His and the companies attitude being that failure was fuel for future success, an admirable mantra in these days where we reward our young with participation certificates for trying. We take reliability for granted these days thanks in no small way to the efforts of Mr Honda but we forget too easily the failures he had on the ladder to success. Velos dominated the start grid with no intimidating effect, honest.īill Biber looms large in this view back from Cloud’s GoPro moments after the race start.
#Smith and fetro girder front end full#
Competition in the form of the ever present, friendly, hospitable, and growing Team Rudge, along with a couple of shiny Indians and a few others made up a good looking grid for old girder bikes, what were the chances of that? Some experienced problems of one sort or another in getting their full compliment to the start line, but that’s old bikes and those inflicted with the bug of running them live with this reality constantly. Following ill fated last minute sponsorship negotiations with Pump house Paddy a siting lap and practice was upon us, a proud moment seeing all our riders splendid in black leathers on black machines, visually set off with that fine minimal gold pinstriped tank, the only concession to decoration on the purposeful racers. What chance we might capture something this day to relive such a delight not only in colour and sound but with on bike viewpoints to boot? Either way we looked to better our beginning Eldee2 clip of 2012. Our in-house film crew of Theo and Jasper taped GoPro miniature cameras here and there on the vintage KTT’s giving rise to a classic but ironically accurate comment from octogenarian Neville Wooderson that he presumed the pictures would be in colour! