy and doing all that weird shit. We use them for my company; we have a couple of Harley rallies at Las Vegas at night, and we sell them out of our booth to kids to twirl in the dark. Buffalo is a long-time friend. He was one of the guys in partnership with me back in the early days, when we had a shop in downtown Berkeley: we were the CZ distributor for California at the time. Then there were the Buffalo Breath motocross jerseys, which were really rugby jerseys straight out of New Zealand, the type you now find in a Nordstrom store. If we had held on to the rights of those jerseys we could have been real rich, but as usual we got screwed.
BR: One of the first things, other than your riding talent, that made you stand out from the pack was the infamous white peace dove attached to your crossbar. Can you give us the true story about the bird without flipping us one?
BL: The dove has quite a big following, and as many stories about it. I have to admit, which I have always done, that the dove was not my original idea. I did steal it. When I had the dove I won a couple of races, which made it more popular, and of course it was at the right moment in time. It was at the beginning of the ’70s and the hippie movement was still in force, and I was from Berkeley, California. All those things added together made the dove work at the time.
BR: We just met the original motocross girlfriend, Lori! How old was she when you first met?
BL: I stole her away from home when she was 14 or 15, so that must have been around 1969-1970. She’s a tough cookie to be hanging around the old champ for such a long time. She was the one that made a lot of things work when we traveled the international and world motocross circuits for years in our motor home. All those years, having our kids together, traveling the world, she was behind me 100 per cent. It was just she and I alone in Europe, and if I’d been on my own, it would have never worked. Those years of putting together a championship season and working our way up the 500cc Championship ladder, there were a million times that I just wanted to give up. She was the only one who kept me from quitting. Now I’m an old, fat guy doing nothing, but trying to sell a t-shirt or two, she is still on my side. She’s a good girl!
BR: What kept you going for ten straight years in Europe, trying to win a world championship when you could have racked up a bunch of US championships for more money and an easier time?
BL: When those guys first came over here in 1969 and 1970 I raced against them at China Camp, and some other Inter-Am races. They were so much better than anyone here it was just ridiculous. Even being a dumb kid back then I knew that we were racers, but that the Europeans were a completely different breed of racer. I was only 17 when I first raced against them and they were 27, and even a couple of years difference when you’re young is big.
They were smarter and stronger than we were, and they knew what was going on. They knew how to ride the bikes, they had different bikes and they had special equipment that we had never seen before. Once I had the opportunity to ride the same factory Husqvarna equipment that Heikki Mikkola had in 1974, I no longer had any excuses. It was only the guy now, and had nothing to do with the equipment or the bikes.
I headed to Europe in 1970/’71, and went and trained at the CZ factory and got into my blood that I was going to be as good as them. I was just a dumb teenage kid from northern California who wanted to go beat them. I told my girlfriend Lori and my sponsor, Dick Lightner, that I was going to beat those guys, be a world champion, be the first American to do it and then have a big-ass party. So, I had to stay there until I did what I said I was going to do.
BR: Speaking of big-ass parties. I have heard from many sources that your parties have been the best they have ever gone to. Why would they say that?
BL: We had a couple of good Trans-Am parties back in those days. Jim and I would go race in Europe the whole season, and then we would come back here and race in the fall Trans-Am series. So we were basically on the road, beating ourselves up and trying to beat the Europeans on their soil and our soil. Then the new Americans started picking up the pace, so we had to race and beat them also. We didn’t get very much support when we came back home from the factories, because we were considered Europeans.
I rode for European Honda, and Marty Smith rode for American Honda. It was the same company, but believe me it wasn’t the same company. They wanted their guys to win and our guys wanted us to win, so it was a big rivalry every time we got together to race. At the end of the year, after the Grand Prix season was done and then the Trans-Am was complete, with a few AMA Nationals thrown in between to try to win that championship also, we were tired. I knew I had to go back to Belgium in January to start training for the next season by running through the snow and ice, and racing in every international race before the Grand Prix season started. So we all knew that we had to have a party, and it was usually where the last Trans-Am race was held. When the last race was at Sears Point Raceway, that was real close to my home, and we had a couple of good parties at my place.
BR: You were part of the American Motocross and Trophée des Nations teams for quite a few years with Jim Pomeroy, weren’t you?
BL: The first time I took Jim to the des Nations race in 1972, I think I ran the team. The AMA wasn’t interested in it, and didn’t want us to go because it knew we weren’t going to do anything. I was riding for Kawasaki, which wanted me to go, so I put together a team of Gary Jones, Jim Pomeroy and Jim Weinert. Jones and Weinert rode for Yamaha, Jim rode for Bultaco, and they had factory bikes over in Europe all ready for them.
That was in Holland, on a really deep sand track – none of the Americans had the right experience and we finished seventh overall, which was a huge showing for America because there were more than 20 countries competing. We felt really excited about doing so well our first time over there.
Then in 1974 we went to the home of motocross in Sweden. They pulled out Bengt Aberg, Ake Jonsson, Arne Kring and Hakkan Andersson. They were stacked as deep as a Swedish film star, and we got second overall to the Swedes with Weinert, Pomeroy, DiStefano and myself. I didn’t feel too bad losing to that team. If we had been in any other place except Sweden we would have won it, and that would have been shattering.
