Gordy Ochs
By Shawn McDonald
Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
Birth date: August 1, 1942
Parents: Jim and Laverne
Current marriage: Tina
Children: Terri age 44, Mark age 38, Craig age 36, Cathy age 33 and Jim age 31
Occupation: Retired Seattle firefighter
Bench Racer: How did you get to be a fireman?
Gordy Ochs: I was a stone sawyer down in Portland and a guy offered me a job in Seattle for $100 more a month, which was how much rent cost in those days. That was an offer I couldn’t turn down at the age of 21. I quickly found out I didn't like working for the guy who hired me, and I was ready to move back to Portland when one of my friends told me that Seattle was looking for firemen. I’d always thought about being a fireman so I applied, and took the test a few months later and got the job.
BR: How did you start riding at the advanced age of 24?
GO: In 1964 a guy at the fire station brought in a step-through Honda he was working on, and I asked him if I could ride it. I rode it up and down the street, and came back and told him, "I would like to do this." A couple of weeks later I went down to Dewey’s Cycle and bought a 175cc BSA Bantam D7 two-stroke. I rode that for about two months until I totally trashed it. I then went down to Tom’s Cycle in Seattle, and test rode a 1966 Bultaco 250 Metisse Pursang. I rode it up and down the street, and it scared the hell out of me. That’s when I decided to go racing. I bought the bike, of course. I was married at that point, and had two kids. My wife at that time said if that’s what you want to do, okay. So within a few months of never having ridden a motorcycle, I was now racing.
BR: Like most people in the 1960s, did you start out dirt track racing?
GO: Everything in those days was a rough scrambles race, motocross without the jumps, on taped-off grass fields in which you had heats and main races. If you went professional, then you became a dirt tracker. In 1967 I decided to go dirt tracking and became an AMA Novice, so I could only ride a 250cc bike. I got enough points to move up to the Amateur class the next year, in which I could ride a big-motored Triumph bike.
I went out and I could not ride that Triumph to save my soul. I fell down and twisted my knee to the point I had to have a knee operation.
I was bound and determined the next year to take that 650cc Triumph and succeed. I finished that year third in the State, and 14th in the nation in TT points. Because of my work schedule, being a fireman, I missed about a third of the races. The following year I qualified for the Expert class and did fairly well in that. I made a little bit of money over the next few years.
BR: Did the Seattle Fire Department cut you any scheduling slack because of your racing?
GO: I was always warned, "Don’t get hurt. Don’t get hurt." I broke my collarbone one night at Graham Speedway, and my battalion Chief told me, "Don’t let it happen again or you will pay the consequences. I don’t think being a fireman and being a motorcycle racer are compatible." I told him, "This is a sport just like any other sport, and until I’m actually prohibited from it, and everybody else is prohibited from their sports, I’m not giving it up."
I broke my leg a few months after that. I was a driver at that time, and when I came back after the leg had healed they took away my driving privileges and sent me to the far regions of the district, into purgatory. So I decided that I would work in the far reaches of the civilized world for the rest of my career, but I wouldn’t give up racing.
That Chief eventually retired, and the new Chief wanted me back in town. I told him I’d come back if he gave me Sundays off, so I could go and race. They agreed, and the new schedule gave a few more Sundays off to go racing.
BR: Who was the best rider ever?
GO: There is no doubt that in my time it was Dick Mann. You can't dispute the facts that he won in motocross, 1/2 mile, short track, mile, TT and road races. He was the all-round motorcycle racer who even competed in ISDT events. There may have been others who were better at one type of racing, but none who were good at all types of racing.
BR: In 1972 you were 30 years old, and the racers you were competing against in the Pro ranks in MX were 18-year-old Jim Pomeroy and 16-year-olds Rick Poulin, Doug Raines, Rick McCaffery, Dan Zlock, Rick Burgett, Chuck Sun and Buck Murphy. Hell! We were all 16 back then. What was it like racing against all these snot-nosed teenagers?
GO: We have to put things into perspective first. I was the state scrambles champion in 1969 and 1970, and all the Washington guys had to go through me first. Rick Burgett and Chuck Sun had to do the same thing, and go through Bob Leach and Bill Cook in Oregon. When I was coming up I had to first go through Tony Shotts and Emil Ahola. I never paid a lot of attention to these young guys until they started challenging me. They were all fast, but they didn’t finish a lot so I kept on winning. As they matured and started winning they became the new blood replacing the old blood, just as I had. We know of Jimmy’s accomplishments, Poulin’s career was cut short because of his wrist injury and Burgett and Sun went on to become National Champions. We produced some really good motocross riders from the northwest.
