ELSINORE

A short photo history of the iconic Elsinore Grand Prix of 1970

BY MITCH BOEHM PHOTOS: MALCOLM SMITH ARCHIVE

Many of you can probably recall Bruce Brown’s words without even being prompted: “Fifteen hundred riders and 50,000 spectators fill the little town. It’s a 100-mile race through the streets of the city and in the foothills outside of town…If there’s one event you ride each year, it’s the Elsinore Grand Prix. People of all ages…Girls, the pig farmer from Murietta...”

It’s one of the best-loved segments of Bruce Brown’s legendary moto-documentary On Any Sunday, one that made the race internationally famous.

The mix of pro riders (Malcolm Smith, for one) and personalities (actor Steve McQueen, for another), intermediates and weekend warriors, the sleepy little retirement town, ELSINORE!

that epic mudhole and the uncontrolled ’70s-era craziness of it all (the crowds were the catch fences in places!) resonated pretty strongly with an American public in the process of flipping its lid over motorcycling.

But there’s actually a lot of bittersweet irony here. Brown’s lovely documentary cemented legendary status to the Gripsters-promoted 1970 race for a couple of lifetimes, but also helped doom it, as the 1972 event, which took place less than a year after the debut of the movie in the summer of 1971, was nearly totally out of control in terms of crowds and (mostly) young people and the issues that come with that — crowd-control and safety, drugs and alcohol, lawsuits, what have you.

That 1972 event was the last of the

five original EGPs (1968 – 1972) and the last for more than two decades, until pro motocrosser Goat Breker resurrected the Elsinore GP in 1996.

“The town of Elsinore got pounded during that 1972 race,” remembers Gripsters club historian Ms. C. J. “Sparkplug” Stewart. “[On Any Sunday] was just too good, too powerful,” she added. “Folks just had to come and see what the fuss was all about, and neither the club nor the city was ready for the many thousands of spectators that showed up.”

Of course, when Brown approached the Gripsters and the City in early 1970 about his desire to film the event for a movie he was planning to do (Brown reportedly offered $1,000 and a copy of the film when finished for the right to shoot it), no one had any idea what would come to pass in the summer of 1971 and beyond, and how significant Brown’s efforts would be to the sport of motorcycling.

Still, despite the EGP’s only-five-year run (initially, at least), the celluloid snapshot Brown gave the world back in mid 1971 remains an epic touchstone to motorcycling’s semi-recent past — and to the Elsinore Grand Prix itself. While it’s sometimes difficult to

absorb that On Any Sunday is now 51 years old, and that Malcolm Smith and “Harvey Mushman” (Steve McQueen) were young men at the time Brown filmed them, the film’s ability to inspire and tell evergreen motorcycle stories continues today — and in some cases even more strongly than it did in the 1970s.

So enjoy the photos, and to keep up with the Gripsters (an AMA Historical Charter) and Elsinore Grand Prix history and the people that make it all possible, check out Gripsters MC on Facebook.

That the Elsinore Grand Prix of the late 1960s and early 1970s was “a happening” isn’t in dispute. It was perhaps the country’s coolest motorcycle race, a coming together of hard-core racers (more than 1,500 in 1970), weekend warriors, casual enthusiasts and the curious — but it only lasted five years, in its original form, anyway.

The EGP was put on by a Southern California club called Gripsters MC, and its current president Mike Boyle (a club member in his early 20s back then) recalls the scene and the reasons for its eventual demise in late 1972. “It was wonderful, and crazy, and lots of fun,” he told us for this story. “But what eventually undid things…”

“….were the hassles of a lawsuit, which were expensive for a not-for-profit club.” The litigation referred to was a suit filed by the woman who ran across the track with two kids in tow and was hit in Sunday’s open-class race by none other than AMA Hall of Famer Malcolm Smith…

…who was severely shaken by the incident. “I was headed straight for the smallest child,” Malcolm says, “and while I swerved and missed the child, I hit the woman pretty hard, breaking some ribs and knocking her into the crowd. She survived, but it was not fun.” Hey, that’s a cherry Ford Pinto in the background! 1970s, baby!