Dick Mann - Shawn McDonald

Dick Mann

By Shawn McDonald
I was in a total quandary about what to title this interview. I can usually come up with some snappy story titles, but what in the world could I title the most important interview of my life so far?
Brainstorm hard now, Shawn. What about something that refers to Dick Mann being the first person to win all five forms of racing in the AMA Grand National Championship? After all, he won short track, TT, road race, quarter-mile and mile classes.
Or how about a baseball term? I fancied Racing for the Cycle, or Grand Slam Plus One, or Most Valuable Racer, or Babe Ruth on Two Wheels. Then there’s historic – He’s Got The Right Stuff In The Right Wrist, A Racer For All Seasons, Attila The Mann. Nah! That’s terrible.
Oh, I almost forgot about his racing motocross and the ISDT. Then there is all that stuff about his developing new motorcycles, building his own frames and racing professionally for three decades.
I will never be able to justify my choice - whatever use will be so lame. I am such a terrible writer. I am not worthy even to write a title for a story about walking with a prophet of motorcycle racing. I am BAD, BAD, BAD… Wait! Oh, I am so brilliant sometimes it scares me. I remember that when I called him I said “Mr Mann, this is Shawn McDonald with Bench Racer Magazine.” In a slight raspy voice he simply replied, “Just call me Dick.”
Chuck Yeager was the first man to break the sound barrier, and had a memorable career as a fighter pilot and test pilot as well as commanding squadrons. His calm under extreme moments of stress and his West Virginia accent were copied by many American pilots of military and commercial aviation, being seen as what a pilot should try to achieve. Dick Mann is the motorcycle racing equivalent – the quiet American who lets his deeds do the talking for him even when his equipment was not always top of the line. He is what all American racers should pattern their racing careers on.

Bench Racer: How do you get your wife to allow you to race at the age of 69?
Dick Mann: You don’t get your wife to do anything. You have to have the right wife to start with.

BR: Tell us a little about your partner in crime.
DM: Her name is Kay. We dated for 15 years and we’ve been married for 20. She was previously married and had two kids, and I was previously married and had two kids. Until they grew up and moved away it [marriage] didn’t seem like the thing to do yet.

BR: Tell us about your four children.
DM: Viann is 45 and I have a son, Scott, who’s 41. Right now Viann is working a couple of jobs in the little town she lives in, and my son Scott works in geriatric departments in Retirement Centers. Ken, 44, is a UPS driver who races a BSA A-10 in AHMRA Motocross and Katie, 42, is a workers comp insurance examiner in the East Bay.

BR: I see you were born in Salt Lake City, Utah. You wouldn’t perhaps be Mormon, would you?
DM: The family in Salt Lake, which was a very large family, they were Mormon. Yes. I’m a Mormon, just not a very good one.

BR: You moved around quite a bit before you landed in California?
DM: When I was very young my mother and father were in Nevada during the mid part of the Depression. I think I was four years old when my mother and father were divorced, and we went back to Salt Lake City for a year or two and then on to Reno. I started first grade in Reno and stayed there till 1942. Then we moved to California, where my mother worked in the shipyards during the war.

BR: Strangely enough you’ve sort of returned to Reno, haven’t you?
DM: I always wanted to get back to Reno, but by the time I was able to break away from the California thing it had grown into a very large city, so now I live about an hour south of the city, right up against the Sierra Nevada mountains.

BR: If you had one word to describe you what would it be?
DM: Old.

BR: Can you describe your riding style?
DM: I didn’t have any style. That’s why I was able to be what they consider to be versatile.

BR: So no riding style at all? Do you have another word to describe yourself, such as tenacious, persistent or broke?
DM: That one fits good. Actually, since I was very young I had a desire to be a professional athlete of some kind. It was pretty obvious by the time I was in Junior High – I weighed 110 pounds in Jr. High and got clear up to 120 pounds for the football tryouts in High School – that American stick and ball games were not going to be it for me. About that time I found motorcycles, and a really big group of people who rode motorcycles sort of took me in and it went from there.

BR: Before I forget this question, what was your racing height and weight?
DM: I was 5’8”, and depending upon the time of the year 135 to 140 pounds.

BR: That is about the perfect height and weight for a racer, isn’t it?
DM: From what they tell me. I would stand next to Joe Leonard, who’s over six feet, and he worked really hard to get down to 175 pounds, and you couldn’t keep up with him.

BR: Simple question. Why did you chose to ride the BSA/Matchless singles and not the V-twin Harley-Davidsons? In other words, why did you choose the harder road in racing?
DM: I don’t really know. The first real motorcycle I owned was a BSA Bantam. Somehow I got a connection with BSA at that time. It was a foreign motorcycle and very exotic to me then, and the Harleys were very mundane and normal. When I got into the racing thing and saw how the system was, I realized Harley-Davidson had all the best riders, all the time. And its motorcycles were really good. It had a habit of taking the fastest British rider of the current year and putting him on a mundane Harley, and you never heard of the guy again. I never imagined myself the winner of national championships, but at the normal professional races around the country on the level just below the national championships the BSA was more than competitive. At the big nationals the horsepower and talent of H-D’s riders showed and people thought we were at a disadvantage, but we weren’t.

BR: You raced professionally in the 1950s,’60s and ’70s. Have racers changed in their attitude and commitment over that time?
DM: I don’t think so. Humans don’t evolve that quickly. The conditions were different in the three distinct eras. The ’50s were a real learning curve for me. The ’60s I think were the best time for a rider who did it the way I did. Most of us in the ’60s were self contained. We worked on our own bikes, we hauled our own bikes, we raced our own bikes. As the ’70s approached the technologies changed and more money came into the sport, and with the sponsorship came a different way of going about the racing business.
The competition got tougher, because if you had a talented kid like Roberts – well Roberts is an exception, and I shouldn’t use him – the whole group of young riders in the early ’70s who came along, the young lions like Gary Scott, Jim Rice, Dave Aldana and that whole bunch, and I’m leaving out a lot of names. They didn’t even have to know where the spark plug was. They were just really talented and good racers. Before that it was hard to be a rider and a tuner at the same time.
By the time I quit there was even less of a chance of a rider like myself or Neil Keen to be competitive because of that change in technology.
.

BR: You remarkably finished in the top 10 in 1957 and finished your career in 1973 in the top 10. Was there any year you didn’t finish in the top 10?
DM: One year, I believe in 1965 or 1966 [In 1965 Mann finished second behind Bart Markel in the Grand National Championship. In 1966 he did not finish in the top 10] I thought I was going to retire from racing completely, and went to Hawaii and opened a Suzuki store and missed most of the season. I was there less than a year and realized I was not a retail person, and came back to racing. But to not get into the top ten, I missed most of the racing year.

BR: What kept you in the top 10 for 16 years?
DM: I went to a lot of events. If you finish enough you will end up in the points.

BR: In 1963, when you won your first Grand National Championship, you won only one race. What do you think won you the championship – talent, luck or brains?
DM: Very bad luck on Carroll Resweber’s part. He was injured very seriously at Lincoln, Illinois, and that opened the door for a whole bunch of us. I have no idea why I beat the rest of them, but I was very happy about it. The number one plate is hard to predict, because the year after that I think I won three nationals in a row and four in total, and I didn’t get number one that year. Roger Reiman won it with two wins. The point system to get number one changed almost every year, and how they scored the points was always very complicated. Consistency always paid off. It was more a matter of not how much luck you had, but of how much bad luck the guys who were faster than you had.

BR: You were a factory Yamaha road racer in the early ’60s. Can you tell us about that?
DM: You can tell I’ve landed on my head a few times because my memory for dates and names is not too good. The first year I rode for Yamaha was because Al Gunter, an old comrade of mine, was hired by Yamaha to be the race director. It had a bunch of very talented new young guys, and Albert got me a ride because he thought I could do the job too. We were very lucky. I won 250 Combined races at Daytona, Nelson Ledges, OH and Carpentersville, IL, on the Yamaha 250 (three out of five races).

BR: You won 12 AMA Grand National races on a road race track. Do you have a favorite road race track?
DM: No, I really don’t. I try not to have favorite things because they usually put you in a bad attitude when you’re at the places that are not your favorite, and then you don’t give yourself an even break. So I tried not to think I’m a dirt tracker, or I’m a road racer, or I like TTs better. I tried to stay completely neutral.
It’s like any job. Some days if you’re a carpenter you’re making roofs, and some days you’re making walls. I tried to keep being the professional as the top priority, rather than being a hero.

BR: You were the first racer to win the five racing disciplines of Grand National racing – short track, TT, road racing, quarter mile and mile racing, as well as competing in ISDT and motocross. Please tell us what your favorite type of racing is?
DM: Actually motocross has always been at the top of my list, even before there was such a sport in America. British Scrambles, as they called them: later, after the war, the Europeans brought the word motocross to the forefront. I bought my BSA Bantam from Hap Alzina in Oakland, California – he was originally an Indian dealer and distributor. He was the first one to bring in BSA, and he had all the British newspapers at his dealership. I would ride the bus to Oakland just to read those weekly newspapers. From my earliest days that caught my imagination, and even before I graduated from the BSA Bantam my heroes were the BSA scrambles, motocross or trials team. Actually dirt track and road racing in America was a very different sport. Road racing wasn’t always done on pavement. It was sometimes done on dirt roads. From day one motocross was my imagination, the thing that drove me.

BR: You won 24 Nationals from 1958 till 1972 with 12 wins on the dirt, and 12 wins on the road courses. The only National Champion to have more wins on the road race tracks vs. the dirt tracks was Kenny Roberts. What made you such a good road racer?
DM: I wasn’t that good a road racer. There were always road race specialists who were better than me, and that didn’t upset me at all. Once again, if they didn’t finish I could beat them.

BR: There has to be something more to winning than everybody breaking down?
DM: I don’t know. I tried studying road racing and I think I figured it out pretty early.

BR: In 1971 you finished as the top American in the Trans Atlantic Match races in England. That was nothing to sneeze at when you remember the top Americans and Brits.
DM: That was a shock to our whole team. Before that we had only read about European road racing. The European press had only heard about American road racing as being a bunch of cowboys who drug their feet, and we believed it. We just road raced because the next race on the schedule was a road race. The one after that is a dirt track and the one after that is a TT, and then maybe another road race.
Very few of us considered ourselves road racers. We just raced on the road if that was the venue. We had no idea how good we were or how bad we were. We didn’t care. When we first went to the match races it opened up a lot of eyes, not only on their side but on our side. We were competitive. We weren’t bound by tradition of how to ride and race. It wasn’t really a fair test.
We didn’t think it was fair and didn’t care. It was a very political thing, with all the bikes on the team being a Triumph or BSA, so it was really a commercial. Our best road racer, Nixon, fell on the first day of practice and broke his wrist. The other younger members of the team, some of whom had only road raced once in their life and that was at Daytona the previous month, got on the race track with probably the best road racing group in the world on their home tracks. We didn’t beat them, but we rode right with them. I’ve never been more proud of a bunch of American kids than Aldana, Rice, Emde and Castro. Four young American kids against the best in the world, and we didn’t embarrass ourselves.

BR: You finished in second place at Daytona three times before you won. What did it feel like to finally win on the factory Honda in 1970?
DM: Very, very fortunate. I felt very fortunate to finish in second place three times also.
You have to give a lot of the credit to the team captain, Bob Hanson. He did some extra work on the bike that the European team-mates didn’t do, and our bike finished and they didn’t. We had a good strategy and worked well together, and it was a real workout for both of us, but it all worked out at the end. He deserves a lot of credit for preparing the Honda 750. The Honda four was very difficult to ride compared to bikes I’ve ridden before. It was more like driving a sports car than racing a motorcycle. The four cylinder engine was very powerful, with what we would call a modern, no flywheel powerband. Not a forgiving-handling bike. You had to be very careful riding it compared to the BSA triple, which was like an old shoe that you could throw around like a dirt track bike and you could really race that bike hard. With the Honda you had to be very precise and accurate, and the engine wasn’t as forgiving as the Rocket 3.

BR: Didn’t the first BSA Rocket 3 racers come with the low boy frame?
DM: In 1970, the first year they brought the triples over, they didn’t need the frame. In 1971 there were four bikes with the newer frame that they called the Low Boy. The BSA/Triumph Team at that time was so big that there were only four new bikes. I think Paul Smart and Mike Hailwood got a new one, and Romero and I also got one of the new ones. The rest of the team got the previous year’s bikes.

BR: When BSA and Triumph combined companies in the early ’70s weren’t you riding a Triumph Trident with a BSA Rocket 3 underneath the fairing at times?
DM: Yes. In fact it was my Rocket except it was painted Triumph blue instead of the BSA red. By then they had a better Triumph motor with the cylinders inclined like a BSA, so it all fit together pretty well.

BR: In 1971 you repeated your Daytona 200 win on the BSA Triple. Are you really going to tell me again that it was all due to luck and everybody breaking down?
DM: Well, of course. If you led Daytona, you seldom won or finished.

BR: How come the rest of us are never that lucky?
DM: If you figured out how many times I rode without that fortunate luck you’ll understand: 24 National wins and hundreds of National entries, and it’s not as nice as it sounds.

BR: I’ve done some studying, and you entered 230 Nationals and won 24 times, which means you won 10% of the time.
DM: I used to know how many times I was leading a National and didn’t finish. Now that was a very good statistic, but useless.

BR: You retired from the Grand National circuit in 1974 at the age of 39. Do you have any good reason why you retired?
DM: I never retired. I was just out of work for a year, and finally quit going. The British motorcycle manufacturers went belly up and that would have meant buying a Harley for the dirt, and it’s a complicated machine. It would have meant having to split the money to hire a mechanic and the road racing scene at that time needed a new four cylinder Yamaha every year and the ones you could buy weren’t competitive, and the new ones Roberts and the good guys got you couldn’t compete with. It just became a really bad business, and I looked for something else.

BR: Was there a difference between the ’60s in which the rider had more of an input in the results, compared to the ’70s in which the bike had more of an input in the results?
DM: It’s not that cut and dried, but the technology increased rapidly every year so a privateer couldn’t keep up with it. The good stuff was not available to the privateer. In the ’60s we all started with a standard framework and built our own advantage into the bike. It would take years to build the advantages you yourself created in the bike.
By the ’70s the factory would come with the new trick bike and there would only be two or three of them. Then the next year those models would be made available to the privateers, but with another trick two or three for the factory riders. Unless you were one of the super-talented riders like Roberts you were going to have a hard time making a living road racing or dirt tracking.

BR: You have never stopped being a motorcycle racer. If that is a disease, is there a cure?
DM: There’s no cure. I think that it’s in the brain cells.

BR: Do you remember what you’re worst crash was?
DM: Actually I was very lucky and didn’t have any horrendous crashes. The injury rate in dirt track racing in the ’60s was very high. Safety was not a concern. All the dirt tracks were lined with a fence, usually of wooden posts. My worst injury was when I broke my left hand in Springfield in 1962. I hit the inside fence with my hand. The rider in front of me leaned into the fence, and we both just got a little too close to it. It never put me out completely. It was at the middle of August, and I raced again at the end of September. The injury didn’t do me any good for three or four years. It was a long process to get it to work again.
Dirt track racing in America at that time was probably the dumbest professional sport in the world. It’s much better now. It’s the same with champ cars and sprint cars of that era. You had to be very good to survive the dirt track circuit on a motorcycle or in cars at that time.

BR: You saw a lot of injuries and even deaths during your racing career. Is there one that stands out more than the others?
DM: That’s a tough question. I think the world mourned Cal Rayborn’s death in New Zealand more than the rest. On that same point the injury rate for dirt track was very high, but the fatalities were very low compared to cars and road racing.

BR: One of the things anybody who has seen the movie On Any Sunday will remember you for is at the last race of the National Championship, when you had a broken left leg and you wrapped it up with duct tape to race. Why is it that dirt trackers always seem to go back racing before they are all healed up?
DM: First of all no matter what happens to your body you still have to pay the rent. The next was it wasn’t quite as stupid as it appears. There is a period during the first few weeks when you have a broken bone in which nothing is happening. It’s not healed and it’s not stuck together, and if you displace it it won’t make any difference. If that race had been in the third week after the break I wouldn’t have done it. Because by the third week things start to stick together. If you break up that process the healing may not start again. I had nothing to lose.
No family would have two children if you thought about pain. Once a woman had gone through it once, if she could remember the pain, she would never go through it again.

BR: You won your first National in 1959 at the Peoria TT, and in 1972 you won your last National at the Peoria TT. Are you a TT specialist, or is Peoria suited to you?
DM: I liked Peoria. It was the most physically demanding race on the circuit. It was a difficult track to ride and an oiled surface, which is the ultimate for dirt track racing. The temperature was always a problem there, and it was a race in which you could work your way from the back to the front before the race was over, until Roberts came, of course. It’s the last race on the circuit that goes back to the post war days. It’s done by a club.
Many of the Nationals were done by clubs in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. The track is modified now and it’s a little easier on everybody.
It was a real TT. When I first went there it was a different track layout than it was even in the ’60s or ’70s. The Ascot TT and those were all manufactured. The Peoria TT uses the natural terrain.
There used to be a big TT circuit in the Midwest in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan.
The TT riders never raced dirt track, because there were enough TTs to race every weekend all summer. Nothing but TTs, much as they did in the Northwest.

BR: Everyone I talk with says that in between the Nationals you would all head out to the fairgrounds to race, and make as much or even more money than you would at the big Nationals.
DM: Absolutely. During the summer months we would race three or four times a week. For a few years on the fair circuit we would race every day before the Springfield National, and three or four days after also. Chicago short track ran every Wednesday night. Every Tuesday was a short track in St Louis. You spent your whole life 12 to 14 hours a day either driving, working on your machinery or racing. It consumed every moment of your life for the summer. You carried as many bikes with you as you could maintain.

BR: You raced up here in the Northwest at the Portland Mile, the Castle Rock TT and the road race at Seattle International Raceway. How did you like coming up here?
DM: I liked the Castle Rock TT. It wasn’t your conventional TT because it didn’t have a jump, but it had a really good racing surface. The competition up there was really good. When you came into the Northwest you knew you were in somebody’s backyard because there was talent 10 or 12 deep. There was enough talent for a complete National event without anybody coming from someplace else. The Northwest had a reputation for TT specialists, but Northern California also had a lot of TT races.

BR: What do you remember about Seattle International Raceway and its road race course?
DM: It was not a very European-type track. I had a good race with Kel Carruthers there in 1971. Forget your normal perception that if you have a little 350cc Yamaha and I have a big 750cc BSA I should be better in the fast stuff, and you should be better in the slower stuff – this was absolutely the opposite. The little Yamaha was faster than the Rocket 3. He was a better rider than I was at high speed because of his European background (he was 1969 250cc World Champion). That circuit had some long fast straights and a couple of fast bends, but it also had some very intricate tight stuff and that’s where I had the advantage, which was the complete opposite of what you would think. Kel was able to use his high speed strengths there and my Rocket 3, like I said, was like riding a dirt track bike, and the thing was just great and I was able finish ahead of him. I made sure he lead at the finish line every lap, and I was hoping he would have enough confidence to think that whatever would happen he could always beat me. It sort of worked out that I had a good line for the finish if I had to, and I thought I could beat him but he had clutch trouble before the race was over so we never found out.

BR: Let me ask you some questions on racers. First of all a racer you finished second to in the 1959 GNC four time Grand National Champion (1958/ ’59/ ’60/ ’61), Carroll Resweber?
DM: One of the best dirt track riders ever. Brilliant tactician, had a lot of stamina and style. Nobody could match him when he was in his prime, which was for a very long time.

BR: ‘Black’ Bart Markel?
DM: An absolute individual. He was one of those perfect athletes. He had the ability to push himself way beyond his limits, something very few people can do, and he took advantage of it. He was the beginning of the Michigan Mafia. None of the later day Michigan Mafia could have run with Bart when he was in his prime.

BR: Mert Lawwill?
DM: Another great rider who worked at it. He worked at it very, very hard. He tuned his own bikes and was a good tactician. Statistics don’t show what his ability really was. He was number one, but he probably should have been number one more than once.

BR: Gene Romero?
DM: He was one of the young lions. Part of what I would call the real advancement in the profession of the sport, with that whole group that was so vibrant and crisp. They were not drab professionals, those guys were real showmen and extremely talented. The day they showed up at the track they were as good as we were. They didn’t learn from us. They came equipped when they showed up.

BR: Joe Leonard?
DM: What can you say? He’s an ultimate racer. A consistent number one racer in motorcycles, and he showed the same ability in cars and only a couple of people have done that. He ranks up there with Roberts and Resweber as the ultimate guys. They were all on a higher level than the rest of us.

BR: Neil Keen?
DM: He is the epitome of a professional racer. He only won one National, but I think he won more AMA professional races than anybody. He could race any place. He made a very good living tuning his own bikes.

BR: Skip Van Leeuwen?
DM: Skip was one of those super-talented young lion guys that was a TT specialist. He was almost unbeatable at certain tracks. Peoria was the great equalizer. When the young lions showed up at Peoria they were just regular lions. But at their favorite tracks like Ascot they were just great.

BR: Sammy Tanner?
DM: Probably the best style in dirt track I ever saw. He could run on a deep cushion or a groove. He was very small but very tenacious, and he really had the style. If I could look like Tanner on a bike I could have beat Resweber, I could have beat anybody if I just looked like him on a bike.

BR: Gary Nixon?
DM: Another hard-working guy who made his way through life with nothing but tenacity. People don’t realize how versatile he was. He was one of the guys who could have done the Grand Slam. He missed winning Peoria one year by 30 feet, and he never forgave me for it.

BR: Mike ‘The Bike’ Hailwood?
DM: I can’t judge Mike because I only rode Daytona with him, and it wasn’t a real road race course so he wasn’t able to show his ability, but he was a Kenny Roberts, Joe Leonard, Resweber type of person.

BR: The best road racer you ever saw or raced against?
DM: Kenny Roberts and Cal Rayborn. Rayborn was so far ahead of the rest of us in style and ability. He was actually a new school rider before new school got here. The problem at the end was that he was on an under-powered Harley.

BR: If those two were in a race, who do you think would win?
DM: Only the one with the fastest bike.

BR: The best motocrosser you ever saw or raced against?
DM: I’d have to say Brad Lackey. DeCoster, Robert and that European group were in a race, I was all alone in the same race. I didn’t really compete against them, I wasn’t on that level. I was able to race Brad when he was 12 years old, so I could say I raced against him.

BR: Best dirt tracker you ever saw or raced against?
DM: Boy, that would be hard to say. It’s about a five-way tie. In the ’50s Joe Leonard. In the ’60s Carroll Resweber. In the ’70s Roberts. Things changed rapidly when I quit racing, so it is no longer easy for me to judge the riders after I quit because they all looked better than I did.

BR: In your view, who was the best racer during your time racing in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s?
DM: Joe Leonard in the ’50s, Carroll Resweber in the ’60s and Kenny Roberts in the ’70s. Things changed rapidly when I quit racing, and it was no longer easy for me to judge who was the top rider anymore. By then everybody in the main event looked out of my league.

BR: You raced in 230 AMA Nationals and a bazillion local races over 50 years. How in the hell did you do it?
DM: How does a guy get up every morning and go to work at the Ford plant, and put pieces of parts together? You just do it.

BR: If had never been a motorcycle racer, what do you think you would have chosen as a career?
DM: Motorcycle mechanic. If not in the motorcycle trade, then I think a cowboy. My father worked on a ranch most of his life.

BR: Most embarrassing moment on a race track?
DM: No. I can’t come up with an answer for that one.

BR: Did you ever get into any fights with your fellow racers?
DM: No. The racers in general policed themselves back then. We didn’t go to a referee, and we didn’t fight in the pits. If we did fight it was wherever it was convenient, but out of the public eye. I never had a confrontation on the race track that led to a fight. If a guy was not a very good rider, and he didn’t leave other people room and he made things hazardous, he found it very tough to race. You’d watch the other riders ride, and if they rode a certain way, you rode against them the way they rode. If they rode clean and right, you rode right with them.

BR: In dirt track and road racing you would cross over handlebars at over 100mph. That requires trust in your fellow racers. Is there one racer that you trusted the most?
DM: No. As a group we all had to trust each other equally on the track. You could always trust the top guys. There was always the local guy who hadn’t caught on to what it was all about who you might have to deal with. The top guys were very respectful of each other, because we held each others’ lives in our hands, actually.

BR: You raced Daytona when it was still a beach race. What was it like racing on the paved back road and then hitting the sand beach with the tide coming in? That was really the first Super Motard race!
DM: In the ’50s an AMA road race didn’t necessarily mean that the road was paved. The first two years at Dodge City used paved straights and dirt turns on an airfield. The last race there was a street circuit on an abandoned military housing project. The course went four blocks down the main street and turned left on Elm Street, and one block to Sage Street and then turned right. I thought racing on the street was really cool.
The Laconia road race was run through the paved roads in a park. There were 25,000 fans sitting on the park hillsides watching the racing. One year Jody Nicholas and George Roeder had a really good race – they were side by side for most of the race. Jody fell on the last corner before the white flag, and picked up the bike without killing the motor and caught and passed George for the win. I liked racing on that type of street courses better than the big professional circuits.
Daytona was North on the beach and South on a paved highway. You never got to practice at Daytona. You just lined up and raced. The sand corners got rutted and deep, just like a motocross. The pavement was slightly downhill the last 3/4-mile and we saw speeds of 130-plus even back then. The pavement was so rough you would be black and blue from the pounding. The first year I rode Daytona was 1955. We had road race bikes with clip-ons, and half way through the race I fell and got it back up again and finished the race in seventh place. The next year we were like the Harleys, and had two sets of handlebars. The clip-ons for the straightaways and dirt track bars for the corners. That made us much more competitive.

BR: Best moment in your life so far?
DM: Waking up one morning four years ago and being alive. Gordy Ochs and I have both survived throat cancer. So many people have gone through so much more than I have that I hate to talk about it. I was very fortunate in that I had a really good surgeon, and support from my wife after the surgery. She saved my life every day for a month. It’s just another unpleasant adventure in life. It’s pretty interesting to spend a few months not knowing whether you’re going to make it, and you make it.

BR: Best motorcycle that you ever raced?
DM: Probably the BSA Goldstar. It really is a three way tie between the Goldstar, the G50 Matchless and the BSA Rocket 3. It’s just that the Rocket 3 wasn’t adaptable for anything but road racing, but it was a great bike to race.

BR: Didn’t you race factory Ossas?
DM: Not factory Ossas. I worked for John Taylor on the Yankee 500 project when he was the Ossa importer. John sponsored me on Ossas when motocross first started.

BR: Tell us about your involvement with the Yankee twin cylinder two stroke 500 bike?
DM: I raced for John Taylor in the early ’60s at Laconia in the Lightweight race on a little 197 Bultaco and won, and that started a friendship. A few years later it was John’s desire to build an American motorcycle. He traveled to Europe, and found the Ossa factory in Spain willing to build a motor to his specifications. My involvement was to be on the development of the chassis. At the time the bike was designed, the lightest 500 dirt bike around was a 500 Triumph twin. There were no lightweight big bikes back then, so developing it was a reasonable idea. By the time the project was finished the Ossa factory was two years late on the delivery of the engine, and by then things had changed and there were now lightweight dirt bikes available. At that time the Yankee Twin project changed the emphasis to a dual purpose bike/police bike/road bike. It was a real interesting project, but didn’t have enough capital to keep things going.

BR: Didn’t you race at the Portland Mile race up here in the Northwest for a long time?
DM: It was a great race track and was first cousins with Bay Meadows track in the San Francisco area, which was the ultimate mile race track in the 1950s on the west coast. Portland Meadows, while being second in stature, was still a big deal.

BR: Tell me about your Matchless G50 being banned by the AMA for the Daytona 200 when you were the odds on favorite to win that year?
DM: That’s a pretty complicated thing that would be hard to answer.

BR: I’ve got time, and there is a lot of tape in this machine. And I’m sure that the readers would love to hear how you were BANNED.
DM: The Indian motorcycle company was part of the AMA at that time, and its representative was Jimmy Hill. He presented the Matchless for classification, as were all other bikes – 25 roadworthy bikes were approved. Racing parts were also approved in the same way that Harley and Triumph got them approved. They approved a better front brake and a different frame for competition.
Jimmy Hill got all those things approved for the G50 by the AMA. So a basic Matchless G50 with a couple of extra parts was approved to race legally, just as a racing Harley ‘K’ model was approved after mods to its road model, as was the Triumph with its racing parts. I raced it for a complete year with these changes that had been improved by the AMA, and then the Indian Motorcycle Company went bankrupt and had no more representation in the AMA.
Then Rod Coates from the Triumph Company announced that the Matchless G50 had never been approved in that form, and we couldn’t continue to race it. I had already put in a season racing on it, as had Ralph White and others. I was young and naive to think I could bring that to court and win. I tried to hire some attorneys in Florida, and found out that everyone there worked for Bill France, the owner of Daytona Speedway.
I didn’t get to road race it, but I got to dirt track it because there were different rules for dirt track and road race homologation. I was able to win the Ascot TT on the G50, which gave me the number one plate. Harley Davidson gave me no problems, it was Triumph at that time that gave me the problems. It was all political.

BR: You have never backed away from controversy if you felt that you were in the right?
DM: I always tried to keep it that way.

BR: Hard tail vs. rear suspension. Which did you like the best?
DM: Mert Lawwill and I came out in the same year with a special dirt track frame with rear suspension. I had built a special rigid frame for the Matchless G50, and the AMA banned that in the middle of the season so I was left with nothing but the road race frame with the swing arm and suspension to dirt track on, and it worked well. The reason we held onto rigid frames for so long was the difference between being competitive with the Harleys was so small that an extra 10 pounds for the swing arm and suspension would have tipped the scales. Even an extra inch of wheelbase was bad. The rules at that time didn’t allow for special built frames. When the rules finally did change so we could build our own frames, I did so. I built a light, short wheelbased, swing arm frame that was immediately superior to a rigid frame. At the same time Mert Lawwill was working on a swing arm frame. We were the only two who campaigned the swing arm frames that first year.

BR: You and Mert share the same make-it-better attitude by designing your own frames over the racing years and beyond.
DM: During most of my racing career you couldn’t make enough money racing, so you had to work during the winter. I always worked at a motorcycle shop as a mechanic, and frame repairing and straightening was something I did. The combination of my racing and frame work led to frame designing quite early in my career. I consider myself very fortunate to understand how everything worked. I believe that it is in only the last eight to 10 years that the industry has found out what it is all about.

BR: I remember you especially for the frames you built for the Yamaha 500TT.
DM: That was actually after the frames I built for the BSA B50. The name of my company was DMS, or Dick Mann Specialty, which included promoting races or building frames or whatever.

BR: Was there ever one great rival – someone that made you think ‘ I just got to beat this guy no matter what’?
DM: No. It seemed like every year or two there was a new group of riders that came to the forefront. So you were always just out of the limelight of winning and being the hero, and that didn’t bother me at all. I thought it was a great advantage to be the underdog. From day one I was never mad that someone was better than I was, and that actually helped me a bunch.

BR: Did you ever make any money racing?
DM: Not until the very end. I did okay in 1971. There were a few years I considered myself very successful if I could make as much money as my friend who’s a plumber. That was a benchmark I usually fell short of. I absolutely had no credit. I never bought anything on time except for a house. Everything I bought was with cash, because I was afraid of being in the position of not making payments. So I paid everything in cash.

BR: What did your kids think of you racing? Jeez, we haven’t seen dad for months!
DM: I was gone a lot. They handled it real well. To them racing was ho-hum. They never wanted to be motorcycle racers. It’s usually that way. Most of the people I know, their fathers didn’t race motorcycles. Some of them did, but it was rare. The racers today seem to have a father who wanted to, but never did.

BR: As your racing career was ending there was another Northern Californian whose star was just ascending, Kenny Roberts. Your personalities seem quite different. Can you describe Kenny’s personality? DM: He's an absolute individual. You can’t compare him to other people. Nothing is the same. Trying to compare him to other people is a lost conversation. If you had to describe Kenny Roberts you would have to say he’s a lot like Kenny Roberts, because there is nothing preceding him to set a standard. Kenny is extremely talented, extremely energetic, extremely interested. He learned to make frames, he learned how to weld aluminum. He was his own worst enemy in that nothing was ever good enough for him. He just couldn’t be number one, he had to win every event. It just wasn’t good enough to know that nobody could ever be number one again as long as he raced. He had to win every race, every week. If he didn't win then there was a problem, and he had to solve it by next week. That was his downfall, because that can’t happen.

BR: Did anybody ever tell you that you were the American racing rebel by doing things the way you wanted, when you wanted it? That you were the individual against the big machines of Harley and V-Twins. That you set a standard that of letting your actions speak for themselves? DM: No! I didn’t set any standards. Looking back at the records, books and articles just don’t show you how it really was. I was constantly surrounded, from year to year and time to time, by other racers who were above my ability and sometimes had better motorcycles. It was part of being a racer to know that’s the way it was, and not let that put you off from what you came to do. I was willing to accept that, where other people just couldn’t, and it ruined their career.
I always thought my specialty was to finish ahead of people who were better than I was. It actually worked sometimes. If it didn’t, it wasn’t a big thing. Whatever I did at the races, there was always somebody that would outshine you at road racing, or dirt track, or TT. There was always somebody bigger and better than me. But I would not accept that and let that ruin my desire to finish ahead of him no matter how good he was. I never thought I would beat somebody because I was better than them, I finished ahead of them because I did something better than them. I was right in not accepting my station in life as far as natural ability went. And that helped me. Not that I didn’t have confidence. You just have to accept things and try to make it better.

BR: I have never met a racer without a good sense of ego about them. You have to have some ego, Dick?
DM: Yeah. My ego came from confidence, and not from aspirations.

BR: Did you caravan with other racers around the circuit, or did you head off alone? DM: Once we all got back on the circuit everybody would go from one race to the next race, and so naturally there was a lot of caravanning going on. Because of the reliability of our equipment back then it was always safer to travel in a group if you could.

BR: A few racers from the past have told stories about when there was no money left in the pocket, doing a gas ’n’ dash on the rare occasion. Got any stories you would like to tell us about? DM: A Mormon kid didn’t do that.

BR: The other stories are always, “I was so broke when I got to the race track that I…” What are your tales of I was so broke that?
DM: I have a couple of stories where I went to a race and had money. All the rest of the stories about arriving at the track with no money are true. As soon as I would make money I would send it home, so I never had any in my pocket. It was a great incentive to race well and finish in the money.

BR: Is there any racer in the last 100 years that you didn’t have a chance to race against, but would have liked to? DM: If I had the ability I would have loved to race against any of the motocross riders from what they call the Golden Era, in the late ’50s and early ’60s. People like Jeff Smith, Bill Nilsson, Rolf Tibblin, Sten Lundin and John Draper, who was one of my heroes because he was one of the small motocross riders from the ’50s when the rest of the racers were pretty big guys to wrestle around those four-strokes. I would have loved to have the ability to race against those guys.

BR: I have a videotape of the early ’50s MX Des Nations, and those guys were fast even compared to modern day riders and their bikes. Take away the triple jumps and today’s racers would have a hard time beating those guys in their prime.
DM: Men were men in those days. That’s my feeling. The late ’50s and early ’60s were rightfully named as the Golden Era of motor sports by all types of people in all types of sports, whether in cars, or on motorcycles. There was Dan Gurney, AJ Foyt, Mario Andretti, Stirling Moss, John Surtees and Mike Hailwood, to name just a few. AJ was a rookie in car racing the same year I was a rookie in motorcycle racing. They were all very, very talented, but drove within their limits. You see car guys now and they drive over their limits, because they are so protected. The big dirt track cars back then had no trick seatbelts, and no protection such as roll bars. They seldom crashed because the outcome was death or crippling injuries. They drove within their limits, and that is the hardest thing to do when racing. Their limits were so high, though. I got a word of advice from a 78-year-old who was around in 1906, when they started racing, and he told me, “You’ve got to go as fast as you can go, but no faster.” That is the most difficult thing to do.

BR: America has always been different to Europe. Where we have dirt track, they have Grand Prix. Where we have fairground racing, they have racing circuits. Where they have a long history and many different cultures, we have a short history and basically one culture and language. Did you guys ever feel secondary to the European elite? DM: Oh yeah. When we went to the first Trans Atlantic Cup matches in England in 1970, it was a real eye opener for the Americans and the Europeans. We had no idea we were competitive, and neither did they.

BR: Joe Leonard, Brad Lackey, Kenny Roberts and many more motorcycle champions came from Northern California. You have the reputation for being slightly different to the rest of the country – being unique, like nobody else. Is there something in the water?
DM: There is a long list of motorcycle greats from this area. I learned from the pre WWII era riders like Sam Arena and Boots Curtis, who were the top riders in the ’30s. Those riders from the Northwest set the standards for the young guys to surpass. We inherited a lot of those individual qualities that we have passed along to the modern day riders.

**BR: How did the film On Any Sunday, by Bruce Brown, change the motorcycle world?
DM: Bruce Brown is like Roberts, in that he cannot be described, because nobody preceded him. His work is not like anybody else’s. Bruce brought the stature of our sport up 100 notches. The motorcycle sport and industry is eternally indebted to him for making the movie. He’s just a great guy. He’s a good friend of mine now, and we see him often. The stature of everybody who raced motorcycles changed after that film. We were no longer seen in the same light, and it helped elevate motorcycle racing immediately.

BR: You have been involved with the AHMRA since 1987. Why all the hard work? DM: It started out as a privately owned operation, and then in 1990 Jeff Smith took over and it became a member owned organization. I really started out before that in 1984, at dirt bike events, with exhibitions of the bikes from the 1950s and ’60s. I would have an event with dirt track, motocross, hill climb and trials exhibitions and a swap meet, and we would get some of the past superstars of racing and be interviewed. We had such a great time with it. The problem was that each one of the segments of the event got so popular that I had to quit doing the rally, and concentrate on each individual aspect of the event. It was just a movement that got started in 1984, and has kept growing since.

BR: Are you at all surprised how popular vintage MX and road racing has become since its start? DM: Not at all. I’m not surprised a bit. We never started it because the bikes were old and obsolete, as some people think. The whole idea of AHMRA MX and road racing in the beginning was to try capture a certain time frame in racing, and make it stand still and never change. That’s much more difficult than it sounds. We’re not recreating history, like people think. If we recreated history then every bike we raced would be obsolete for the second time in two years. We took a certain time frame of motocross when suspension didn’t dominate the sport. So we put a limiter on rear travel at four inches at the rear, and seven inches at the front. We are trying to save that era of racing, before long travel, as long as we can. Because the lack of suspension dictates a different style, one that is missing from modern racing.

BR: So what are you doing today to keep busy? DM: I can’t really call it a business. More of a passion. I enjoy being able to do something that I don't have to deal with customers and the retail aspect of a business. I was never comfortable in those situations. I build special bikes, and each one is unique. When the guy buys it he’s going to go use it, and not look at it. I can’t call it a restoration. What I do is recreate bikes that are AHMRA racing legal. The bikes are better than they were originally for racing. What I do is give everyone a bike that the best riders from the best factories had at that time. Now we’re all able to have one to race.

BR: Skip Van Leeuwen asked me to ask you about Dick Dorrestyn.
DM: Dick was one of the young group of riders from Richmond, California, when I was about 16 or 18. He was about 14, a couple of years younger than I was, and he would steal his brother's Mustang motorcycle while he was stationed in Korea.
I forgot that most people don’t know what a Mustang is. It was a motorcycle made in Pasadena, California, in the ’50s and ’60s, and it had a big side valve engine inside a tiny little chassis the company built, and it had, I think, 12-inch wheels. It looked like a minibike, but it was really fast. He was probably one of the most talented racers I ever knew. He didn’t like road racing, but he still did it very well. He was a fantastic TT rider. Even the TT greats like Eddie Mulder and Skip Van Leeuwen tipped their hats to Dorrestyn. Mulder, Van Leeuwen and the group of TT riders from the ’60s and ’70s were some really good guys, and they would all say that Dorrestyn was the best. We had two rival motorcycle camps in Richmond, California, in those days. Dick rode for the Triumph dealer and I worked for the BSA dealer, and we were friendly rivals.
As soon as Dick was old enough to lie about his age, when he was about 16, he signed up for his competition card and he started racing in the professional class. As a novice he was one of the fastest riders at the 1/4 mile Belmont race track against the top riders like Joe Leonard, and all the top racers in the bay area. Dick was a Triumph rider as a novice and junior, and by the time he graduated to the expert ranks he was fully sponsored by Johnson Motors.
The Triumphs weren’t dominating at that time, but Dick did very well, especially on the 1/4 mile tracks. Dick had rheumatic fever at a very early age, and the Triumph people took away his motorcycles and wrote him off. Dick got a little better, and I had an extra BSA single and so we went back east together, and he was recovering and impressed everybody who saw him with his ability and personality. That’s how I first brought him down to Ascot, riding my BSA.