BR: When did you first run into Pomeroy?
GO: The first time I ever saw Jimmy was at a race over at Moses Lake, Washington, in the sand dunes. They took a road grader and pushed the snow to the side. He was fast. The first I saw of him on the green side of the state [Washington state is split in two sections by the Cascade mountain range, with the western side next to the Pacific ocean being green and perfect for growing trees, moss and Microsoft. The eastern side is shadowed by the mountains and is dryer, hotter and flatter, and perfect for growing wheat, apples and wine grapes] was when he was riding Bultacos for Don Rhodes Motorcycles in Auburn, WA. He was still extremely fast, but he would break the bike or win. They were always working on the bike. Jimmy was racing the Bultaco in Idaho and it broke down, so he borrowed Dick Poulin’s Maico and won the race. (Dick was Rick’s dad, and a Maico importer). Don got mad about this and took away his ride. I heard about that and told my sponsor, Terry Saxlund, about Jimmy’s problem and said it would be great if we could bring him over to race with us. So Terry gave him a call.
I liked Jimmy. He was a tremendously likeable kid, and still is. We made up a strong team and for at least six months we finished in the top two positions in every race we entered. It was a tremendous streak.
I took Jimmy down to Hangtown, California, the last time it was held in Plymouth. Jimmy led all three motos but he lost a seat and broke a wheel, and I finished up in third overall against top national riders. On the way home Jimmy kept telling me, "I could have won, I could have won if I didn’t have all those problems." I said to him, "Jimmy, when you get out of school next week it is the start of the Golden State Series. Why don’t you talk to Terry Saxlund and run that Golden State Series? It would be good for you." Jimmy left that following Thursday, and I didn’t see him again until after he had won the Spanish Grand Prix. The University Honda/ Bultaco/ CZ/ Kawasaki team was broken up from then on.
He did so well in the Golden State Series that they sent him back East to Unadilla, and from there he went to Spain for a one-off ride. About a month later a vanilla envelope arrived at my home with a picture of Jimmy in his classic cross-up, with the words "To my teacher and good friend Gordy." It shows how down-to-earth and what a good guy Jimmy Pomeroy is.
BR: You were about the same age as Oregonian Bill Cook. Did you race against him much?
GO: I did race against Bill Cook a whole bunch. In my opinion he was one of the steadiest and finest racers ever to come out of the Northwest. He was very tough, smooth and fast. You could talk to Burgett and Sun, and they would say the same thing. They had to work their way past Bob Leach and Bill Cook first, before making it to the top.
BR: What was your favorite Northwest motocross track?
GO: Without a doubt it would be the Puyallup Raceway Park. When I was racing it was probably one of the finest MX tracks in the United States, and I had raced Unadilla, Carlsbad, Saddleback, and most of the important tracks at the time. It had some high speed which I liked, it had some jumps, it had some whoops and it had some sandy corners. It had a little bit of everything for a great track. The old Washougal track was outstanding and fun.
Startup was also a fun track, and I raced the Inter-Am there in 1969. I was riding a 1969 360 Bultaco Bandito, and it was so muddy that it was like riding in a giant Slurpee. It was so cold that after one moto I pulled off to the side and stuck my hands on the cylinder to warm them up, and Ake Jonsson pulled up right beside me and stopped the motor and also put his hands on the motor to warm up. It was literally a race of attrition, of who could actually finish.
Everybody tells the story of how much faster the Europeans were compared to the Americans at that race, but the race at which you really saw the difference was the next week in Salem, Oregon. Four-time 250cc World Motocross Champion Torsten Hallman lapped while hollering at me in his native language, most likely to get the hell out of his way. They were just that much faster than we were. They were there for a second, and then gone.
BR: Tell us a Buck Murphy story?
GO: I talked Buck into going with me to an Inter-Am in St Louis along with another local hot shot, Bill Snoey. We got into Casper, Wyoming and they wanted to eat. I think Buck ordered one of everything on the menu, and came out with two full bags of food. Buck was about as thin as a water pipe back then, and ate like a horse. That was back when they gave everybody nicknames like ‘Lumberjack’ Burgett and ‘Too Tall’ Mike Bell. After Buck was done eating all that food we were driving across the country, always rolling the windows up and down because he farted all the time. I told Buck that I had a perfect nickname for him. So I said your name is ‘Butt Stink’ Buck Murphy. Other than that, Buck was a great traveling companion.
Jim Pomeroy set the standards. There was no doubt that Ricky Poulin was very fast and very smooth. If he hadn’t broken his wrist he would have been right there with Pomeroy, Burgett and Sun.