The next year was my last. We went to Czechoslovakia with Kent Howerton, DiStefano and Pomeroy, and finished a rather disappointing ninth overall. The AMA didn’t pick me for the des Nations team again, because I was considered a European. It then took from 1974 until 1981, when the Americans won it all, to get back in the hunt. I would do it all over again the same way, because the history of the sport is what counts, and we were a part of that, and that’s what I love. Regardless of whether I won or lost any races or world championships, we were there at the beginning of American motocross.
BR: Weren’t you were the first American to take training seriously, with your work with the CZ and then Husqvarna teams in Europe?
BL: When I went over to Europe in 1973 for a full-on assault on the 500cc championship my sponsor, Kawasaki, wasn’t behind me. It wanted me to stay here and win races and more national championships. It wasn’t interested in me riding Grand Prix, because I was going to get my ass beaten even if I was the 1972 500cc AMA Champion. After a half-ass season with no support from Kawasaki, with Lori and I taking care of each other and paying the mechanic, I got to experience and learn what the world championships were all about. I learned which teams were serious about winning, and Husqvarna was very serious. So I worked a three-year contract with Husqvarna, in which I got the same bikes as the world champions, so it was totally up to me to succeed. Without any excuses, I trained with Mikkola and the rest of the Husky team, and worked harder than anybody. I wasn’t as fast, as experienced, as mature or as strong when I first started out, but in the end the reason why I won a world championship was because I was stronger than everyone else at the end of the race. I got to win the world championship because I could run them into the ground until they were exhausted, then play with them and kick their ass. That was all about the training.
BR: Who won the first AMA 500cc National Championship, you or Mark Blackwell?
BL: Mark won by one point. There was no discrepancy in Mark’s winning by one point. It had to do with how the AMA decided to collect points for the championship that first year. It had a system in which it gave you points for so many races, and took points away if you didn’t finish a certain amount of other races. It was a real black area.
The CZ factory, which I was riding for, thought it was the nine races that counted, and not the seven races then take away two. There was a lot of bullshit there. At the last race of the year the mechanics showed me the sign that I had won the championship, and to just finish in the position I was in. I did that, and when I came back in after the race I found out I had lost by one point. Winning that first AMA National Championship would have been important to my career, and to me also. The next year I won every race on the Kawasaki to win the AMA 500cc National Championship.
BR: How or what did it feel like to be the first American to win a World Motocross Championship?
BL: It felt great of course, but as with any racer I count on results to say what accomplished in my career. Having the first AMA 500c National Championship in 1971 basically won, then winning it outright the next season in 1972, and then finally winning the world title in 1982 was great. I got burned out of a couple of world titles. Except for a couple of things I could be counting three or five champions, but having three of those or five of those was like, no matter where you end up you always want more!
BR: First of all tell us about your three children?
BL: The three chiLLLuns. Their names all start with an ‘L’. Logan is the baby, Lauren is the middle one and Lia is the eldest. Lori, my wife, is the oldest. So all together we have four ‘L’s’ and one ‘B’. We figured if we ever bought any good luggage we could pass it down to the kids. Lia just got married a little while ago and works as a designer for a sign company that handles the Ross stores accounts in the Bay area. Lia went around with us in Europe for the first five years of her life on the GP circuit until I won my championship. She still has good memories of when she was there, and has been back a few times since. Lauren is going to graduate from college in San Francisco with a degree in Corporate Functions/Events. Logan is working at a local motorcycle shop in Fairfield, getting broken in and doing anything that needs to be done.
BR: In 2000 you won the AHMRA 40 Plus Expert class. What got you back into racing after such a long break?
BL: The vintage bikes and riders of the late ’60s and early ’70s were part of my era. Some friends of mine were coming up to my area for a race and one of them said he would bring me an old CZ to ride. I rode it and I had fun. Then I went out and bought an old piece of crap and tried to make it into a good vintage bike. I didn’t have much luck because I’m not the best mechanic in the world. There were some local vintage CZ riders that I got hooked up with, and they helped me get the bike going. Then at a race up in Hollister the bike broke down.
A friend said, “I’ll go borrow you a bike. I’ll go up and down the pits and find the best CZ for you and see if I can borrow it.” He ran across Mike Tillman, who had the cherriest and cleanest CZ in the pits. So my friend asks Mike, “Hey can Bradley ride it for the second moto?” Surprisingly enough he said “Yeah!” We didn’t know Mike at all at the time, but we became friends. The next race in the series was at Sandhill, which is my local track, and Mike unfortunately broke his leg there. Then Mike offered to let me race his bike for the rest of the season because he wouldn’t be able to ride.
We went to the first AHMRA (American Historic Motorcycle Racing Association) National Championship Series race in Arizona, and Mike flew down to work on the bike and we won our race. A trailer was leaving for the next race in Daytona and had one extra space for a bike. Somehow we decided to throw the bike on the trailer and go back and do the whole season. We went back east and around the US, and won all ten nationals with his bike and won the 40 Plus Championship. I took all the trophies and put them into one big frame, and gave it to Mike for all his help with the bike. Then Mike built me a new bike and we race three or four local races a year, just for fun. We had fun, and it was a great experience. We just wanted to see if we could still ride, and that’s what we basically did.
BR: How many factory motocross teams did you ride for in your career? And which was the best and worst team to ride for?
