Profile: Bernie Schreiber
PROFILE: Bernie Schreiber
America's Best Trials Rider Heads for the World Championship
Len Weed
Star spangled eagles flew high in Europe last year. Kenny Roberts won the 500 road racing World Championship, Brad Lackey finished second in the 500 motocross chase and Scott Autrey was third at the World Speedway final.
And Bernie Schreiber turned in the best-ever trials performance by an American. finishing third in World Observed Trials for 1978, his first full season of competition. Bernie's four wins in 12 starts matched the record of champion Yrjo Vesterinen. But the champ was edged by the 19-year-old Schreiber in runnerup finishes. three to two. In fact, if the old FIM system of scoring the best half of the total number of events plus one had been used, Bernie w'ould have won the World 'Championship.
Down by 35 points (40 to 5) after three "rides. Schreiber mounted a stretch drive that lasted three-quarters of the season. He won four of the next five events. For the „y^ar his performance log read: 9-8-15-11 —2—1 — 1 -2-3-6 2. Over those final nine Irides he outscored Vesterinen by 23 points and series runnerup Martin Lampkin by *20.
What threw' a spanner in the works at Those opening rounds? Ice and snow'. Bernie simply didn’t get on with the unfamiliar icy rocks of Ireland and Wales, «taking a ninth and eighth. In Belgium, more grief. Mud penetrated the air box •and assaulted his engine’s innards. He finished out of the points, 15th.
* Then, the turn-around—after a deliberate strategy reversal. “I think I was burnt out from practicing. I had been out every £lay, practicing and pushing in mud. So I took a tip from Martin Lampkin. I didn't practice at all the week before the French round.”
► Bernie beat runnerup Lampkin by 13 points in France. “After I didn’t ride my &ike for the whole week I really wanted to ride on the day of the trial. I was really psyched up. I think that’s what did it. Kbeing so pumped up to ride my bike.” That w'in in France, w'ith Bernie just a ►few' weeks past his 19th birthday, made him the youngest rider ever to win a world nial. One year before, he had become the first American to finish in the top 10 in a 'championship trial overseas.
Bernie w'on again a w'eek later in Spain. He headed home in fifth place, 24 points toff the pace.
In May Bernie flew to Germany for round six. He took second. 3.4 points behind Martin Lampkin. Returning home, he won the U. S. World Trial at Roaring Branch, Pennsylvania.
Italy in July gave him his fourth w'in in five starts. This moved him into second in points, ahead of Vesterinen. A week later in Austria he flirted with a fifth win before bow ing to Vesterinen by less than one point.
A third in Sweden in August moved him just four points behind leaders Lampkin and Vesterinen. But a bout with bronchitis, which wras to linger for several months, hindered his efforts as he slipped to sixth in Finland the following week. A third in Czechoslovakia in September clinched third place for the year. 12 points behind champion Vesterinen.
But while Bernie was bowling over the world classers, he was beset with problems in the national championship series. The 1978 American Footing Show had a great script. The final title round in Alabama could just as easily been held in South Dakota with Alfred Hitchcock directing the trio of Schreiber. Leavitt and Whaley off-camber across Lincoln’s forehead.
After his two wins in Europe Bernie w'as looking forward to the national series that opened in early April. That was before he drove a steel fence post through his leather boot five days before the first trial. The wound required stitches. Bernie started the first national, but had to drop out. He tried again the next day. The effort netted him a third as he dropped twice as many points as winner Marland Whaley.
Bernie’s world w'in in Pennsylvania also counted as a national victory. Then the> following weekend he won two more nationals—but one didn't count. He was disqualified for being one minute late. Electrical problems had delayed him so much in New Hampshire that he was forced to race—score card between his teeth—the filial portion of the first loop and all of the final loop without stopping to walk the sections. As the series took a two-month ^break the standings after six of the nine rounds read: Whaley 59, Leavitt 58. >Comer 48, Schreiber 40.
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To further compound the situation. Finland conflicted with the seventh U. S. round in Arizona. Lane Leavitt was in a position to clinch the championship with a win in Arizona, but Marland Whaley won, ^setting up a three-way sectioneer show-down the following weekend.
Bernie had to win both trials to take the .y. S. title. His bike quit on him in Texas. Leavitt lent him the low voltage coil he needed to continue. Bernie won. The electrical problem was eventually traced back bo the mad dash in New Hampshire two months earlier. During hasty field fettling *his flywheel had not been tightened securely. It eventually fell off. This knocked it out of true enough to cause shorting in The low voltage coil.
Two days and 800 miles later—the final dest came in Alabama. Whoever won the day, won the championship. Bernie’s bike *quit again. He had to borrow another bike to push his dead machine back to the pits. He secured another low voltage coil and won the trial. The national series had finally been Schreiberized.
