Legends of Motorcycling - The Ascot Reunion

Legends

of Motorcycling

The Ascot Reunion

Sammy Tanner

Ascot bred a lot of legends, but start talking about the ones who are synonymous with the place, and the list narrows. Sammy Tanner would have to be right near the top of it. Tanner devoted much of his racing career to going fast at Ascot, preferring to stay home and contest its well-paying weekly professional events rather than hitting the AMA National trail. His Ascot stories could fill volumes, and Tanner had no trouble recounting his three most promiby Scott Rousseau nent Ascot memories. “The first one would be the National that I Over 700 fans mingled with racers and historic flat track motorcycles at the Ascot ended up winning in 1959, because I had to Reunion in Pomona, California. Organized by former Ascot racer and motorcycle come all the way from the back, and I beat restorer Jerry Greer, it was the first such event to be held since the track’s demise. (then-reigning AMA Grand National Champion) Carroll Resweber to do it,” Tanner said. “The second would be the last race of the year in 1966. Elliott HEN FOLK-ROCK artist Joni Mitchell lamented how “they Schultz had won 14 races, and I had won 14 races, and we were paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” she might as in a battle for the High-Point Rider honors. Well, the crankshaft well been singing about Ascot Park. For over three broke on my BSA during practice at the decades, the half-mile clay oval located last race, and someone else would have to in the heart of Los Angeles was a hub of beat Elliott in the main event if I was going Southern California motorcycle racing to be High-Point Rider for that year. and a place responsible for breeding Blackie Bruce was the only rider that I World and National Champions (see thought could do it, so I went over and MCN, February 2012). Ascot’s been gone coached Blackie, and he was able to beat for over 21 years, but until this past May Elliott so that I could win the points deal. its legacy had never been formally celeI remember that during the race I was out brated by the motorcycle community. on the back straightaway, waving Blackie Jerry Greer, a former Ascot racer and on, and then I realized that Monday mornIndian restoration expert knew there were ing was going to be hell because both of a lot of former racers and fans who, like those guys worked for me at the time. But him, still carried a torch for Ascot, so he Elliott never had a problem with it. organized the first of what will hopefully “And the third thing I remember is just be an annual event, the Ascot Reunion. Among the classic racebikes on display were Greer’s goal wasn’t just to get former two of Ascot’s most famous,Sammy Tanner’s the battles that I had with Elliott when he was riding that Royal Enfield for Shell Ascot racers and fans together but also to BSA Gold Star (7) and Shell Thuett’s Royal Thuett and I was riding BSA Gold Stars generate money for a good cause, the Aid Enfield (27), ridden by the late Elliott for C.R. Axtell,” Tanner said. “I battled to Injured Riders (AIR), a benevolent fund Schultz. Tanner and Schultz waged epic with a lot of guys at Ascot, and they were that offers its flat track-racing members battles for Ascot supremacy in the 1960s. all hard to beat, but Elliott was the hardest. some financial relief from the inevitably Elliott once told me that the first time he ever came to Ascot, he astronomical medical bills incurred if they should suffer catarode in on a Cushman scooter, and he was sitting in the stands with strophic injuries while racing. his friends, watching me go around the racetrack, and he told Greer didn’t expect the response he received. About 800 peothem, ‘You see that guy going around out there? I’m going to ple attended the May 12 event held at the Wally Parks NHRA beat that guy someday.’ And he actually accomplished what he Motorsports Museum in Pomona, California, to garner autosaid. To this day, all I want to know is who in the hell invited that graphs, chat with Ascot racing legends and view more than 50 guy out to the racetrack in the first place!?” historic motorcycles and other Ascot-related memorabilia on display. There was even an opportunity to watch old Ascot race videos on two big screen televisions inside the museum. Skip Van Leeuwen NHRA museum personnel were thrilled as the Ascot Reunion Skip Van Leeuwen has still got it. was one of the best-attended gatherings in the museum’s 14Cruising the Ascot Reunion with a year history, and the event raised over $8000 for AIR babe on his arm, the flamboyant An impressive group of racing legends shook hands, posed for “Van Looney” swapped tales and photos with fans and caught up with fellow racers, many not havtook in the sights. ing seen each other for several years. Naturally, almost all of “This is amazing,” Van Leeuwen them had a particular favorite Ascot story, and there simply isn’t said. “I can walk two feet in any direcenough space here to tell all of them, but we selected a few of our tion and know everyone here. It’s like favorites to share. being in the pits at Ascot in 1965.”

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MOTORCYCLE CONSUMER NEWS

Also an Ascot regular, Van Leeuwen was particularly awesome on Ascot’s fabled TT course, winning two of his four career AMA Nationals on the track and battling fellow Triumph racing legend Eddie Mulder in the marathon 100-lap events. Not bad for a motorcycle rabble rouser who got a much later start into organized professional racing than most of his competition. “How it started was that my pal Dick Hammer and I just went there to spectate,” Van Leeuwen said. “We saw all these guys limping around, and we thought they had broken legs. We didn’t know they were wearing steel shoes! We thought, ‘Hell, if they can do it, we can do it.’ Hammer started racing there before me, and then I started. It was an eclectic place, man.” Winning the 100-lap TT at Ascot in 1967, says Van Leeuwen, was the highlight of his career. “It was the first motorcycle race that they ever showed on (ABC’s) Wide World of Sports,” he said. “Evel Knievel made a big jump that day, and (actors) Jayne Mansfield and Clint Walker presented us the trophies. I made $750, which was the biggest dirt track payout at that time. This was when gas was about 20 cents a gallon and you could drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco for about 15 bucks.”