BL: I rode for Kawasaki twice. I rode once for CZ, Montesa, Honda, Suzuki, Husqvarna, American Eagle and DKW. I liked racing for the Kawasaki team the best, because it believed the rider was doing all the R&D work and he knew what was happening on the bike. It would listen to the rider and make the changes. The other Japanese companies would have the engineers decide what was right for the bikes, and then place the rider on top of their design and make him adapt to the bike. Instead Kawasaki said, “You’re riding it and we’ll make it the way you want it because the more you like it the faster you’re going to go.”
All the teams had their problems, so it’s kind of a toss up about which was most difficult team to ride for, but I would say it was the Husky team. It was mostly due to the timing and circumstances when I was on the team. Its theory was that it had the world champion (Heikki Mikkola) riding the bike, so if I wanted any changes done on the bike it would just say that I was riding the bike wrong. If the chain fell off every week it was my fault for the way I was riding, and not that the swingarm was flexing. Honda didn’t do a lot of changing, but I was in a little more control, and in my championship year with Suzuki it let me do whatever I wanted, even though it probably didn’t like it.
BR: Why do you think that throughout all those factories and championships you are most closely identified with the CZ brand?
BL: In the real world I didn’t even ride the CZs for two years. It’s just that everybody is connecting with that time frame of the very early ’70s. 1970 and 1971 was when motocross was still pure and real. That is the time people want to remember, when motocross was a breath of fresh air.
BR: Tell me about your www.BRADLACKEY.com?
BL: When I started back in the vintage racing scene everybody wanted shirts and information, and the website was a way to connect with those people. We had the schedule of races that I would be at, and the storied results afterwards. Then we put on some of the products people were asking for on the BADCO store, like the Czecherd Past t-shirts and jerseys, the Peace Dove that mounts to the handlebar, The Motocross Techniques, Training, Tactics book and video written by me and Len Weed, and the Championship Training written by myself, Dean Miller and Len Weed. So that way if people knew we were coming their way for a race they could come by and buy a shirt. The site also to promotes AHMRA. Plus everybody has a web site these days.
BR: What was the best bike you ever raced?
BL: Uuummmmm, aaahhhhhhhh? I’ll probably have to say my 1980 Kawasaki. Kawasaki did its homework. It did everything I wanted. It built a big, nice grunty motor, which is what you needed to win the 500 class with. There was nothing wrong with that bike. It was just perfect. The 1978 Honda 250 was the best production bike I ever rode. It was so light, quick and ahead of its time in terms of power band and motor characteristics. I rode it in international races before and in between the Grand Prix season in Europe against Heikki and Roger on their factory 250s, and I would beat them every week on a production bike. The only change that we made to the bike was that we put a pair of Fox shocks on it.
BR: Now where did the nickname ‘Bad’ come from?
BL: I don’t know. It was probably from one of those scummy journalists. You know how those guys are.
BR: How about the nickname that Pomeroy calls you, ‘Partly’?
BL: You know Bimbo isn’t the sharpest tool in the drawer sometimes. We were down in LA and were leaving to go to the Trans-Am in Unadilla, New York. Bimbo took off prematurely and got lost before we even got out of the garage. So we drove separately all the way across the country, when we were supposed to be caravanning so we could help each other out. Then he blamed me somehow for his mistake, and started calling me ‘Partially Leaky’ or ‘Partly’, I guess for being only partially complete. Bimbo still blames me for it, although it was his fault.
BR: What was you favorite track to race on?
BL: Probably the GP at Farleigh Castle, in England. It was a fast track, all natural with green grass, wide, rough, big hills, a great start, fantastic crowd, and it was on the fourth of July weekend.
BR: Who were the best fans?
BL: For me it was Carlsbad at the US Grand Prix, because that is where I am from. That’s where most of my fans are from. In Europe I was racing against all the other countries at each GP, so the fans were for whoever the home country hero was. If you were in Germany and the lead German rider wasn’t doing well it didn’t matter, because the fans were going to cheer for him no matter what. Obviously your best fans are from your home country.
BR: Did the fans actually block you on the race course or throw things at you during a race?
BL: Oh, way too many times to talk about. They would throw sand in the eyes when the goggles were down, throw beer in the face, rap you on the head with poles when you went by. It wasn’t just a myth, it was reality.
BR: In your career did it ever just become a job and not a passion?
BL: That was actually why I quit. It was getting to the point where I was concerned about injury. If you think about that too long you’re not doing something right out on the track. You have to want to do it no matter how much someone pays you. There is a certain period of time when you are willing to do all the things that are necessary to win, and when that comes to an end you shouldn’t be racing professionally if your time has passed. A ten-year window in motocross is about as long as you can go, and I won the 1972 AMA 500cc National MX Championship and then 10 years later I won the 1982 FIM 500cc World MX Championship.
BR: Why is it that you retired from professional racing in 1982, when you reached the top of the sport by winning the World Championship?
BL: Every 10 years the economy goes into a little depression, and that’s what was coming at us in 1982/’83. Except for Honda, the factory teams were very small, with Kawasaki and Yamaha having one support rider each through their European distributors. Honda had a full camp with current and past world champions. Suzuki had just quit after winning the 125 World Championship with Eric Geboers, and getting first and second in the 500 Championship with me and Andre Vroomans after not being in the championship series for five years. So it bailed out so it could laugh at everybody. The options for getting a really good ride were no longer there, and the odds of winning were not in my favor, so I had to make a decision.
BR: In 1982 you had one of the first custom painted helmets in MX, which once again set you off from the rest of the madding crowd. What was it based on?
