I don’t go to modern race meetings. The sight of dozens of I4 Japanese bikes whizzing by, all looking the same and sounding the same just doesn’t do it for me. That’s why my forays to the track these days are for the historic races where I can recognise the bikes, read the number boards and know who the riders are. So I can’t say with any certainty what attention is paid to the grading of the riders at modern races or even if the riders’ grades are listed in the programme as they used to be, but it is interesting to look at grading of riders as it was because it was a much more complex issue than what it first appears.
When I first started going to the races in early 1976, riders in the three most populous states, NSW, Queensland and Victoria were graded according to their ability, experience and performance. There were three grades, C, B and A, as seen in the photo of the Macarthur Park programme, late 1978.
C grade was the lowest grade and it was for novice riders. At a C grade race day (and there were many of them) the first race of the day was always the Novice Race. This race was restricted to riders who had not filled any of the first three places in any race they had contested to that point. Once a rider had finished 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in a race he/she was no longer considered a Novice. This restriction did not mean that Novices couldn’t compete in any other of the races on the day and, of course, they all did; getting as many rides in a day was part of the game. C grade meant that you were a novice to the sport and that you were starting at the bottom.
Part and parcel of the novice grading was the rider’s choice of machinery. Though a TZ 250 or 350 WAS affordable (more of that in a moment), most riders started out on a production bike of some sort. Often the bike was their road bike, suitably fettled for racing. By the time I started going to the races the previously common practice of riding your bike to the track, stripping off the road-going gear, racing it all day then returning it to road-legal form at the end of the day and riding it home had just about ceased.
A production bike was usually one of two sorts, either the rider’s Kawasaki Z1 or a 250cc two stroke bike like the Yamaha RD250 or the Suzuki GT250. These two bikes pretty much dominated the C grade grids during this time. They were a good choice. With standard exhaust pipes they could be run in 250 Production and, with the stock pipes being replaced by a set of expansion chambers they could be raced in 250 Improved Touring. Again, more rides per day.
And once the riders had done a year or so on the proddy bike, they would then graduate to a “proper” race bike, almost always a Yamaha TZ250 or TZ350. It’s hard in these days when proper racing bikes don’t race any more to realise that a genuine road racing two stroke bike was within the reach of many riders’ budgets. A 250 OR a 350 was around $2500 when I started following the sport. Yes, that sounds cheap, but it was more than half of an average worker’s yearly income so they weren’t THAT cheap. But finance was readily available and many riders bought their TZ’s on the never-never. Along with the bike came a comprehensive spares kit which, if you looked after the bike, could easily last you a year and still be largely intact when, at the end of the racing season, you looked to sell the thing and upgrade to the next model.
The aim, of course, was to get out of C grade as fast as you could and get into the “graded” races where you could race WITH your heroes (Willing, Hansford et al) rather than just watch them over the fence. There were a few exceptions, however, Sydney’s John Collins, a very talented and experienced rider, did all that he could to AVOID being upgraded, preferring the quiet life of a club racer to the huryy burly of open competition. Indeed, on his entry forms, John would always refer to himself as “perpetual C grader”. It always got a giggle when you were sorting entry forms. Getting out of C grade wasn’t that easy, at least not in NSW it wasn’t. The Grading Committee of the ACU of NSW, the sports local governing body, was overseen by the formidable and quiet Arthur Blizzard and his equally determined but not-so-quiet wife, Jan. Along with several other senior officials, it was their job, at regular intervals, to pore over road race meeting results and determine who had done enough to deserve being the recipient of “The Letter”. Criteria was strict and was not confined solely to looking at how many races a rider had won since last the committee met. Also considered was lap times over the period, consistency of results and the overall “package” that a rider was seen to be.
It was unheard of, when I first arrived on the scene, for a rider to be upgraded in less than a 12 month period. In that 12 months a rider could have ridden a couple of dozen meetings and given the committee plenty of feedback as to their suitability or otherwise. Ron Boulden was upgraded all the way to A grade in just over a year, an astonishing achievement, superseded a couple of years later by Wollongong’s John Macdonald who made it all the way to the top in less than a year, a record that stood for quite some time.
The next grade was, unsurprisingly, B grade where a much higher expectation faced the rider. He went from being the cream of the crop to being a nobody, racing against what were, by now, seasoned veterans. The talented and brave filtered to the top again, some quickly and some less quickly. Some never did, finding that they had reached the limits of their budget, enthusiasm and talent. The learning curve was steeper and the expectation of the Grading Committee was increased.
Sometime in the late 70’s a Provisional B Grade class was introduced. This enabled newly graded riders to “ease into” the next class up without as much pressure. If a riders settled quickly into the new class, a promotion to full B grade usually happened fairly quickly.
As you can see from the above programme list, the number of A grade riders was ridiculously small compared to those in the lower grades. As you get closer to the top of the mountain, there are fewer climbers to accompany you, is the saying. Getting an “A” after your name was a major achievement compared to the transition between the lower grades. NOW, as B grade rider, your performances were measured against a much more stringent standard and you had to show that you COULD, in fact, beat the big name riders or, at least match their performances. AND, in NSW, you stood almost zero chance of getting to A grade if you didn’t ride a TZ Yamaha or an RG500 Suzuki. Though it was never written down anywhere, everyone in the game knew that Arthur Blizzard was not going to even consider your name for upgrading to A grade if you hadn’t ridden for a season on a PROPER racing bike. And so we had luminaries like Roger Heyes, Dennis Neill and others, riding around for the requisite number of meetings on a TZ Yamaha so that they could get their “letter” and then ditching the 2 stroke bikes and getting back on their Superbikes. I can’t remember how Roy Dennison got around this requirement because I don’t ever remember seeing him on a TZ. Perhaps the Grading Committee, known for its total lack of humour of any kind had their funny bones tickled just a little trying to imagine the impressively sized Roy trying to wrap himself around a little TZ 🙂
While the Jews and Samaritans concept was alive and well when it came to relations between Victoria’s ACU and race organisers and those from NSW, there did, at least, seem to be agreement on the riders’ gradings being transferrable between their separate jurisdictions. If you were A grade in NSW, you were the same grade in Victoria and vice versa.
And, while we’re on the subject of Victoria, it was always felt at the time that the south of the border officials were far less stringent when considering riders’ gradings than the NSW ones were. There were many examples of prospective talents being upgraded in record time during this era. Whether this was because of a “mine’s bigger than yours” situation or not, I don’t know but we always felt that many Victorian riders had not done nearly enough to “earn their spurs”
Gradings took place on a rolling basis during the year and it was always exciting to go to a club meeting and have one of our riders hold up his letter and announce that he’d been moved upwards. However, there was one exception to this. For reasons that always escaped me (though it could be related again to the Grading Committee and their taciturn way of doing things) there was always an upgrading flurry just before the traditional Easter Bathurst Carnival. It was during the lead-up to the Easter weekend that many riders who knew they were under consideration would avoid going to the letterbox in case the dreaded “Letter” was there. Of course, it would be much easier if you were a C grade rider, to ride Bathurst as a C grader rather than to be thrown into the B grade races without any opportunity to prepare for the vastly increased competition and pressure that went along with it. It was a forlorn hope, however, because, when you turned up to race, there was Jan telling you that you had to race in B grade.
Watching from the sideline as riders negotiated the vagaries of racing and the Grading Committee was alwasy interesting and it’s been fun dragging up those memories again to day. I hope you enjoyed it.
