Profile: Brad Lackey
PROFILE: BRAD LACKEY
HIS BEST-KNOWN SIDE IS PROBABLY HIS BACK, QUICKLY FADING FROM VIEW
ED REMITZ
DODGING COW dung in someone’s borrowed field must be a great way to start a brilliant motocross career—at least if Brad Lackey is a criteria.
Brad is currently the top contender for the U.S. AMA Motocross Open Class Championship. Brad won’t say it, but others in racing circles say it’s a strong possibility that 1972’s winner’s circle will bear his countenance. But it’s no fluke. Brad has been a consistent race winner all through his career.
Last year, he was one-pointed out of the Open Class championship spot by Mark Blackwell, another dirt charger; and in the interim of that battle, he’s gone to Europe and placed higher than any American ever has in the World Championship 250 Class.
Brad lives with several friends (they’re bike riders, too) in Lafayette, Calif., a sleepy commuter-colony about 30 miles toward sunrise from San Francisco. Nestled about a quarter-mile off a super-freeway is his place—a yellow adobe-bricked Spanish villa-type house with bike-logo emblazoned walls.
Brad was late for the interview (he was spectating a bike race) so Lori Hagman, his friendly and gracious girlfriend, hosted a house tour.
The garage was the place for full focus—Brad’s well-dinged Maico cow-
trailer sat in one corner and his brand new Sportster 1000 in another. The real sunspot was an incredible Harley XR750 owned by Dick Lightner, the house’s owner and a one-time sponsor of Brad. Dick had it set up with lights and twin hydraulic disc brakes on front, a single disc on back, and street licensed. Sometimes Dick lets Brad ride it, but only Brad. Dick himself is a little frightened of it. After all, 80 bhp at a throttle crack is pretty hairy.
When Brad arrived, he chose to talk out front in his custom, $5000 Ford van (the pin striping alone cost over $200).
Brad, at 19, has the kind of build only acquired through a life of exertion. He’s not muscle-bound, but it’s obvious that motocross racing has kept him in lean trim. The next thing you notice after his shoulder-length hair and attempted moustache is his quietness.
Brad is quiet, frustratingly quiet. It’s all that modesty; he’ll readily say how great his competition is but won’t press himself one bit. He did chronicle his racing career, but always seemed a bit embarassed to talk about himself.
Brad began biking at age 12 when his father bought him and brother Randy a Honda 50 for cowtrailing. Brad is originally from Pinole, Calif., a town just a hill away from Richmond and within the magic deci-diameter; a 10-mile circle
in which Dick Mann, Super Joe Einhorn and Kerry Kleid (the male-defeating woman dirt racer) all live. The diameter is also less than an hour’s drive from the homes of Art Baumann and Mert Lawwill.
A paradise for bike talent. And as with anyone who began bike racing there, Brad started competing on the hilly bike acreage at Point Richmond, an eastern hamlet of citified Richmond.
Brad started Point racing in the 125 class at 15. It didn’t take long before people noticed a gangly kid was winning practically every race he was in.
“Yeah,” Brad explained, “I went from scrambles to motocross and won some and then, when there wasn’t anything else to do, I’d race short track and hillclimbs and stuff (and usually win).”
A year later, at 16, American Eagle saw his championship potential and started sponsoring him.
For a year he rode American Eagle and then moved to CZ. He rode CZ for nearly three years, but not under sponsorship. He sponsored himself because “CZ is one of the best.” A question about the bikes’ preparations got a deliberately mute response. “I’ll give you one hot tip,” he eventually confided, “give Carl Cranke (Brad’s then CZ wrench and a hot racer in his own right) about $300 and he’ll make it bad for you.”
Since last January, Brad has been racing Kawasakis under a Kawasaki sponsorship. He has been running its prototype specials and is quite impressed with them. Unfortunately, the prototype he was running in this summer’s Inter-Am 250 Class was not properly set up—“We only had several days before the series to get it together. Kawasaki wasn’t hot to race the InterAM but John DeSoto and I sorta pushed them into it at the last minute.” In this fall’s Trans-AMA Open Class series he’ll race a prototype 490 with full factory backing.
But with Brad, it doesn’t matter much which bike he rides or in what class. He eats it all up—“I like all the classes but the 500 class is easier. The guys in the 250 class go faster...500 riders are mostly older guys and they’re just not as crazy as the (usually) younger 250 guys who’ll go out and kill themselves ’cause they’re not old enough to know better.”
Brad has no hobbies or pursuits outside of racing except dating Lori. What other free time he does get from his busy racing schedule is used for “just relaxin’ and restin’ up.”
Competition has been good and bad to him; he’s broken each arm once, his right kneecap, left collarbone and gathered an abundance of the usual bumps, bruises and sprains in his 3-year career. Easing the hurts, though, have been his earnings of nearly $35,000 so far this > year. The money really started coming in this season and he puts it to use. He is in the process of selling his van and just purchased a more practical (if you crisscross the country on race circuits) 24-ft. El Dorado motorhome for $10,000.
Commercial endorsements for Kawasaki, Buffalo Breath Motocross T-shirts and such have fattened his wallet, too. All this helps him maintain his play bike stable of the Sportster, the Maico, brand new Norton and a super-modified Honda SL70 “for pit racin’.”
Brad said he wants to continue racing for about five more years and then lay back—“By then, hopefully, I’ll be rich enough to sit back and take it easy for awhile.”
Some friends pulled up in their likewise customized bike vans and massed over by the garage. Dick Lightner had arrived and wheeled out the XR for “Brad to show it off a little.” Much priming and foot-cranking got it kachumpity-rumping. The damn thing wasn’t exciting or gutty, it was downright erotic. Brad slung on and “whoeed” softly, “the neighbors love this one.” He tire-dusted down the street. Brad’s back, probably his best-known side, quickly faded from view....
