American Motorcyclist June 2021

Page 6

PERSPECTIVES

SO LONG, GEORGE

O

EGeorge Singler, in his element, applauding finishers during an AHRMA national in 2009 at Medina, Ohio’s Smith Road Raceway, which he owned and ran for four decades.

6

AmericanMotorcyclist.com

By Mitch Boehm

hio motocross, and the entire motorcycling community, really, lost a great one back in March. He was George Singler, a truly Paul Bunyan-esque icon of Northern Ohio who for 40 years owned and ran a little motocross track just West of Medina, Ohio by the name of Smith Road Raceway. George was 87. Smith Road figures prominently in my own motocross life. It was not the first track my dear dad took me to but it was the place that hooked me into motocross like a hungry bass in a pond. See, “Smith,” as my dad and I called it, was the first place I ever trophied, way back in the fall of ’74 on my bone-stock ’73 Honda XR75. We’d tried racing at a few local tracks before heading to Smith Road in October, and I hadn’t had much luck. Not even a top ten. Most of the XRs (and there were a lot) had pipes and cams; some had bigbore kits, and most had moved-up (or laid-down) shocks. The Yamaha YZ80s were fast, too, and lighter than my XR. But in that late-season race I got good starts, rode better than I had, and ended up with a third overall and a trophy — which George handed me with his huge, callused hands in front of 60 or 70 riders, parents and fans. Boom! Open mouth. Insert hook. For this then-12-year-old it was a truly awesome moment. And the start of a near50-year love of motocross that very definitely inspired this issue.

From there it was a whirlwind several years for me and my dad — and sometimes mom, too. We did all of ’75 on that same XR but with a big-bore kit, pipe and trick monoshock suspension. I won 17 trophies that season, many at Smith Road, and even won a few races. In ’76 we moved up to the 100cc class on a Yamaha YZ100C, did all of ’77 on a YZ125D, and did ’78 on a YZ250E. And every year there’d be George, working the track, driving those tractors with his shirt off, running riders’ meetings in the mornings and handing out trophies at day’s end. I reconnected with George some 12 years ago for a story I wrote called Full Circle about racing at Smith Road after a 30-plus year absence on the last bike I’d ridden there — a ’78 YZ250. Being on that sacred dirt and racing again where it all began for me was amazingly powerful — as was seeing George working the starting gate, watering the track and moving dirt around. George and I kept in touch, and the guy continually amazed me, racing well into his 70s after selling the track and moving to Florida, and still going pretty fast. George was one of the country’s best off-road riders in the 1960s, and he kept those skills sharp right until he quit racing a few years ago when pancreatic cancer got the best of him. The Plas family, which owns and runs Smith Road these days, is having a memorial race in George’s honor at their annual July 4th event. I’m planning to attend before heading to MidOhio for Vintage Motorcycle Days. Godspeed, George. You are in many ways Mr. Motocross to me, and you will be missed.


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.