1967 Gary Nixon Motorcycle Racing History - 4-Page Vintage Article

Description

1967 Gary Nixon Motorcycle Racing History - 4-Page Vintage Article
Original, vintage magazine article.
Page Size: Approx. 8" x 11" (21 cm x 28 cm) each page
Condition: Good
FAR RIGHT; Nixon leads the pack at recent
eastern road race. (Boyd Reynolds photo).
RIGHT; Gary made two appearances in
winner's circle at Daytona this year,
copping the 100-Mile 250cc Expert / Amateur
ecent on a Yamaha and the 200-Mile
Expert race on a Triumph.
BABY
NIXON
A PROFILE
AND HISTORY ON
DAYTONA'S 1967
DOUBLE-WINNER AND
ONE OF AMERICA'S
TOP RACING STARS
BY JOE SCALZO
GARY NIXON thinks it was Everett
Brashear who first told him: “You
want to be a racer, kid, you better start
sticking your wheel in there with the
leaders. You better make up your mind
you can do it. No one will do it for you.”
An impressionable 21-year old at the
time, Nixon instinctively took Brashear’s
advice. “I wanted to be a racer, I was
out of money, and it was the only thing
I could do. I started running every small
and big race I could besides all the
Nationals.”
Gary Nixon, now 26, a ,000-a-year
and full-time motorcycle racer who looks
to be on his way to his first American
Motorcycle Assn. Grand National title,
continues to run every small and big
race he can find. He takes the races
where he finds them, be they on the
hard, flat tracks of Pennsylvania, the
spectacular cushion speedways of Ohio,
the streaking black tarmack road courses
of Illinois and Iowa, or grooved and high-
speed mile ovals like Sacramento, Calif.
Nixon has won races on all these
diverse types of tracks, and is sure to do
more winning this year, and even more
yet the next five years. Or possibly
longer. “You spend your life racing,”
Gary says, “and you finally start clicking
off some of the Nationals. That’s not the
time to take it easy. That’s the time to
really go, to wail.”
Wailing in 1967 should come easy for
Nixon, a 135-pound 5-7 redhead with
deep, sharp eyes, sharp nose, sharp ton-
gue, and a grating, drawling manner of
speech which is the double of pop/
country recording artist Roger Miller. A
tough, short, and transplanted Sooner
living in Baltimore, Nixon-the-racer is
coveted by race promoters throughout
the nation, who realize he is pure fire-
water at the box office. Realizing the
same thing are two of the strongest
motorcycle films in American racing —
Triumph and Yamaha. Both Triumph and
Yamaha have groomed Nixon’s mounts
almost since Gary’s earliest days, and
will continue to. And Nixon, with his
self-styled goal of being Grand National
champion, owes it to himself to do some
wailing this season.
Daytona Beach, Fla., and last March’s
200-mile National road race, clinched the
matter. The 200 was supposed to be be-
tween Gary Nixon and his introspective
but determined road racing rival, Cal
Rayborn. But instead it was Gary Nixon
and Triumph against everyone and even
Rayborn didn’t have a chance. Nixon
won the 200 simply and strongly. He also
won the 100-mile 250cc lightweight race
Saturday. Sunday’s premier 200-miler
was a Triumph picnic; Saturday’s 100-
mile lightweight classic was a Yamaha
picnic. Both races were Gary Nixon
routes.
What does it all mean, or prove? It
means Gary Nixon is off to a giant point
lead in this year’s battle for the difficult
AMA Grand National title, and it proves
he is going to be a most rugged citizen
to stop. Gary Nixon may be the new Bart
Markel of the Sixties.
Markel, that incredibly aggressive
Flint, Mich., tool-and-die maker and
Harley-Davidson stalwart (three-time
Grand National champion), has ruled
AMA Nationals for seasons now, but re-
cently the races Markel didn’t win, Gary
Nixon usually did. Last year Nixon fin-
ished a tenacious second to Markel in the
AMA point standings, and this year, what
with Nixon’s beautiful Daytona sweep,
Gary appears to have a roaring chance of
wearing No. 1 by season’s end, partic-
ularly because of Markel’s poor Daytona
showing.
Thus the stage is now set for some-
thing which has been a-building for
several seasons: the year-long battle be-
tween Markel, the perennial titlist, and
Nixon, the perennial challenger. Of all
people Markel has been in the best po-
sition to watch the rise to prominence of
young Mr. Nixon. Markel has been in
the hot seat. Markel has been the object
of Nixon’s swift, broadsliding blows. Al-
most every aspiring professional motor-
cycle racer starts his career with the aim
of dumping Markel. No one yet has. But
Gary Nixon has been steadying his aim
for eight years, and, what with the final
returns now in from the giant ballotting
box at Daytona International Speedway,
this should be a Nixon year.
Strange!)’, Nixon does not appear to
be wildly, thunderingly overcome by his
chances of becoming the best motorcycle
pilot in all the land. But this lack of
emotion is because racing has always
had the curious effect of acting as a
tranquilizer on him. During a race, after
a race, or even a minute before a race,
Nixon is the epitome of coolness. Un-
ruffled and nerveless, he just may be the
perfect racing machine, working thought-
fully and scientifically and thoroughly
while going faster and smoother than
anyone else.
Perhaps Nixon is this way because of
his free-wheeling conduct away from the
race tracks. In a strange transformation
that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde buffs would
relish, Gary Nixon becomes a bombastic
cut-up on a party or out in everyday life.
Why? No one knows. But the real Gan-
Nixon is a man of two distinct parts; and
these two parts are as distinct and differ-...
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