BL: I called it the 57 Chevy helmet. I wanted to come up with something that was all American, but didn’t have flags on it. There were flags on everybody’s helmet already. So I had a Frenchmen paint 57 Chevy flames on the helmet, which was as American as apple pie.
BR: You have been known for pushing the envelope of what was accepted MX routine by leaving the lucrative contracts of the US, heading for the uncharted World Championships, putting training as the focus for winning, peace doves and many more things. You have never accepted the middle road. Is it because you’re from Berkeley that you’re such a rebel?
BL: I’m from Northern California. That’s what you do! There are a lot of good riders out of the San Francisco bay area, like ‘Bugsy’ (Dick Mann) and Kenny Roberts. I had a lot to live up to because they invented a lot of stuff as racers that we take for granted today. That was the standard procedure around here, to do stuff that nobody else was doing. That was my plan from day one.
BR: Do you have a motorcycle today?
BL: I have some vintage stuff that is more collector oriented, like a 1968 405 American Eagle, 1970 CZ, 1965 CZ Twin Pipe and my 1982 Suzuki RN 500 World Champion bike, which just last year I was able to locate and get back. I’m just in the process of getting an electric start Suzuki 400 DRZ from my local shop, Fairfield Cycle, that works with me on a lot of stuff. So I’m going to have that to cow trail, cruise around and a little fun racing on. This will be the first modern bike I have had since my 1982 Suzuki RN 500. Last week I went out riding with the dirt track boys, Johnny Murphy and Sean Russell. They had modern MX bikes that I got to borrow, and we went on a real nice local track and got to warm up the bones.
BR: What do you think about the triple jumps of today?
BL: Those aren’t in my vocabulary.
BR: What do you think about the difference between the riders of today vs the riders of your generation?
BL: Because of the way the sport has changed I think training and conditioning is a big factor. One big difference is you now have 20-minute races versus 45-minute races. The training factor is not as important as it was in my time. In whatever era you have to be very talented, train hard, be half way smart and know all the right things to do to reach the top.
I think there is one thing that riders today don’t have to face, and that is to be in condition for the longer races of yesterday. It just takes one thing away and makes it easier. The Supercross technique of riding and setting up the bike is different today, but everything else about the racing is basically the same. The guys who race the outdoor nationals have to adapt to different tracks every weekend. The guys who race the Supercross, where the tracks are basically the same, only have to slightly tweak the set-up from week to week. It’s not like making major set-up changes from a muddy Sittendorf race to a sand race in Holland.
The physical demands on the body over 40-plus minutes changed so much of the race strategy by the end of the race. The racer who is in shape has the advantage, and he can do things the other riders can’t do. Today the racers have to be in good enough shape to go 20 minutes, but how hard is that? That’s just my view on it, though.
BR: Tell me about your road trip story, with Marty Smith and Jimmy Ellis down in Australia in 1983, playing bumper cars in your rental cars?
BL: Well, it was probably the nearest to a big death crash we’d ever had in a rent-a-car. Of course there were a lot of rent-a-car stories back then. My Dad and I were leaving the track in my car, and Jimmy ‘Cobalt’ Ellis and Marty Smith were leaving in their car. They were full-sized Ford rentals with the steering on the wrong side of the car, and plus we were driving on the wrong side of the road. We were zipping down the road as fast as those cars would go, playing bumper cars at 100-plus going up and down the hills across the countryside. We came flying over this hill crest with Marty right on my butt, and as I look towards the bottom of this hill I saw a big wreck at the intersection with people standing on the street, cars crashed together, fire trucks on the side, cars coming in the other lane and our lane was completely blocked. So I let off the gas and Marty ran into the back of me, because he didn’t see what was going on, and that lurched our car forward into the air and now we had no way to stop the car. All we could do was to weave our way through the oncoming traffic and go through the crash site at 80 plus, with people diving off the road. Then we just continued to haul ass because we knew they were going to come after us for almost killing everybody. When we got back to the hotel Marty said, “Oh man. I looked through my window to your back window, through your front window, and saw all that crash and just knew we were all going to die. So I figured anything you did, I would just follow you.” My Dad, who was in the car, thought he had died. When he realized he wasn’t dead he was so pissed off at me he wouldn’t even talk to me for days afterward.
By Shawn McDonald
It is a privilege to introduce a man who broke down the European myth that an American could never be a world champion – that the golden prize trophy would always remain locked tightly in the Swedish and Finnish halls of Valhalla, or closely guarded by the Belgians in the medieval city of Namur.
Brad Lackey set the path for all American motocross racers by constantly challenging himself to reach for higher goals that were just barely out of his reach. He didn’t follow the path set by others; he blazed new trails for others to follow. Whether it was the young long haired rebel with the peace dove on his crossbar or the wizened man with full beard who knew exactly what lay in front of him and attacked it. Brad has never taken the easy path in life, the path on which money and adulation awaited him. He has always taken the road less traveled, and has always been his own man in his views and his decisions. Look to the stars of today and see if Carmichael’s work ethic is no different, or if McGrath’s rebellious nature does not share its roots in the trailblazer.
What I found in these conversations was best stated by Shakespeare in the play Henry V “For, though I speak it to you, I think the King is but a man, as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me: the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but human conditions.” Brad, in all his comments, is a common man as you or I, a man with a good sense of humor, a strong family and challenges still to conquer. Yet he is different in that he set idealistic goals for himself even though no others can see his path.
Others took him for granted in his early years when his hair was long and the peace dove flew high on his handlebars. What they did not see was the young man who dreamed of one day being the King. Brad not only dreamed but also had the fortitude to follow up those dreams with years of relentless hard work. If that’s the case then Brad is a true American.
Bench Racer: First question would be how old are you?
Brad Lackey: Not as old as Pomeroy, but I will be in 2003 on July 8.
BR: When did you start racing?
BL: I started racing CZ motorcycles back in 1969. I continued racing CZs up to mid 1971. I rode a factory Kawasaki and a CZ in 1971, so I guess I had a dual sponsored citizenship between Japan and Czechoslovakia back then. No one has done that for a long time, having two different factory rides at the same time.
BR: Does the name Buffalo Breath mean anything to you?
BL: Buffalo Breath is my good friend Bob Briner. Bob just started a new company, called Colt Tronics, with his son – who happens to be named Colt. They deal in all kinds of the sort of flashing lights you might see at a rave, the kind where you swing them around while taking ecstasy and doing all that weird shit. We use them for my company; we have a couple of Harley rallies at Las Vegas at night, and we sell them out of our booth to kids to twirl in the dark. Buffalo is a long-time friend. He was one of the guys in partnership with me back in the early days, when we had a shop in downtown Berkeley: we were the CZ distributor for California at the time. Then there were the Buffalo Breath motocross jerseys, which were really rugby jerseys straight out of New Zealand, the type you now find in a Nordstrom store. If we had held on to the rights of those jerseys we could have been real rich, but as usual we got screwed.
BR: One of the first things, other than your riding talent, that made you stand out from the pack was the infamous white peace dove attached to your crossbar. Can you give us the true story about the bird without flipping us one?
BL: The dove has quite a big following, and as many stories about it. I have to admit, which I have always done, that the dove was not my original idea. I did steal it. When I had the dove I won a couple of races, which made it more popular, and of course it was at the right moment in time. It was at the beginning of the ’70s and the hippie movement was still in force, and I was from Berkeley, California. All those things added together made the dove work at the time.
BR: We just met the original motocross girlfriend, Lori! How old was she when you first met?
BL: I stole her away from home when she was 14 or 15, so that must have been around 1969-1970. She’s a tough cookie to be hanging around the old champ for such a long time. She was the one that made a lot of things work when we traveled the international and world motocross circuits for years in our motor home. All those years, having our kids together, traveling the world, she was behind me 100 per cent. It was just she and I alone in Europe, and if I’d been on my own, it would have never worked. Those years of putting together a championship season and working our way up the 500cc Championship ladder, there were a million times that I just wanted to give up. She was the only one who kept me from quitting. Now I’m an old, fat guy doing nothing, but trying to sell a t-shirt or two, she is still on my side. She’s a good girl!
BR: What kept you going for ten straight years in Europe, trying to win a world championship when you could have racked up a bunch of US championships for more money and an easier time?
BL: When those guys first came over here in 1969 and 1970 I raced against them at China Camp, and some other Inter-Am races. They were so much better than anyone here it was just ridiculous. Even being a dumb kid back then I knew that we were racers, but that the Europeans were a completely different breed of racer. I was only 17 when I first raced against them and they were 27, and even a couple of years difference when you’re young is big.
They were smarter and stronger than we were, and they knew what was going on. They knew how to ride the bikes, they had different bikes and they had special equipment that we had never seen before. Once I had the opportunity to ride the same factory Husqvarna equipment that Heikki Mikkola had in 1974, I no longer had any excuses. It was only the guy now, and had nothing to do with the equipment or the bikes.
I headed to Europe in 1970/’71, and went and trained at the CZ factory and got into my blood that I was going to be as good as them. I was just a dumb teenage kid from northern California who wanted to go beat them. I told my girlfriend Lori and my sponsor, Dick Lightner, that I was going to beat those guys, be a world champion, be the first American to do it and then have a big-ass party. So, I had to stay there until I did what I said I was going to do.
BR: Speaking of big-ass parties. I have heard from many sources that your parties have been the best they have ever gone to. Why would they say that?
BL: We had a couple of good Trans-Am parties back in those days. Jim and I would go race in Europe the whole season, and then we would come back here and race in the fall Trans-Am series. So we were basically on the road, beating ourselves up and trying to beat the Europeans on their soil and our soil. Then the new Americans started picking up the pace, so we had to race and beat them also. We didn’t get very much support when we came back home from the factories, because we were considered Europeans.
I rode for European Honda, and Marty Smith rode for American Honda. It was the same company, but believe me it wasn’t the same company. They wanted their guys to win and our guys wanted us to win, so it was a big rivalry every time we got together to race. At the end of the year, after the Grand Prix season was done and then the Trans-Am was complete, with a few AMA Nationals thrown in between to try to win that championship also, we were tired. I knew I had to go back to Belgium in January to start training for the next season by running through the snow and ice, and racing in every international race before the Grand Prix season started. So we all knew that we had to have a party, and it was usually where the last Trans-Am race was held. When the last race was at Sears Point Raceway, that was real close to my home, and we had a couple of good parties at my place.
BR: You were part of the American Motocross and Trophée des Nations teams for quite a few years with Jim Pomeroy, weren’t you?
BL: The first time I took Jim to the des Nations race in 1972, I think I ran the team. The AMA wasn’t interested in it, and didn’t want us to go because it knew we weren’t going to do anything. I was riding for Kawasaki, which wanted me to go, so I put together a team of Gary Jones, Jim Pomeroy and Jim Weinert. Jones and Weinert rode for Yamaha, Jim rode for Bultaco, and they had factory bikes over in Europe all ready for them.
That was in Holland, on a really deep sand track – none of the Americans had the right experience and we finished seventh overall, which was a huge showing for America because there were more than 20 countries competing. We felt really excited about doing so well our first time over there.
Then in 1974 we went to the home of motocross in Sweden. They pulled out Bengt Aberg, Ake Jonsson, Arne Kring and Hakkan Andersson. They were stacked as deep as a Swedish film star, and we got second overall to the Swedes with Weinert, Pomeroy, DiStefano and myself. I didn’t feel too bad losing to that team. If we had been in any other place except Sweden we would have won it, and that would have been shattering.
The next year was my last. We went to Czechoslovakia with Kent Howerton, DiStefano and Pomeroy, and finished a rather disappointing ninth overall. The AMA didn’t pick me for the des Nations team again, because I was considered a European. It then took from 1974 until 1981, when the Americans won it all, to get back in the hunt. I would do it all over again the same way, because the history of the sport is what counts, and we were a part of that, and that’s what I love. Regardless of whether I won or lost any races or world championships, we were there at the beginning of American motocross.
BR: Weren’t you were the first American to take training seriously, with your work with the CZ and then Husqvarna teams in Europe?
BL: When I went over to Europe in 1973 for a full-on assault on the 500cc championship my sponsor, Kawasaki, wasn’t behind me. It wanted me to stay here and win races and more national championships. It wasn’t interested in me riding Grand Prix, because I was going to get my ass beaten even if I was the 1972 500cc AMA Champion. After a half-ass season with no support from Kawasaki, with Lori and I taking care of each other and paying the mechanic, I got to experience and learn what the world championships were all about. I learned which teams were serious about winning, and Husqvarna was very serious. So I worked a three-year contract with Husqvarna, in which I got the same bikes as the world champions, so it was totally up to me to succeed. Without any excuses, I trained with Mikkola and the rest of the Husky team, and worked harder than anybody. I wasn’t as fast, as experienced, as mature or as strong when I first started out, but in the end the reason why I won a world championship was because I was stronger than everyone else at the end of the race. I got to win the world championship because I could run them into the ground until they were exhausted, then play with them and kick their ass. That was all about the training.
BR: Who won the first AMA 500cc National Championship, you or Mark Blackwell?
BL: Mark won by one point. There was no discrepancy in Mark’s winning by one point. It had to do with how the AMA decided to collect points for the championship that first year. It had a system in which it gave you points for so many races, and took points away if you didn’t finish a certain amount of other races. It was a real black area.
The CZ factory, which I was riding for, thought it was the nine races that counted, and not the seven races then take away two. There was a lot of bullshit there. At the last race of the year the mechanics showed me the sign that I had won the championship, and to just finish in the position I was in. I did that, and when I came back in after the race I found out I had lost by one point. Winning that first AMA National Championship would have been important to my career, and to me also. The next year I won every race on the Kawasaki to win the AMA 500cc National Championship.
BR: How or what did it feel like to be the first American to win a World Motocross Championship?
BL: It felt great of course, but as with any racer I count on results to say what accomplished in my career. Having the first AMA 500c National Championship in 1971 basically won, then winning it outright the next season in 1972, and then finally winning the world title in 1982 was great. I got burned out of a couple of world titles. Except for a couple of things I could be counting three or five champions, but having three of those or five of those was like, no matter where you end up you always want more!
BR: First of all tell us about your three children?
BL: The three chiLLLuns. Their names all start with an ‘L’. Logan is the baby, Lauren is the middle one and Lia is the eldest. Lori, my wife, is the oldest. So all together we have four ‘L’s’ and one ‘B’. We figured if we ever bought any good luggage we could pass it down to the kids. Lia just got married a little while ago and works as a designer for a sign company that handles the Ross stores accounts in the Bay area. Lia went around with us in Europe for the first five years of her life on the GP circuit until I won my championship. She still has good memories of when she was there, and has been back a few times since. Lauren is going to graduate from college in San Francisco with a degree in Corporate Functions/Events. Logan is working at a local motorcycle shop in Fairfield, getting broken in and doing anything that needs to be done.
BR: In 2000 you won the AHMRA 40 Plus Expert class. What got you back into racing after such a long break?
BL: The vintage bikes and riders of the late ’60s and early ’70s were part of my era. Some friends of mine were coming up to my area for a race and one of them said he would bring me an old CZ to ride. I rode it and I had fun. Then I went out and bought an old piece of crap and tried to make it into a good vintage bike. I didn’t have much luck because I’m not the best mechanic in the world. There were some local vintage CZ riders that I got hooked up with, and they helped me get the bike going. Then at a race up in Hollister the bike broke down.
A friend said, “I’ll go borrow you a bike. I’ll go up and down the pits and find the best CZ for you and see if I can borrow it.” He ran across Mike Tillman, who had the cherriest and cleanest CZ in the pits. So my friend asks Mike, “Hey can Bradley ride it for the second moto?” Surprisingly enough he said “Yeah!” We didn’t know Mike at all at the time, but we became friends. The next race in the series was at Sandhill, which is my local track, and Mike unfortunately broke his leg there. Then Mike offered to let me race his bike for the rest of the season because he wouldn’t be able to ride.
