There is much sadness in the motorcycling world this week as word spreads of the passing of one of America’s greatest motorcycle racers ever. Two-time AMA Grand National champion Dick “Bugsy” Mann passed away on April 26 at his home near Reno, Nevada. He would have been 87 years old on June 13.
Dick’s versatility on a motorcycle will never be matched. There were so many specialists back in his days of racing, when there were five types of events in the AMA Grand National Championship. On the point-scoring calendar were 1/4-mile Short Tracks, 1/2-mile and 1-mile Flat Tracks, TTs, and Roadraces. Of the thousands who have tried, Dick Mann is one of only four riders in the history of the AMA Grand National series to have won in all five. Only Mann, Kenny Roberts, Bubba Shobert, and Doug Chandler ever achieved that.
Dick won the Daytona 200 twice (1970 and ’71), as well as many other roadraces through the years. So you might think he just liked smooth tracks. The truth was in dirt track racing, the rougher it got, his chances of winning went way up. That brings me to a story he told me a couple of years ago when I visited him and his wife Kay at their house in Nevada.
We were talking about racing, of course, and I asked him how it was that he was so good on the rough dirt tracks. He said the late, great racer Joe Leonard told him when he was getting started back in the 1950s that it would pay off to be good on rough tracks. Dick said Joe told him that at the smooth tracks there would always be 20 or more of what Joe called the “soup-and-salad guys” who would all go fast. But when the track is rough and dusty, only a few will be any good.
Dick took Joe’s advice and he wasn’t just good at the rough AMA Nationals. In the off-season Mann rode motocross at the pro level, as well as Enduros and other off-road events. In 1975 he earned a place on America’s International Six Days Trial team and won a bronze medal.
Two books were written about him: Motorcycle Ace. The Dick Mann Story, written by Joe Scalzo and published in 1972, and Mann of His Time, by Ed Youngblood in 2002. Mann has also been honored by the major motorsports institutions. He was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1993, the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1998, and the TrailBlazers Hall of Fame. In 2005, Mann received the TrailBlazers highest honor when he was the recipient of the prestigious Dick Hammer Award.
In his later years, Dick was involved with vintage motocross and Trials, restoring antique motorcycles and traveling to events in America and also to England to participate in reunions with his many former racing competitors.
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