Jim Rice Ascot wasn’t for the timid, its tacky-fast track and rock-hard crashwall claimed dozens of lives and was responsible for hundreds of injuries during the track’s 33-year existence. The former factory BSA rider never won a National at Ascot but nevertheless has a poignant memory of just what kind of “ball breaker” the track could be. “If my memory serves me, it was around 1970, and Gene Romero had gotten busted by the AMA for putting down the name of a gynecologist on his pre-race physical form,” Rice said. “The AMA penalized him one National, so he couldn’t ride the TT, and I was battling him in the points. So, I was doing okay in the National, running about fourth or fifth, and I was following a Triumph rider in off the half-mile turn, and he threw the primary chain, which broke his cases and dumped oil all over the groove. The lighting wasn’t great, so I didn’t see the oil, and I went down right in front of our pit. “It was no big deal, but you know how tacky the track at Ascot could be, and the bike went down, slid a few feet and then caught traction and jumped back upright,” Rice continued. “When it did it rammed me right in the crotch so hard that I…left a big dent...in the top of the aluminum fuel tank. So my pit man runs out on the track, picks up the bike, kicks the brake lever straight and starts yelling at me, ‘Get on, get on! You’re still doing great!’ I just crawled off the track on my hands and knees with my head down, saying, ‘I can’t get up, I can’t move, I can’t do anything!’ Let me tell you that I’ve raced with a broken shoulder before, and I’ve raced with my nose broken after crashing at the Sacramento Mile (as portrayed in the film, On Any Sunday), but that’s the only time that I’ve never been able to get back on the bike. That was just too much pain.”

David Aldana Leave it to the forever young David Aldana to provide a real view of the Ascot lifestyle. One half of the self-proclaimed “Team Mexican” (along with Gene Romero), Aldana

was a young and crazy teenager who will readily admit that the Ascot lifestyle helped shape his character—and Aldana is still quite a character when he spins yarns about Ascot today. “My fondest Ascot memories?” Aldana responded. “Well, a lot of times it wasn’t the races, it was what would happen after the races. Like, they had the 190 Club across the street, and they would serve underage kids, so it was really fun for all of us 18-year-olds to go hang out over there at the end of the night. Seriously, though, for me a real highlight was winning the Yamaha Gold Cup HalfMile race on Friday night and then winning the Ascot TT National on Saturday night in 1973 on Nick Deligianis’ Norton, which was basically the factory Norton at that time. Usually, on back-to-back nights like that, a guy will have one good night and one bad night, but that time I had two really good nights. Winning the Gold Cup race on the half-mile was just like winning a National because all of the good guys from out of town were there. To come out on top of that was a feat in itself, but to do it again the next night on a Norton was even better. That was the first AMA National that a Norton had won in about 20 years, so that was quite an accomplishment and something I’ll always remember.” And if the race itself wasn’t enough of a barn burner for the fans, the post-race celebration was, as Aldana narrowly escaped injury during a freak fire in the winner’s circle. “In those days we didn’t have good electrical connections, just bare wires that we twisted together,” Aldana said. “Even before the race we knew that the float bowls in the Norton’s carburetors were going to break because for some reason the tabs on the concentric float bowls would break, and we had found this out at Peoria TT when me and Kenny Roberts were catching up to the lead pack and the float bowls came off, and it happened somewhere else, too. So, for Ascot we put rubber bands and wire around them, and they still broke, but they didn’t come off this time. Gas was leaking all over the place, and the bike started sputtering, just not enough to cost me first place. But when I came into the winner’s circle and put my feet down, the bare wires that we had pinched together from the battery ignited the fuel. So I jumped off and the bike just laid there on its side and burned, and me and Nick were just laughing and saying, “Let it burn!” Then Kenny Roberts came around on his bike and started doing doughnuts by it to throw dust on it and put the fire out. We didn’t care because we’d already won the race, but the fire didn’t even hurt the bike too badly at all.”

The Legend Lives Will anyone ever be able to overestimate the impact that Ascot had on motorcycle culture? After all, the Ascot legend was large enough that both Yamaha and Honda honored the venue by naming models after it, Yamaha with the Ascot Scrambler production racer in the 1960s and Honda with its FT500 and VT500 Ascot streetbikes in the early 1980s. Ascot may be gone, but its aura is still strong, and the Ascot Reunion was proof of that. “This was phenomenal,” said attendee Chris Agajanian, who, along with brothers Cary and Jay handled Ascot’s business after their father’s death and until the track’s unfortunate closing in 1990. “You just forget how involved people were and how much they loved it. They all feel like Ascot was theirs, and that’s great because that’s how I feel. That real estate at 183rd and Vermont was definitely a special place, and there’s never going to be anything like it again.” But maybe with a little support, the Ascot Reunion will be back. We sure hope so. There are lots more stories to be told. Visit us at WWW.MCNEWS.COM

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