Big Bangers' Last Blast

Big Bangers' Last Blast

Former Thunder

IT’S BEEN MORE THAN THREE decades now, but there was a time when Thumpers ruled uncontested in the dirt.

“It was the Golden Era,” says Jeff Smith, former BSA works rider, now executive director of the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association. “Well, at least that’s what they tell me now-we didn’t know it back then! I remember it as a wonderful time; we were young and having fun.” From the first 500cc World Motocross Championship in 1957 through 1965, four-strokes from England and Sweden held the crown, but their time was growing ever more short.

“We knew the CZ two-strokes were coming, that they’d be lighter and faster with fewer moving parts and a lower center of gravity,” says Smith.

Thirty years later, it’s the men, not the machines that Smith best remembers. The riding was rigorous, he says, with up to 50 meetings a year, but there was always room for camaraderie.

“We were a circus, really, going from country to country. After the races, the Swedes, the Brits, the Belgians, whatever Frenchman happened to be going fast that year and a couple of Italians would sit down at the dinner table. We’d eat beefsteak and drink red wine and say, boy, this is the best life in the world.”

So, will the two-time world champion, now 63, throw a leg over the new Yamaha YZ400F Thumper? “Yes, if I get the opportunity,” Smith says, “though it’ll probably scare the hell out me.”

Not bloody likely. -David Edwards