The guy who didn’t accomplish what he should have accomplished was Buck Murphy. He was a big, strong kid who could ride fast. When he rode for Can-Am he was without a doubt the fastest man on the team, and he got the least amount of recognition. His team-mates were Mike Runyard and Jimmy Ellis, and Runyard’s dad ran the team. They favored Ellis. When the Can-Am team was on the track they were like a freight train, with Buck as the engine. I think of all the guys in the northwest he achieved the least for his talent. With a little different luck he could have been up there with anybody.
BR: Tell us about the Clews-Stroka bike you rode?
GO: Terry Saxlund and his motorcycle store had taken on the Clews brand to sell and I was their rider, so I got to race the bike. [The Alan Clews designed bike was made by modifying the standard BSA B50 motor and bike to look and act like the ex-factory BSA MX bikes – Ed]. The bikes were so new that Alan Clews told the dealers to send their riders out on them, and tell him what changes were needed on the bikes. The first thing I noticed was that the foot pegs were mounted on the side cases of the remade BSA B50 motor, and were too far forward. You sat on it like you sat on a chair, which made it very difficult to stand up. I moved the foot pegs back to the frame myself so I could stand up. Clews didn’t want to make the change because he said, "The guys over here in England don’t stand up that much." Clews said he wanted input back, but he really didn’t. The bikes were light for what they were, and they were fun and fast. The only problem was they had a constant loss ignition system, and as soon as you came off the track you had to charge the battery back up. Unfortunately, like all the British bikes back then, they ran great for the first month and then they started breaking. I went through two Clews-Stroka bikes within a year. They cost $2,000 back then, which was almost twice as much as the next European bike and even more so for a Japanese bike. It was a $2,000 rock thrower, my trail riding friend told me.
BR: Any favorite bikes?
GO: I was a Bultaco support rider from 1971 through 1974. When I became a Vet rider in 1979 I stopped riding Bultacos, and got a 360 Honda Mugen MX bike. Honda only made 250cc bikes in 1979, but Mugen was Honda’s official after market manufacturer, and it had a 360cc kit for the Honda CR. It was so fast and handled so well I think that bike would be competitive today, in the hands of a top rider. Three days after I broke my collarbone I won the Vet National on that bike. It was probably the best race bike I have ever owned.
BR: There is a picture of you racing in the snow at Puyallup Raceway in 1972. Now that probably isn’t strange to people in Alaska or Minnesota, but it’s out of this world for people in California or Texas. How was that race?
GO: Gary Bailey was the number one Bultaco rider in 1972, and he came up to race at Puyallup in January. Everybody thought Bailey would win the race at Puyallup. It just happened to snow the night before the race. The next morning they bulldozed as much snow off the track as possible, but there were still tons of spots that were just pure white. To us northwest riders it was just another race.
The gate dropped and I ended up winning with Ricky Poulin, Buck Murphy and Jimmy Pomeroy taking up second through fourth places. Gary Bailey finished in fifth place. Bailey also entered the 125 class, and local Penton racer and fast guy Rick McCaffery beat him there also. They interviewed Bailey after the race and asked him what he thought about the northwest racers, and he just said, "Those guys are nuts!" and that was the end of the interview. I think Bailey went back home with his tail between his legs.
BR: Wasn’t it strange bench racing with all these 16-year-old racers when you were 30 and married with children?
GO: We were competitors first. If I couldn’t beat them, they would have had nothing to do with me. And if they couldn’t beat me, I wouldn’t have talked with them. When we would go out on a road trip to a race I would hang out with the mechanics, where Pomeroy would hang out with Lackey, and Murphy would party with his young friends. I was more of an older brother figure to them, if anything. They were never a threat to me, because I knew I would have my short time in the spotlight and that they were next in line. I wanted them to do well, and helped them as best I could.
BR: You did pretty well at some of the bigger races, like the Trans-Am support and Inter-AMA races.
GO: For a few years I was the highest placed northwest rider in the Support class, which was heavily stocked with national caliber riders like Lars Larson, DeWayne Jones, Tim Hart, Ron Pomeroy, Bryar Holcomb, Tom Rapp, Bill Clements and the Grossi brothers. I raced when I could. I never committed myself completely to racing, because I had a job and a family.