We went to the first AHMRA (American Historic Motorcycle Racing Association) National Championship Series race in Arizona, and Mike flew down to work on the bike and we won our race. A trailer was leaving for the next race in Daytona and had one extra space for a bike. Somehow we decided to throw the bike on the trailer and go back and do the whole season. We went back east and around the US, and won all ten nationals with his bike and won the 40 Plus Championship. I took all the trophies and put them into one big frame, and gave it to Mike for all his help with the bike. Then Mike built me a new bike and we race three or four local races a year, just for fun. We had fun, and it was a great experience. We just wanted to see if we could still ride, and that’s what we basically did.
BR: How many factory motocross teams did you ride for in your career? And which was the best and worst team to ride for?
BL: I rode for Kawasaki twice. I rode once for CZ, Montesa, Honda, Suzuki, Husqvarna, American Eagle and DKW. I liked racing for the Kawasaki team the best, because it believed the rider was doing all the R&D work and he knew what was happening on the bike. It would listen to the rider and make the changes. The other Japanese companies would have the engineers decide what was right for the bikes, and then place the rider on top of their design and make him adapt to the bike. Instead Kawasaki said, “You’re riding it and we’ll make it the way you want it because the more you like it the faster you’re going to go.”
All the teams had their problems, so it’s kind of a toss up about which was most difficult team to ride for, but I would say it was the Husky team. It was mostly due to the timing and circumstances when I was on the team. Its theory was that it had the world champion (Heikki Mikkola) riding the bike, so if I wanted any changes done on the bike it would just say that I was riding the bike wrong. If the chain fell off every week it was my fault for the way I was riding, and not that the swingarm was flexing. Honda didn’t do a lot of changing, but I was in a little more control, and in my championship year with Suzuki it let me do whatever I wanted, even though it probably didn’t like it.
BR: Why do you think that throughout all those factories and championships you are most closely identified with the CZ brand?
BL: In the real world I didn’t even ride the CZs for two years. It’s just that everybody is connecting with that time frame of the very early ’70s. 1970 and 1971 was when motocross was still pure and real. That is the time people want to remember, when motocross was a breath of fresh air.
BR: Tell me about your www.BRADLACKEY.com?
BL: When I started back in the vintage racing scene everybody wanted shirts and information, and the website was a way to connect with those people. We had the schedule of races that I would be at, and the storied results afterwards. Then we put on some of the products people were asking for on the BADCO store, like the Czecherd Past t-shirts and jerseys, the Peace Dove that mounts to the handlebar, The Motocross Techniques, Training, Tactics book and video written by me and Len Weed, and the Championship Training written by myself, Dean Miller and Len Weed. So that way if people knew we were coming their way for a race they could come by and buy a shirt. The site also to promotes AHMRA. Plus everybody has a web site these days.
BR: What was the best bike you ever raced?
BL: Uuummmmm, aaahhhhhhhh? I’ll probably have to say my 1980 Kawasaki. Kawasaki did its homework. It did everything I wanted. It built a big, nice grunty motor, which is what you needed to win the 500 class with. There was nothing wrong with that bike. It was just perfect. The 1978 Honda 250 was the best production bike I ever rode. It was so light, quick and ahead of its time in terms of power band and motor characteristics. I rode it in international races before and in between the Grand Prix season in Europe against Heikki and Roger on their factory 250s, and I would beat them every week on a production bike. The only change that we made to the bike was that we put a pair of Fox shocks on it.
BR: Now where did the nickname ‘Bad’ come from?
BL: I don’t know. It was probably from one of those scummy journalists. You know how those guys are.
BR: How about the nickname that Pomeroy calls you, ‘Partly’?
BL: You know Bimbo isn’t the sharpest tool in the drawer sometimes. We were down in LA and were leaving to go to the Trans-Am in Unadilla, New York. Bimbo took off prematurely and got lost before we even got out of the garage. So we drove separately all the way across the country, when we were supposed to be caravanning so we could help each other out. Then he blamed me somehow for his mistake, and started calling me ‘Partially Leaky’ or ‘Partly’, I guess for being only partially complete. Bimbo still blames me for it, although it was his fault.
BR: What was you favorite track to race on?
BL: Probably the GP at Farleigh Castle, in England. It was a fast track, all natural with green grass, wide, rough, big hills, a great start, fantastic crowd, and it was on the fourth of July weekend.
BR: Who were the best fans?
BL: For me it was Carlsbad at the US Grand Prix, because that is where I am from. That’s where most of my fans are from. In Europe I was racing against all the other countries at each GP, so the fans were for whoever the home country hero was. If you were in Germany and the lead German rider wasn’t doing well it didn’t matter, because the fans were going to cheer for him no matter what. Obviously your best fans are from your home country.
BR: Did the fans actually block you on the race course or throw things at you during a race?
BL: Oh, way too many times to talk about. They would throw sand in the eyes when the goggles were down, throw beer in the face, rap you on the head with poles when you went by. It wasn’t just a myth, it was reality.
BR: In your career did it ever just become a job and not a passion?
