A Life At Speed
A life at speed
UP FRONT
David Edwards
ROGER REIMAN DIED AT DAYTONA INternational Speedway, March 4, 1997. The 1964 Grand National Champion and former factory Harley-Davidson team member was practicing for a BMW Battle of the Legends race when he tangled with a group of riders and went down. He was 58 years old.
In tribute, the Legends race scheduled for later that day was cancelled. Instead, Reiman’s colleagues rode in formation three times around the track, signifying his trio of Daytona 200 victories. Reiman’s racebike, wearing his trademark #55 numberplates, sat riderless in pole position on the starting grid.
Don Emde, winner of the 1972 200miler and a long-time Legends competitor, was trailing Reiman when the accident happened and got caught up in the melee, breaking a leg in the resulting tumble.
“Roger was a modest man,” Emde says. “Based on his accomplishments, he was in the superstar category, yet he never acted that way-no ego, no rock-star attitude. He came to Daytona every year mainly to be with friends and family. He was comfortable to be around, whether you were a fellow racer or an average Joe.
“Roger died doing what he loved to do. He knew the risks and accepted them. We’re sort of like the Flying Wallendas up there on the highwire-sometimes we fall. But it’s what we do. It’s the path of life we take.”
Not that it makes a loss like this any easier to deal with.
“I cried my eyes out,” Emde says.
Reiman first came to Daytona in 1959, a fresh-faced rookie with a crewcut and a fast Harley KR. A TT specialist back in Kewanee, Illinois, Reiman wasn’t fazed by the halfsand/half-highway beach course used in those days and dogged eventual winner Brad Andres for much of the race. With 13 laps left, though, his primary chain let go, scuttling the effort.
Daytona 1960 and Reiman was up front again-until just past the halfway point when his gas tank sprung a leak and began dumping fuel. It took three long laps to fit a new tank, dropping the disappointed Reiman to 18th at the finish.
It all came right in 1961, the first year the 200-miler went all-asphalt, running at Bill France’s newly built Daytona International Speedway. Reiman qualified fastest and went on to an easy win, often sticking a foot out dirt-track style to keep his skittering KR upright on the six-turn infield roadcourse.
For safety reasons, the AMA kept the bikes off Daytona’s daunting 33degree banking until 1964. When the okay was given, Reiman responded well to the unfamiliar environment, putting in a smooth, calculated performance on the high banks to win again, lapping the field through fourth place in the process. The next year, Reiman was even more impressive. Starting in 29th place, he deftly sloshed through a wind-whipped rainstorm to take his third Daytona 200 victory. At the finish, only one other rider, Mert Lawwill, was on the same lap.
Writing in Cycle, commentator Roxy Rockwood called the 1965 win Reiman’s “finest ride,” noting that “over 90 riders starting a race in a downpour created the largest manmade water screen we have ever seen. A rider has to have hair to come up through the pack at full speed under those conditions. Reiman did just that.”
In all, Reiman would run in 16 straight Daytona 200s, racking up eight top-20 finishes and 2327 competition miles, fourth highest on the all-time list, by the time he called it quits in 1974. He left in elite company: At the time, only two other riders, Dick Klamfoth and Brad Andres, had a Daytona hat-trick. They would be joined in later years by Kenny Roberts and Scott Russell.
BSA luminary and two-time Grand National Champion Dick Mann knew Reiman as a rival and friend.
“If you cut him, he bled HarleyDavidson orange and black,” says Mann. “He was an intense racer, always under control but very fast. And he was the best I’ve ever seen in the rain, better even than the Europeans.
“Between Daytona 200 appearances, Battle of the Twins competition, vintage racing, Harley 883s and the BMW Legends contests, I guess Roger made every Daytona for almost 40 years,” says Mann. “And right to the end he was still very capable. In modern races, even though he stayed tucked-in on the bike and you couldn’t see a piece of him sticking out, he’d more than keep up with the young leg-draggers.”
Mann finds some comfort in the fact that Reiman met his death at a racetrack that over the years gave him so much of his fame and popularity.
“It’s a tragedy, no doubt, but for Roger I couldn’t think of a better way to go-if he had to go. He was doing what he loved doing, at a place he loved doing it,” Mann says.
Former Harley teammate Chris Draayer, speaking at a trackside tribute, said, “We’re grateful for Roger and for the kind of person that he was. He was probably the most professional motorcycle racer I’ve ever known. He would give you an inch even if there wasn’t an inch to give. He loved motorcycles, and he loved the fans. There was no stronger an enthusiast and supporter of motorcycling.”
Team Obsolete’s Rob Iannucci remembers Reiman for his early and active backing of vintage roadracing, remembers Reiman atop his cherished old KR, brought out of mothballs each March to boom around Daytona as if time had somehow been hoodwinked into standing still.
“He was still fast,” says Iannucci. “He added a lot of class-always professional, always friendly, always with that wry sense of humor. Roger never stopped racing. Never lost his style.”
Roger Reiman died at Daytona International Speedway, March 4, 1997. More important, Roger Reiman lived at Daytona International Speedway.
And always will.