In 1973 Buck Murphy, Ron Pomeroy and I decided to race the entire Inter-AMA Series in the support class, starting off July 1 in Salt Lake City, then the LA Supercross, Lawrence, Kansas, Toledo, Ohio and the US Grand Prix in New Berlin, New York. It took five weeks and I placed seventh in Utah, fourth in LA in front of 30,000 people, eighth in Kansas. I broke my crankshaft in Toledo while running in third. In New York I finished in fifth after the head of Cemoto East (Bultaco) asked me not to ride because he didn’t think the bike would finish the race, and that it would look bad for the company. I told him this was the only time I have been able to race in a pro series, and I was going to race. Against his better judgment he said he would let me ride, and I raced all three motos and finished in fifth overall without breaking the bike. I finished sixth in the entire support series for the Inter-AMA.
BR: You still get to go out and ride today.
GO: About three years ago I started going down to Baja for two weeks on my KTM 520 to ride with friends. It’s the last place you can go and ride a motorcycle like the way you did in the ’60s. You aim for a spot and just ride to it. Two years ago I went riding with Dick Wascher (WASCO) and Big Larry Wescott from the Sea of Cortez across the peninsula to the Pacific Ocean, using a GPS for guidance to cross the mountains because there are no roads. They (who supposedly know) said it was a nine to 10-hour ride, and I told my buddies I would like to try that ride, but we might have to spend the night out there if we got lost.
It wasn’t a good idea for me, because I needed to take my pills and have water for my medical condition, but that never stopped me before. We told the guy where we were staying that we were going over the mountain, and he told us, "You’ll be back tonight. Many people try, and they all come back."
So we took off from San Felipe, and the GPS was telling us where we were, but sometimes we would be stuck in some cactus and boulders and it took us four hours to go five miles. The bikes were overheating, Dick and Larry were running out of water and we had no food. I had enough water, but Dick and Larry had drunk most of theirs. At first we were joking about it. I then told Dick if we didn’t make it we could always kill Larry and eat him. It was a joke at that time, because we didn’t think we would have to spend the night. As time went by it was getting darker and darker, and we still had not got over the top of the mountains. Now it was getting serious, they realized we would actually have to spend the night and they were highly upset about the prospect.
We rode until we couldn’t see any more and just parked the bikes, and slept on the ground. We got up the next morning and had half a bottle of water between the three of us, and finished it off and headed down the mountain towards the GPS Pacific Ocean. Four hours later we came across a little village, where a nice lady gave us some water from her well. We finally made it to our destination at San Ignacio, and we told the hotel/restaurant owner what we had done and he told us, "I know of only 50 people who have ever made it across the mountains. Many people try, and only a very few make it."
We didn’t eat Larry. I’d told Dick we could live forever on Larry, and he said he knew how to dry meat and we could hang him up and even drink his blood. Larry would jokingly reply, "Don’t kill me. Just take an arm!" To which we would tell him that he couldn’t ride without an arm, so we might as well just have a feast!
BR: You raced at the first ever Puyallup MX race on October 18, 1970?
GO: I finished in first at the East/West Challenge race, followed by Doug Munson, Randy Skiver, Jim Pomeroy, Ricky Poulin, Norm Kopp, Mike Welland, Pat Marinacci, Bill Barthrop and Dick Poulin. Two weeks later I won again at Puyallup, and two weeks after that they had the Northwest Scrambles Championships in which Bill Cook won, and I finished in second place. One of my most memorable races was in 1967, in a race in which I finished in second place. A few of us put together a race called the Can-Am Challenge in Aldergrove, British Columbia. We had three 30-minute motos in maybe one of the first motocross races in the country. They had a Grand Prix at the end of the day and I finished third, and those two trophies mean a lot to me.
BR: Is there anything you would have changed in your racing career?
GO: Except for starting out younger. There is no way I would have been able to race without the help of my sponsors, Tom’s Cycle and Terry Saxlund and Jim Tenneson. I am extremely happy with my career, and to be surrounded by such good people who I would have never met if it wasn’t for motorcycles. Even people I have worked with all my life still refer to me as the motorcycle-racing fireman. I actually won the Master (30+) 250 and Open class Police and Fire World MX Championships in 1985, with competitors from 26 countries and around the US.
BR: You have overcome some significant medical problems to still ride today. Do you mind talking about it a little?
GO: As I got older and continued to race I noticed that while I wasn’t getting any slower, I was getting tired earlier and earlier despite my workout program. I broke my back racing, which ended my racing career in 1986, and after I healed up I had a physical and they found out I had cardio myopathy (an enlarged heart) which they told me I had for about 10 years. I retired from the fire department in 1990, and had a heart transplant in 1991. Then because of the immune suppress medications for the heart I got tongue cancer in 1995, even though I never smoked. But because of my lowered immunity, and being a fireman for 26 years and racing motorcycles with all those fumes, something caught up with me. Overall my health is pretty good, I can ride motorcycles down in Baja and go snowmobiling in the winter.
Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
Birth date: August 1, 1942
Parents: Jim and Laverne
Current marriage: Tina
Children: Terri age 44, Mark age 38, Craig age 36, Cathy age 33 and Jim age 31
Occupation: Retired Seattle firefighter
Bench Racer: How did you get to be a fireman?
Gordy Ochs: I was a stone sawyer down in Portland and a guy offered me a job in Seattle for $100 more a month, which was how much rent cost in those days. That was an offer I couldn’t turn down at the age of 21. I quickly found out I didn't like working for the guy who hired me, and I was ready to move back to Portland when one of my friends told me that Seattle was looking for firemen. I’d always thought about being a fireman so I applied, and took the test a few months later and got the job.
BR: How did you start riding at the advanced age of 24?
GO: In 1964 a guy at the fire station brought in a step-through Honda he was working on, and I asked him if I could ride it. I rode it up and down the street, and came back and told him, "I would like to do this." A couple of weeks later I went down to Dewey’s Cycle and bought a 175cc BSA Bantam D7 two-stroke. I rode that for about two months until I totally trashed it. I then went down to Tom’s Cycle in Seattle, and test rode a 1966 Bultaco 250 Metisse Pursang. I rode it up and down the street, and it scared the hell out of me. That’s when I decided to go racing. I bought the bike, of course. I was married at that point, and had two kids. My wife at that time said if that’s what you want to do, okay. So within a few months of never having ridden a motorcycle, I was now racing.
BR: Like most people in the 1960s, did you start out dirt track racing?
GO: Everything in those days was a rough scrambles race, motocross without the jumps, on taped-off grass fields in which you had heats and main races. If you went professional, then you became a dirt tracker. In 1967 I decided to go dirt tracking and became an AMA Novice, so I could only ride a 250cc bike. I got enough points to move up to the Amateur class the next year, in which I could ride a big-motored Triumph bike.
I went out and I could not ride that Triumph to save my soul. I fell down and twisted my knee to the point I had to have a knee operation.
I was bound and determined the next year to take that 650cc Triumph and succeed. I finished that year third in the State, and 14th in the nation in TT points. Because of my work schedule, being a fireman, I missed about a third of the races. The following year I qualified for the Expert class and did fairly well in that. I made a little bit of money over the next few years.
BR: Did the Seattle Fire Department cut you any scheduling slack because of your racing?
GO: I was always warned, "Don’t get hurt. Don’t get hurt." I broke my collarbone one night at Graham Speedway, and my battalion Chief told me, "Don’t let it happen again or you will pay the consequences. I don’t think being a fireman and being a motorcycle racer are compatible." I told him, "This is a sport just like any other sport, and until I’m actually prohibited from it, and everybody else is prohibited from their sports, I’m not giving it up."
I broke my leg a few months after that. I was a driver at that time, and when I came back after the leg had healed they took away my driving privileges and sent me to the far regions of the district, into purgatory. So I decided that I would work in the far reaches of the civilized world for the rest of my career, but I wouldn’t give up racing.
That Chief eventually retired, and the new Chief wanted me back in town. I told him I’d come back if he gave me Sundays off, so I could go and race. They agreed, and the new schedule gave a few more Sundays off to go racing.
BR: Who was the best rider ever?
GO: There is no doubt that in my time it was Dick Mann. You can't dispute the facts that he won in motocross, 1/2 mile, short track, mile, TT and road races. He was the all-round motorcycle racer who even competed in ISDT events. There may have been others who were better at one type of racing, but none who were good at all types of racing.
BR: In 1972 you were 30 years old, and the racers you were competing against in the Pro ranks in MX were 18-year-old Jim Pomeroy and 16-year-olds Rick Poulin, Doug Raines, Rick McCaffery, Dan Zlock, Rick Burgett, Chuck Sun and Buck Murphy. Hell! We were all 16 back then. What was it like racing against all these snot-nosed teenagers?
GO: We have to put things into perspective first. I was the state scrambles champion in 1969 and 1970, and all the Washington guys had to go through me first. Rick Burgett and Chuck Sun had to do the same thing, and go through Bob Leach and Bill Cook in Oregon. When I was coming up I had to first go through Tony Shotts and Emil Ahola. I never paid a lot of attention to these young guys until they started challenging me. They were all fast, but they didn’t finish a lot so I kept on winning. As they matured and started winning they became the new blood replacing the old blood, just as I had. We know of Jimmy’s accomplishments, Poulin’s career was cut short because of his wrist injury and Burgett and Sun went on to become National Champions. We produced some really good motocross riders from the northwest.
