the State of Vintage

Post Vintage in happier times.
Riders are Steve Parker & Monty Price

Madras, 2000

Glen Miller vs the Beatles HOW THINGS FELL APART FOR PV

Pacific NW Riders enjoy cheap Vintage & Evolution (Post-Vintage) Racing all winter at VDR. In Summer we had AHRMA races, but it was Vintage only.

In 2000 AHRMA (National) introduced PV Classes. Al Wenzal asked me to be the Assistant Coordinator for PV. My job was mostly a helping out - sorting out bikes into the PV Classes- and explaining to the promoters that there were new classes, and finally to try to get the classes from being bunched up at the end of the program- a disservice to PV only riders.

But there began to be some scornful muttering from the Vintage Regional Coordinators (and crew) about how the Post Vintage Bikes should not be allowed at the races. This resistance grew over a 3 year period until the they decided to force the issue by refusing to run the PV Classes. The official reason given why V and PV couldn't coexist was that "PV Bikes chopped up the track" which I found hard to believe. PV Riders were told to go away/start your own series.

There followed a futile war of words online. I foolishly got mixed up in it, and said exactly what I thought. In what became a yelling match I found myself allied with Dirk Williams. But the whole thing was hopeless. All the arguing accomplished nothing. I got admonished for saying things that I hadn't actually said. And the discussion got so heated that Bill Grubin pulled the thread from his web page.

PV Riders were being told that Post Vintage needed to "stand on its own". The number of PV Riders was about 25 or 30 maybe- nowhere near enough to make a go of it. And I know for myself I didn't want a PV only day. To me the Romance of Vintage Motocross was being able to race two or three totally different bikes- for example a 441 BSA, a '73 MX250, a '77 YZ400. All on the same track on the same day. In fact I never did find ANYONE who raced Post Vintage who wanted a PV only series in the Northwest. So we now had a hilarious situation.

The only people who wanted a "PV Only Series were a handful who didn't race PV. At all.

It crossed my mind that maybe the real reason why all of this was happening was that the neighborhood would be ruined if a bunch of damn kids moved in, and couldn't they move somewhere else please? but no one ever said that exactly-

instead they had a series of other reasons, none of which I really quite believed.... not least because they kept changing.

the Changing Reason WHY
POST VINTAGE JUST HAD TO GO

the given reason

why I wasn't convinced

PV Bikes chop up the track

I noted that berms, ruts and braking bumps didn't change at all after PV Classes were excluded

PV Classes take too much time

this argument ignored the glaring fact that there were only a handful of PV Riders, and the House of Cards was barely standing WITH these riders.
If there were 600 entries that would be different, sure.

PV Bikes need a more supercross track

sounds great, except that a) we aren't kids, and jumping is a skillset that most Vintage Riders don't have
and b) you'll notice that PV Riders are not clamoring for more jumps.
Watch the 1979 Season In Europe with Heikki Mikola and you see there aren't any manmade jumps.

Anytime you introduce PV Bikes
the Vintage Entries fall off and Vintage dies.

Maybe true elsewhere. Maybe true in the rest of the Universe. But apparently not the case HERE. Remember we're talking about the Pacific Northwest. And long before I started looking at the numbers I was fully aware that this was just another excuse, so shooting it down won't do any good.

But then I began to be interested in the numbers just from a stats point of view.

This is a Five Year graph ONLY of the Percentage. It doesn't reflect the number of Entries at Pacific Northwest Races. What is cool and weird is how the mix of of Vintage and Evolution Bikes has been almost bizarrely steady. The Pacific Region has a healthy balance that sits at just about exactly 50/50. Actually you'll notice that Vintage stays slightly ahead of 50%.

When you look at the entry numbers on the NEXT PAGE it's even more bizarre...

THE STATE OF VINTAGE - Map of Issues
1 the Legitimacy of Critics Keeping Regionals Alive

2 PACIFIC NW MESS - the Short Version

3 How things fell apart for Post Vintage Stats: the Actual Percentage
4 Graph of Northwest Entries Northwest Riders
5 Klamath Falls Race called off The Advent of the New PNW Region
6 the A-Team Ahrma at Hammer & Tongs
7 the Region the Big Meeting
8 Philosophy of Vintage Approach to Criticism
9 2006 races my own Responsibility
10 madness the last straw