What Brad himself won’t talk about, his father, Doug, will. A body and fender man by trade, Doug Lackey has been the stalwart of Brad’s career. He’s “more-or-less” Brad’s agent, promoter, counselor and biggest fan.
In the garage at the family’s Pinole home, Doug pointed at his Metisseframed Victor (Doug cowtrails himself) and explained in soft, Southern tones what Brad did in one riding—“He’s really rough on equipment. He rode this in a Point race for fun and broke a peg, my special black-chromed pipe and just generally tore it up. The thing had over twenty-thousandths clearance and was smokin’ real bad but he won the race, anyway!”
Brad is notoriously hard on bikes. He lines up with the philosophy that throttles are made to turn open, wide open. Just run it ’til it wins or breaks.
Doug discussed Brad’s racing background farther, “He’d be better off if he were a better mechanic, but he really won’t mess with his bike.... Even before a race he won’t prepare. He won’t look at the course, set up race strategy or nothin’. He doesn’t get nervous either. He just pulls up to the line, waits for the flag and tears out. And yet, he wins at least 85 percent of all his races.”
The only training Brad does for competition is riding races and cowtrailing. He follows no special diets or
exercise programs but Brad did say earlier “Ya gotta be a good boy two or three days before the race to make sure your stuff’s together.”
Brad is great and, according to Doug, Brad’s 21-year-old brother Randy has great potential, too. Doug said with a heavy sigh, “That kid’s a natural but he’s never worked at it. Brad has worked for his success by staying at it.”
Randy races occasionally and usually wins, but he doesn’t stay with it. It’s probably the best thing to happen for the competition—two Lackey terrors would make most riders slice off their knobbies and switch to drag racing.
Searching for one factor for Brad’s success, Doug said, “Drive. He’s just got the drive to beat the others. But sometimes Mark Blackwell, Jim Wienert, Gary Jones, John DeSoto or Bob Grossi and those other guys can get him. They’re really good boys, too.”
In the summer of 1970, Brad made a big splash in racing circles when CZ trucked him to Europe for a three-week training stint.
The ripples got bigger a year later, when Brad went over again for six weeks of training with 30 other top motocross riders from 15 European countries and the U.S. The group was hand-picked as being the best motocross talent in the world. At the end of the six weeks, CZ picked Brad as the one rider to stay on as a development lab test rider and to compete in the World Championship Gran Prix 250 Class. This is when he rode to an 11th World overall position, the highest an American has ever finished.
All of Brad’s expenses and living accommodations were paid for by CZ while Brad tested and raced. But to stay in Europe, he had to drop out of high school (he was an honor student) in the last month of his senior year.
“The school was really great about it,” Doug explained. “They said a chance for an European trip like this (Brad raced and visited in Poland, West Germany, Yugoslavia, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands and England) was well worth delaying my high school diploma. Brad himself said, T learned more in six months over there than I could’ve learned in five years of high school.’ He’s going to take some classes on the side and make it up as soon as his schedule allows.”
In all his racing career, there was only one time when Brad got traumatized by a racing accident. Doug recalled, “It was up at the Evel Knievel Race (Twin Falls, Idaho, May ’72). There was this irrigation ditch, about a foot wide and a foot-and-a-half deep running right on the edge of one of the course turns. Brad came through the corner and hit the edge and went into it. Well, these little kids had been running out on the course all day, I heard later,
and it turned out one of these kids was sitting partways in the ditch.
“Brad couldn’t stop ’cause the ditch’s sides had jammed up his pegs and everything and he couldn’t get the bike out of the ditch. He ran over the kid and broke the kid’s leg, I think.
“It really got him. After he stopped, he ran back to check on the kid. He didn’t want to stay in the race but finally a bunch of people got him to go back. He went on and got a sixth.”
Brad may be very quiet, but he is extremely sharp on business. Earlier this year he went in with Dick Lightner and Doug on a motorcycle shop in Berkeley, Calif., “Brad Lackey’s Cycle World,” which retailed Norton and CZ. Now the deal is breaking off, but Brad and his father have another fantastic venture in mind.
Doug’s eyes glinted as he explained, “It’s kind of a dream thing.... We want to open up a place like a bike shop/park that has facilities like a country club or golf course. Brad has this super idea of setting up a place with showers, lockers and stalls for bikes and equipment so anyone renting the space wouldn’t have to truck their bike around. They just leave it locked up at the club and come out and change into their riding clothes, go out and ride and then take a shower afterward. It’d be real great for the businessman who only had time for a quick ride on his bike. Of course, we’d have races and other public events on weekends. It’d just be terrific for bike riders!”
Brad’s immediate plans, though, were centered on the Fall Trans-AMA racing series. More than 20 top Europeans and the best Americans are competing. If Brad can maintain his championship habits, though, he’ll garner the number one spot.
His fall itinerary included a detour to Holland for the one-day Motocross De Nations 500 Class Team competition, to be part of the American team which includes Mark Blackwell, Jim Pomeroy, John DeSoto and Bryan Kenny.
Europe will see him again early next April for the World Championship Gran Prix Motocross 250 Class. This time, he feels, he and the rest of the Americans will do better in international competition—“The more you race the better you get. And I’ve been racing a lot. The Europeans have been at it longer, but the Americans are really getting better.”
Brad really cooks in competition and he’s constantly improving. He is dominating American motocross and is the greatest American threat to the European riders yet. Maybe, after his return to Europe next spring, the Europeans will feel like many American riders who will grit their teeth for the next five years until Brad retires from racing.
You can get tired of looking at one guy’s back all the time.