BR: When did you first run into Pomeroy?
GO: The first time I ever saw Jimmy was at a race over at Moses Lake, Washington, in the sand dunes. They took a road grader and pushed the snow to the side. He was fast. The first I saw of him on the green side of the state [Washington state is split in two sections by the Cascade mountain range, with the western side next to the Pacific ocean being green and perfect for growing trees, moss and Microsoft. The eastern side is shadowed by the mountains and is dryer, hotter and flatter, and perfect for growing wheat, apples and wine grapes] was when he was riding Bultacos for Don Rhodes Motorcycles in Auburn, WA. He was still extremely fast, but he would break the bike or win. They were always working on the bike. Jimmy was racing the Bultaco in Idaho and it broke down, so he borrowed Dick Poulin’s Maico and won the race. (Dick was Rick’s dad, and a Maico importer). Don got mad about this and took away his ride. I heard about that and told my sponsor, Terry Saxlund, about Jimmy’s problem and said it would be great if we could bring him over to race with us. So Terry gave him a call.
I liked Jimmy. He was a tremendously likeable kid, and still is. We made up a strong team and for at least six months we finished in the top two positions in every race we entered. It was a tremendous streak.
I took Jimmy down to Hangtown, California, the last time it was held in Plymouth. Jimmy led all three motos but he lost a seat and broke a wheel, and I finished up in third overall against top national riders. On the way home Jimmy kept telling me, "I could have won, I could have won if I didn’t have all those problems." I said to him, "Jimmy, when you get out of school next week it is the start of the Golden State Series. Why don’t you talk to Terry Saxlund and run that Golden State Series? It would be good for you." Jimmy left that following Thursday, and I didn’t see him again until after he had won the Spanish Grand Prix. The University Honda/ Bultaco/ CZ/ Kawasaki team was broken up from then on.
He did so well in the Golden State Series that they sent him back East to Unadilla, and from there he went to Spain for a one-off ride. About a month later a vanilla envelope arrived at my home with a picture of Jimmy in his classic cross-up, with the words "To my teacher and good friend Gordy." It shows how down-to-earth and what a good guy Jimmy Pomeroy is.
BR: You were about the same age as Oregonian Bill Cook. Did you race against him much?
GO: I did race against Bill Cook a whole bunch. In my opinion he was one of the steadiest and finest racers ever to come out of the Northwest. He was very tough, smooth and fast. You could talk to Burgett and Sun, and they would say the same thing. They had to work their way past Bob Leach and Bill Cook first, before making it to the top.
BR: What was your favorite Northwest motocross track?
GO: Without a doubt it would be the Puyallup Raceway Park. When I was racing it was probably one of the finest MX tracks in the United States, and I had raced Unadilla, Carlsbad, Saddleback, and most of the important tracks at the time. It had some high speed which I liked, it had some jumps, it had some whoops and it had some sandy corners. It had a little bit of everything for a great track. The old Washougal track was outstanding and fun.
Startup was also a fun track, and I raced the Inter-Am there in 1969. I was riding a 1969 360 Bultaco Bandito, and it was so muddy that it was like riding in a giant Slurpee. It was so cold that after one moto I pulled off to the side and stuck my hands on the cylinder to warm them up, and Ake Jonsson pulled up right beside me and stopped the motor and also put his hands on the motor to warm up. It was literally a race of attrition, of who could actually finish.
Everybody tells the story of how much faster the Europeans were compared to the Americans at that race, but the race at which you really saw the difference was the next week in Salem, Oregon. Four-time 250cc World Motocross Champion Torsten Hallman lapped while hollering at me in his native language, most likely to get the hell out of his way. They were just that much faster than we were. They were there for a second, and then gone.
BR: Tell us a Buck Murphy story?
GO: I talked Buck into going with me to an Inter-Am in St Louis along with another local hot shot, Bill Snoey. We got into Casper, Wyoming and they wanted to eat. I think Buck ordered one of everything on the menu, and came out with two full bags of food. Buck was about as thin as a water pipe back then, and ate like a horse. That was back when they gave everybody nicknames like ‘Lumberjack’ Burgett and ‘Too Tall’ Mike Bell. After Buck was done eating all that food we were driving across the country, always rolling the windows up and down because he farted all the time. I told Buck that I had a perfect nickname for him. So I said your name is ‘Butt Stink’ Buck Murphy. Other than that, Buck was a great traveling companion.
Jim Pomeroy set the standards. There was no doubt that Ricky Poulin was very fast and very smooth. If he hadn’t broken his wrist he would have been right there with Pomeroy, Burgett and Sun.