Bernie finished the year with four wins and a third, just five finishes for the bestbive-rides series. He edged Leavitt, who had three wins, by a single championship 'point.
Champions usually begin displaying Their talents at an early age. Schreiber Juegan his balancing and battering act at age 10 aboard a Kawasaki 90, then switched to a Bultaco Lobito converted for trials. He climbed aboard his first Bultaco Sherpa T at age 13 and became the fourth ranked Expert in Southern California. ^That was 1972. A year later he was number two Master. That effort won him an El ^7rial de España funded trip to Spain to -watch a world trial.
He came home knowing what he had to ¿prepare for. His practice sessions became much more demanding—outright hairy to riiose who watched them. Bernie captured the number one rating in Southern California in 1974. That wasn't such an easy feet-up feat. His competition included the other “wonderkid” of American trials, -Marland Whaley. Bernie again won the SoCal title in 1975 as Whaley took the first . ef his three American championships.
In the spring of 1976 the pair visited the ^Scottish Six Days Trial as viewers, too young for FI M licenses. It was there Bernie ^first gave the British press a hint of things to come. Bultaco team rider Charles Coutard, retiring with an injury, encouraged Bernie to borrow' his bike. He dropped just two dabs in eight sections. That matched the efforts of the trial wanner. Martin Lampkin. Returning to Scotland in 1977, Bernie won the Top Newcomer Award, finishing 1 1 th.
A
The TIM age requirement forced Bernie to miss the first two rounds of the 1977 championship season. His first ride came in Belgium. He finished fifth in a mudslogging high-scoring melee. He then followed with a third in Spain, a fifth in France that saw him leading after the first loop, and a second in Germany.
The European press was astounded that any teenager could debut in such a manner. especially one from a nation noted for its low interest in trials. Bernie continued to score consistently for the remainder of the series and finished seventh for the year.
Back home, taking his first full attack on the American championship series, he finished runnerup to Marland Whaley, who swept through the year winning all eight starts.
Bernie’s riding style has changed some since his exposure to European competition. Practice sessions at champion Vesterinen’s home have influenced a swing away from the “Lampkinesque” frontal assaults that initially caused the English ~>ress to tag him Barging Bernie. He has now adopted the wide-legged stance favored by Vesterinen and discarded the toe-riding technique that he and Whaley and other SoCal Experts have used for years.
But his style is still distinctively his own. Vesterinen is referred to as the technician with ice water blood. Lampkin is the legsin-full-speed-ahead charger. The English call Bernie the circus rider and stunt man, impressed by his unicycling and his bravado with the throttle. His antics include leaping from rock to rock, holding a line along a railroad track or riding over warm bodies by unloading the suspension.
There are several still-to-be-tackled riding stunts on the Schreiber list-of-thingsto-do. Cars have been ridden over before— but no one has tried it yet with the auto moving. Another proposed stunt is going off the roof of a building, landing on the roof of a van and then riding down to the pavement.
Those who have had the opportunity to watch Schreiber practice are continually astounded by his comments that he would never do anything dangerous on a motorcycle and that anything under 20 miles per hour isn't dangerous. Watching him ride straight off a seven-foot ledge or blast up a 12-foot vertical wall leaves many questioning his concept of danger.
Each of America's three trials champions to date has a distinct personality. Leavitt, the first champion, is the “elder statesman,” a trials-is-fun enthusiast. Whaley, wfith his surfer blondness and machine-like precision, is sometimes terse, often humorous off a bike, always intensely dedicated to winning. And Schreiber, youngest of the trio, is playfully audacious, totally confident of his abilities. He feels the best trial is the toughest trial. For Bernie. cleanliness is happiness, and a warm puppy glee still characterizes his foot-less outings after 10 years on the pegs.
Life off the pegs centers around the foothills town of La Crescenta. His father is a precision machinist, his mother a teacher. Bernie once convinced a foreign pressman that he aspired to becoming a district attorney in Los Angeles someday. Right now his only vocational interests are with motorcycling. He is a professional in a basically amateursport that enables few to earn a star athlete’s income. If he wins the World Championship this year he may come close to the take-home pay of a factory employed motocrosser who gets average results in national racing. Still, he remains dedicated to the less-dollars sport.
When Bernie first tackled world action in 1977 he was quoted as saying he'd either win the World Championship by the age of 22 or he'd never do it. He's now 20. Those who know trials expect him to make it. One former World Champion has already called him the best trials rider he has ever seen. If Barging Bernie maintains last year's momentum, this could be the year that the world, not just the nation, gets Schreiberized.
