At first glance this photo seems to capture a moment shared between teammates, members of the eminent Harley-Davidson Wrecking Crew lined up either in anticipation of their victory, or perhaps just after, on a dusty dirt oval in the 1920’s. With a bit more investigation it is discovered that the photo comes from a series of M&ATA National Championship races held at Los Angeles’ old Ascot Park in January 1920, just as professional motorcycle racing in America was rebooting after WWI. The riders then begin to come into focus, from left to right, as Freddie Ludlow, Ralph Hepburn, Albert “Shrimp” Burns, and Otto Walker, but if the caption were to end there far too much of the story would remain untold.
If there is one machine which embodies the storied era of the board track motordrome it would no doubt be an Indian, and no configuration to have come out of the Springfield factory was more perfectly tailored for the infamous slanted timbers of America’s fabled dromes than Indian’s Big Base 8-Valve. Perhaps even more synonymous with the treacherous glory of the American motordrome is one of the company’s most notable talents, the young Texan William Edward Hasha.
Arthur George Chapple, the man rocketing up the Fort Lee hill in December, 1909 as covered in this week’s previous post, was one of America’s first and most loved motorcycle racing stars. A pioneer of the sport, Chapple’s racing career dates back to the earliest days of competition, when daring early adopters found themselves duking it out with the very men responsible for the machine’s creation, men like Glenn Curtiss, Oscar Hedstrom, and Joseph Merkel. He became a fixture competitor...
A popular early form of motorsport was the hill climb, which in its original form dates back to the very introduction of the automobile and motorcycle.However, these early hill climbs were not the outlandish grudge matches with nearly vertical slants like the ones America fell in love with in the 1920’s and 30’s. The earlier bouts were timed ascents up inclined local roads throughout the country and were only slightly more civilized. This photo comes from one such early hill climb, an event staged in the palisades of New Jersey in the fall of 1909...