The guy who didn’t accomplish what he should have accomplished was Buck Murphy. He was a big, strong kid who could ride fast. When he rode for Can-Am he was without a doubt the fastest man on the team, and he got the least amount of recognition. His team-mates were Mike Runyard and Jimmy Ellis, and Runyard’s dad ran the team. They favored Ellis. When the Can-Am team was on the track they were like a freight train, with Buck as the engine. I think of all the guys in the northwest he achieved the least for his talent. With a little different luck he could have been up there with anybody.
BR: Tell us about the Clews-Stroka bike you rode?
GO: Terry Saxlund and his motorcycle store had taken on the Clews brand to sell and I was their rider, so I got to race the bike. [The Alan Clews designed bike was made by modifying the standard BSA B50 motor and bike to look and act like the ex-factory BSA MX bikes – Ed]. The bikes were so new that Alan Clews told the dealers to send their riders out on them, and tell him what changes were needed on the bikes. The first thing I noticed was that the foot pegs were mounted on the side cases of the remade BSA B50 motor, and were too far forward. You sat on it like you sat on a chair, which made it very difficult to stand up. I moved the foot pegs back to the frame myself so I could stand up. Clews didn’t want to make the change because he said, "The guys over here in England don’t stand up that much." Clews said he wanted input back, but he really didn’t. The bikes were light for what they were, and they were fun and fast. The only problem was they had a constant loss ignition system, and as soon as you came off the track you had to charge the battery back up. Unfortunately, like all the British bikes back then, they ran great for the first month and then they started breaking. I went through two Clews-Stroka bikes within a year. They cost $2,000 back then, which was almost twice as much as the next European bike and even more so for a Japanese bike. It was a $2,000 rock thrower, my trail riding friend told me.
BR: Any favorite bikes?
GO: I was a Bultaco support rider from 1971 through 1974. When I became a Vet rider in 1979 I stopped riding Bultacos, and got a 360 Honda Mugen MX bike. Honda only made 250cc bikes in 1979, but Mugen was Honda’s official after market manufacturer, and it had a 360cc kit for the Honda CR. It was so fast and handled so well I think that bike would be competitive today, in the hands of a top rider. Three days after I broke my collarbone I won the Vet National on that bike. It was probably the best race bike I have ever owned.
BR: There is a picture of you racing in the snow at Puyallup Raceway in 1972. Now that probably isn’t strange to people in Alaska or Minnesota, but it’s out of this world for people in California or Texas. How was that race?
GO: Gary Bailey was the number one Bultaco rider in 1972, and he came up to race at Puyallup in January. Everybody thought Bailey would win the race at Puyallup. It just happened to snow the night before the race. The next morning they bulldozed as much snow off the track as possible, but there were still tons of spots that were just pure white. To us northwest riders it was just another race.
The gate dropped and I ended up winning with Ricky Poulin, Buck Murphy and Jimmy Pomeroy taking up second through fourth places. Gary Bailey finished in fifth place. Bailey also entered the 125 class, and local Penton racer and fast guy Rick McCaffery beat him there also. They interviewed Bailey after the race and asked him what he thought about the northwest racers, and he just said, "Those guys are nuts!" and that was the end of the interview. I think Bailey went back home with his tail between his legs.
BR: Wasn’t it strange bench racing with all these 16-year-old racers when you were 30 and married with children?
GO: We were competitors first. If I couldn’t beat them, they would have had nothing to do with me. And if they couldn’t beat me, I wouldn’t have talked with them. When we would go out on a road trip to a race I would hang out with the mechanics, where Pomeroy would hang out with Lackey, and Murphy would party with his young friends. I was more of an older brother figure to them, if anything. They were never a threat to me, because I knew I would have my short time in the spotlight and that they were next in line. I wanted them to do well, and helped them as best I could.
BR: You did pretty well at some of the bigger races, like the Trans-Am support and Inter-AMA races.
GO: For a few years I was the highest placed northwest rider in the Support class, which was heavily stocked with national caliber riders like Lars Larson, DeWayne Jones, Tim Hart, Ron Pomeroy, Bryar Holcomb, Tom Rapp, Bill Clements and the Grossi brothers. I raced when I could. I never committed myself completely to racing, because I had a job and a family.