BR: Was that Romantic fever? DM: No. It's Rheumatic fever, and it keeps you in bed a lot, but usually at night.

BR: So does Romantic fever.

BR: What part did you have in the development of the Bell Star helmet? DM: Nothing. The project designer was Al Gunter, when he worked for Bell Helmets. I didn’t do anything except test some helmets for them. Al Gunter, Neil Keen and I were some of the first motorcycle racers wearing and testing the Star helmets. I was just the rider making suggestions or comments on the helmet, and Al was the designer. The professional racers welcomed the new helmet, but were concerned about the visibility and the claustrophobic nature of the full-faced helmet. I voiced my opinion on these two subjects to Al. They then started opening the window of the face mask bigger, and that helped. I came up with a flip-up shield on my helmet that nobody else had. I made mine out of fiberglass, that you had to change a plastic lens in. I used that for years. In the beginning Bell refused to put that option on its helmets. Later it came up with a full plastic flip-up shield.

BR: This is a question from Mike Sullivan. At the 1970 Castle Rock TT did you purposely put down David Aldana because he was taunting you? DM: No. For one thing he wasn’t taunting me. When he hit me four times in four laps at the beginning of the race that wasn’t taunting me, that was running into me. David and I had a lead on the rest of the field from early on, and rather than have a confrontation with him for the next 21 laps I just let him pass me, and then followed him. The only way to describe it was near the end I made David make a decision. Every time we came to the end of the straightaway, no matter when I would shut off, he would shut off later, because that was Aldana. I started shutting it off in plenty of time and he always made it into the corner by shutting it off after I did. About the 23rd or so lap I didn’t shut it off, and so naturally Aldana didn’t shut it off and he went through the fence. I didn’t touch him. All I did was make him make a decision. I will admit I knew what decision he would make.

BR: Talk to me about the legendary announcer Roxy Rockwood? DM: He was an icon in his era. He was one of the best announcers. He had a computer-like mind and he could pull statistics off the top of his head. He never got excited announcing. He wasn’t a modern-day screamer. Dave Despain is a take-off of Roxy in terms of style and substance. Roxy was a strange guy, though. For a while he believed he was the person who made racing in America happen. That might have been a little ambitious of him, but other than that he was a great announcer.

BR: Was there one thing you would have done differently in your racing career? DM: No. That’s why I wasn’t very successful, because I did what I wanted to do. Basically I did things the way I wanted to, and no complaints. Maybe my decisions are not what other people would do, and maybe I would have been more successful, although I don’t think so. I don’t have any regrets, and I would probably do everything the way that I did.

BR: When you were traveling by yourself back and forth across the country, before the advent of cassettes, CDs, in car movie DVDs and most radio stations, what did you do to pass the time? DM: I mentally worked on my motorcycle. All I did was go over in my mind – for hours and hours and miles and miles – the cause and effect problems on the motorcycle that you can do in your mind. Then the first chance I got I would do it physically. I would think about chassis dimensions or the clearance of pistons, and when I would stop driving I would go do the actual work with my hands. Occasionally I would travel with people, but I did just as well by myself. Two people have different ideas, wants and needs, and it worked out just as well to travel alone.

BR: Another question from Van Leeuwen. Tell me about your only win in 1963 at the Ascot TT on the way to your first National Championship, when you beat Harley racer George Roeder by one single point. Don’t forget the part about having your groin ripped open in an east coast race before this, and picking off rider by rider.
DM: Skip Van Leeuwen remembers this race because he would have probably won it if his bike hadn’t blown up. It was one of those nights that was perfect for the Matchless. It wasn’t too slippery and it wasn’t too sticky. It was a 50-lapper, so it took a long time to work by those guys. And they were a bunch of great TT racers. The G50 was working perfectly, and things happened to go right for me. Groin is a pleasant word. What happened was that I fell at a 1/2 mile, and you know the position, with your leg stretched out. And as I went down the riders behind me hit me square in the ass. The rip wasn’t in the groin, it was much lower than that. It tore me all up the bottom, all the way from my ass to my scrotum with a big enough rip that the parts were hanging out. I was in the hospital, and after two days there I was complaining of back pain. They did a trick x-ray and found I had a broken vertebrae in my back. I had already been walking around the hospital at that point, and the doctors were now giving me a scenario of being in a body cast for weeks. So I called my friend Bill Tuman and told him the circumstances, and he came over and spirited me away and put me on an airplane and sent me home. After a week of recovering I felt I could go down to Ascot and ride. I still had a big open wound down there, so I padded that up with some female appliances and it worked out okay.

BR: You dirt track guys are nuts! DM: Nobody ever accused of us playing with a full deck.

BR: After the movie On Any Sunday was released, were you recognized more?
DM:** I didn’t notice too much. The stars of the movie were Mert and Malcolm. A few years later, when I went to Europe, I was amazed that hundreds of people knew me. It was all from that movie. On Any Sunday played someplace every night for 35 years, and is probably playing right now. It had a bigger impact on the Europeans than it did on the American fans. I was surprised about that. The American motorcycle racing fans in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s were a tremendously dedicated group of fans. They were rabid race fans, and they basically knew it all before the movie came out. The movie introduced thousands and millions of new fans, but the people I came in contact with already knew what was going on. It made a big difference with people because Steve McQueen was in it.

For the full history of Dick Mann you must get the book Mann of His Time, written by Ed Youngblood. This interview is just a taste of the real Mann. For the full course you can visit Ed’s site at www.motohistory.net to order the book for $24.95.