Oh, Golden Age of Purity
OH, GOLDEN AGE OF PURITY
IGNITION
TDC
MEN WERE MEN, YES, BUT ANY MORE SO THAN NOW?
KEVIN CAMERON
All my life I have heard tell of, "When men were men," which smugly implies that today's males are by comparison underinflated. While heroic storytelling has a tradition, this kind of thing makes me suspicious. We know that US astronauts were trained to land the space shuttle (they say experienced military pilots crash the simulator for about two weeks before they get a glimmer) but did not once have to take over from the automated landing system. Does the ALS make them less manly than the Soviet cosmonaut who had to manually recover a tumbling space capsule, not being sick into his helmet while firing attitude-control thrusters to restore stability? No, it does not, for all who operate in the void of space go in harm's way.
I therefore state that the “real men” expression is just something that rear-echelon nonparticipants use to canonize any poor slob whose primitive equipment forces him to accept crazy risks. Carrier aviation is another risky business. Who is the Big Stud of carrier aviation? Was it Eugene Ely, making the very first takeoff and landing of a motorized box kite on the cruiser Pennsylvania in January 1911? Was it F6F Hellcat pilots, smacking their Grummans down on wood-deck carriers after the Marianas Turkey Shoot,
June 20,1944, their “instrumentation” consisting only of airspeed on the panel and a man on deck waving paddles? Was he an F4 Phantom jockey, dragging his tail in the sea, flying inverted on the way back from Rolling Thunder then expertly picking up the third wire? An F/A-18 driver? An F-35 systems manager?
Collectors have now bought up all the wobbling Yamaha TZ75OS, hailing them as “legendary.” But being hard to ride (they were) was not what won races. They crushed the opposition because their long-travel suspension made them less frightening to ride than the others. Designed in an era of hard Dunlop “triangular” tires, they raced on high-grip slicks that tied them in knots. Their frames flexed and cracked and their damper oil became spongy slop, sparkling with wear particles. Yet their competitors had worse problems; TZ75OS were the best you could have in 1978.
Today’s bikes—pure racers and sportbikes alike—have the motorcycle equivalent of the shuttle’s digital flight controls: throttle-by-wire, virtual powerband, traction control, launch control, and anti-wheelie. According to the “when-men-were-men” crowd, that makes Marc Marquez and Jorge Lorenzo into mewling kittens. Real racing combines maximum man with minimum machine, what I call, “One man, one cylinder, an Amal carburetor, and a Lucas magneto.”
What was the 1950 ignition curve? The rider’s magneto retard lever on the bar. Which fuel map? The rider’s air-jet lever on the bar. What did it all mean? That the rider was the ECU. In the 1960s, Suzuki GP rider Hugh Anderson was perhaps no faster into or out of corners than many others of his time, but he uniquely could manage the temperamental powerplants provided for his use. Other men soared over the bars with mystery seizures. Not Anderson, who anticipated trouble and prevented it. This would be a high-level skill in a dyno operator, but Anderson did it while racing.
But before we decide that the obvious “one man” is Geoff Duke (in 1951, he defeated the four-cylinder Güeras with his single-cylinder Norton), what about the men who won TTs without the plush assurance and consistent grip of Duke’s twin-loop McCandless “Featherbed” chassis, which was revolutionary in 1950? Now we can get into it: Who was more “real,” Geoff Duke on a chassis that made winning easier or Stanley Woods on a bouncing, hopping rigid Norton? Oh, but think again, wasn’t it Woods who just said “yes” to innovation by winning the Senior TT in 1935 on a Moto Guzzi with rear suspension?
BY THE NUMBERS
NUMBER OF US AIRCRAFT LOST IN THE GREAT MARIANAS TURKEY SHOOT, ALSO KNOWN AS THE BATTLE OFTHE PHILIPPINE SEA 600+ NUMBER OF JAPANESE AIRCRAFT LOST IN THE SAME BATTLE, A DECISIVE AMERICAN VICTORY
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS F0RGIAC0M0 AGOSTINI. AGO ALSO HAD 122 GRAND PRIX WINS.
So maybe, to find a purer, more rugged manliness, we must go back to Howard R. Davies, who in 1921 won the Senior (soocc) Isle of Man TT on a dinky 350 AJS. But was that win the result of pure testosterone or did AJS’s little engine benefit from its pioneering OHV design, enabling it to outrun larger but less potent side-valves?
Every time it looks like we’ve finally zeroed in on The Real Man, we find that the hero had technological help. Yes, he is always an outstanding racer, but in every era the great racer turns out to be the one who sees and exploits previously unappreciated potential in technology.
Woods won on the rearsuspended Guzzi, Duke won on the first hydraulically damped Norton, and HRD (yes, Davies is where we get those sacred initials) won with OHV power. On it goes: Giacamo Agostini took the 1966—’67 soocc titles from Mike Hailwood on a quick-turning, 53.5-inch-wheelbase MV Agusta with its engine set forward in modern style so he could get on the throttle sooner than Hailwood on the rear-heavy Honda RC181, which was much more powerful.
Kenny Roberts took three 500CC world titles by showing that if you can’t steer with the front, use the rear (and Goodyear gave him tires that could take such abuse). Freddie Spencer showed that you could enter corners at speeds that would normally lose the front but found that a whiff of throttle from a responsive engine could restore front grip (so much work by the late Francois Decima’s team went into perfecting that Michelin front tire). Mick Doohan controlled tech development at Honda by insisting that only problem areas (power delivery) be improved. He worked to make winning as easy (and therefore safe) as it could be. Five consecutive world championships. Today’s fast-maturing technology is electronic controls.
“IN EVERY ERA, THE GREAT CHAMPIONS HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE VERY BEST EQUIPMENT IT WAS POSSIBLE TO BUILD, AND THAT HAS NOT CHANGED TODAY.”
Why then is there such romantic reverence for the hero riders of past times, despite the clear fact that they had all the help the technology of their time could give them? In every era, the great champions have been given the very best equipment it was possible to build, and that has not changed today. Okay, how about a little Shakespeare? Crusty old Othello, veteran of many battles, says of Desdemona, “She loved me for the dangers I had passed.”
I can get with that. And, despite all that technology has done for motorcyclists, the dangers are still with us.