In 1973 Buck Murphy, Ron Pomeroy and I decided to race the entire Inter-AMA Series in the support class, starting off July 1 in Salt Lake City, then the LA Supercross, Lawrence, Kansas, Toledo, Ohio and the US Grand Prix in New Berlin, New York. It took five weeks and I placed seventh in Utah, fourth in LA in front of 30,000 people, eighth in Kansas. I broke my crankshaft in Toledo while running in third. In New York I finished in fifth after the head of Cemoto East (Bultaco) asked me not to ride because he didn’t think the bike would finish the race, and that it would look bad for the company. I told him this was the only time I have been able to race in a pro series, and I was going to race. Against his better judgment he said he would let me ride, and I raced all three motos and finished in fifth overall without breaking the bike. I finished sixth in the entire support series for the Inter-AMA.
BR: You still get to go out and ride today.
GO: About three years ago I started going down to Baja for two weeks on my KTM 520 to ride with friends. It’s the last place you can go and ride a motorcycle like the way you did in the ’60s. You aim for a spot and just ride to it. Two years ago I went riding with Dick Wascher (WASCO) and Big Larry Wescott from the Sea of Cortez across the peninsula to the Pacific Ocean, using a GPS for guidance to cross the mountains because there are no roads. They (who supposedly know) said it was a nine to 10-hour ride, and I told my buddies I would like to try that ride, but we might have to spend the night out there if we got lost.
It wasn’t a good idea for me, because I needed to take my pills and have water for my medical condition, but that never stopped me before. We told the guy where we were staying that we were going over the mountain, and he told us, "You’ll be back tonight. Many people try, and they all come back."
So we took off from San Felipe, and the GPS was telling us where we were, but sometimes we would be stuck in some cactus and boulders and it took us four hours to go five miles. The bikes were overheating, Dick and Larry were running out of water and we had no food. I had enough water, but Dick and Larry had drunk most of theirs. At first we were joking about it. I then told Dick if we didn’t make it we could always kill Larry and eat him. It was a joke at that time, because we didn’t think we would have to spend the night. As time went by it was getting darker and darker, and we still had not got over the top of the mountains. Now it was getting serious, they realized we would actually have to spend the night and they were highly upset about the prospect.
We rode until we couldn’t see any more and just parked the bikes, and slept on the ground. We got up the next morning and had half a bottle of water between the three of us, and finished it off and headed down the mountain towards the GPS Pacific Ocean. Four hours later we came across a little village, where a nice lady gave us some water from her well. We finally made it to our destination at San Ignacio, and we told the hotel/restaurant owner what we had done and he told us, "I know of only 50 people who have ever made it across the mountains. Many people try, and only a very few make it."
We didn’t eat Larry. I’d told Dick we could live forever on Larry, and he said he knew how to dry meat and we could hang him up and even drink his blood. Larry would jokingly reply, "Don’t kill me. Just take an arm!" To which we would tell him that he couldn’t ride without an arm, so we might as well just have a feast!
BR: You raced at the first ever Puyallup MX race on October 18, 1970?
GO: I finished in first at the East/West Challenge race, followed by Doug Munson, Randy Skiver, Jim Pomeroy, Ricky Poulin, Norm Kopp, Mike Welland, Pat Marinacci, Bill Barthrop and Dick Poulin. Two weeks later I won again at Puyallup, and two weeks after that they had the Northwest Scrambles Championships in which Bill Cook won, and I finished in second place. One of my most memorable races was in 1967, in a race in which I finished in second place. A few of us put together a race called the Can-Am Challenge in Aldergrove, British Columbia. We had three 30-minute motos in maybe one of the first motocross races in the country. They had a Grand Prix at the end of the day and I finished third, and those two trophies mean a lot to me.
BR: Is there anything you would have changed in your racing career?
GO: Except for starting out younger. There is no way I would have been able to race without the help of my sponsors, Tom’s Cycle and Terry Saxlund and Jim Tenneson. I am extremely happy with my career, and to be surrounded by such good people who I would have never met if it wasn’t for motorcycles. Even people I have worked with all my life still refer to me as the motorcycle-racing fireman. I actually won the Master (30+) 250 and Open class Police and Fire World MX Championships in 1985, with competitors from 26 countries and around the US.
BR: You have overcome some significant medical problems to still ride today. Do you mind talking about it a little?
GO: As I got older and continued to race I noticed that while I wasn’t getting any slower, I was getting tired earlier and earlier despite my workout program. I broke my back racing, which ended my racing career in 1986, and after I healed up I had a physical and they found out I had cardio myopathy (an enlarged heart) which they told me I had for about 10 years. I retired from the fire department in 1990, and had a heart transplant in 1991. Then because of the immune suppress medications for the heart I got tongue cancer in 1995, even though I never smoked. But because of my lowered immunity, and being a fireman for 26 years and racing motorcycles with all those fumes, something caught up with me. Overall my health is pretty good, I can ride motorcycles down in Baja and go snowmobiling in the winter.