BL: That was actually why I quit. It was getting to the point where I was concerned about injury. If you think about that too long you’re not doing something right out on the track. You have to want to do it no matter how much someone pays you. There is a certain period of time when you are willing to do all the things that are necessary to win, and when that comes to an end you shouldn’t be racing professionally if your time has passed. A ten-year window in motocross is about as long as you can go, and I won the 1972 AMA 500cc National MX Championship and then 10 years later I won the 1982 FIM 500cc World MX Championship.
BR: Why is it that you retired from professional racing in 1982, when you reached the top of the sport by winning the World Championship?
BL: Every 10 years the economy goes into a little depression, and that’s what was coming at us in 1982/’83. Except for Honda, the factory teams were very small, with Kawasaki and Yamaha having one support rider each through their European distributors. Honda had a full camp with current and past world champions. Suzuki had just quit after winning the 125 World Championship with Eric Geboers, and getting first and second in the 500 Championship with me and Andre Vroomans after not being in the championship series for five years. So it bailed out so it could laugh at everybody. The options for getting a really good ride were no longer there, and the odds of winning were not in my favor, so I had to make a decision.
BR: In 1982 you had one of the first custom painted helmets in MX, which once again set you off from the rest of the madding crowd. What was it based on?
BL: I called it the 57 Chevy helmet. I wanted to come up with something that was all American, but didn’t have flags on it. There were flags on everybody’s helmet already. So I had a Frenchmen paint 57 Chevy flames on the helmet, which was as American as apple pie.
BR: You have been known for pushing the envelope of what was accepted MX routine by leaving the lucrative contracts of the US, heading for the uncharted World Championships, putting training as the focus for winning, peace doves and many more things. You have never accepted the middle road. Is it because you’re from Berkeley that you’re such a rebel?
BL: I’m from Northern California. That’s what you do! There are a lot of good riders out of the San Francisco bay area, like ‘Bugsy’ (Dick Mann) and Kenny Roberts. I had a lot to live up to because they invented a lot of stuff as racers that we take for granted today. That was the standard procedure around here, to do stuff that nobody else was doing. That was my plan from day one.
BR: Do you have a motorcycle today?
BL: I have some vintage stuff that is more collector oriented, like a 1968 405 American Eagle, 1970 CZ, 1965 CZ Twin Pipe and my 1982 Suzuki RN 500 World Champion bike, which just last year I was able to locate and get back. I’m just in the process of getting an electric start Suzuki 400 DRZ from my local shop, Fairfield Cycle, that works with me on a lot of stuff. So I’m going to have that to cow trail, cruise around and a little fun racing on. This will be the first modern bike I have had since my 1982 Suzuki RN 500. Last week I went out riding with the dirt track boys, Johnny Murphy and Sean Russell. They had modern MX bikes that I got to borrow, and we went on a real nice local track and got to warm up the bones.
BR: What do you think about the triple jumps of today?
BL: Those aren’t in my vocabulary.
BR: What do you think about the difference between the riders of today vs the riders of your generation?
BL: Because of the way the sport has changed I think training and conditioning is a big factor. One big difference is you now have 20-minute races versus 45-minute races. The training factor is not as important as it was in my time. In whatever era you have to be very talented, train hard, be half way smart and know all the right things to do to reach the top.
I think there is one thing that riders today don’t have to face, and that is to be in condition for the longer races of yesterday. It just takes one thing away and makes it easier. The Supercross technique of riding and setting up the bike is different today, but everything else about the racing is basically the same. The guys who race the outdoor nationals have to adapt to different tracks every weekend. The guys who race the Supercross, where the tracks are basically the same, only have to slightly tweak the set-up from week to week. It’s not like making major set-up changes from a muddy Sittendorf race to a sand race in Holland.
The physical demands on the body over 40-plus minutes changed so much of the race strategy by the end of the race. The racer who is in shape has the advantage, and he can do things the other riders can’t do. Today the racers have to be in good enough shape to go 20 minutes, but how hard is that? That’s just my view on it, though.
BR: Tell me about your road trip story, with Marty Smith and Jimmy Ellis down in Australia in 1983, playing bumper cars in your rental cars?
BL: Well, it was probably the nearest to a big death crash we’d ever had in a rent-a-car. Of course there were a lot of rent-a-car stories back then. My Dad and I were leaving the track in my car, and Jimmy ‘Cobalt’ Ellis and Marty Smith were leaving in their car. They were full-sized Ford rentals with the steering on the wrong side of the car, and plus we were driving on the wrong side of the road. We were zipping down the road as fast as those cars would go, playing bumper cars at 100-plus going up and down the hills across the countryside. We came flying over this hill crest with Marty right on my butt, and as I look towards the bottom of this hill I saw a big wreck at the intersection with people standing on the street, cars crashed together, fire trucks on the side, cars coming in the other lane and our lane was completely blocked. So I let off the gas and Marty ran into the back of me, because he didn’t see what was going on, and that lurched our car forward into the air and now we had no way to stop the car. All we could do was to weave our way through the oncoming traffic and go through the crash site at 80 plus, with people diving off the road. Then we just continued to haul ass because we knew they were going to come after us for almost killing everybody. When we got back to the hotel Marty said, “Oh man. I looked through my window to your back window, through your front window, and saw all that crash and just knew we were all going to die. So I figured anything you did, I would just follow you.” My Dad, who was in the car, thought he had died. When he realized he wasn’t dead he was so pissed off at me he wouldn’t even talk to me for days afterward.
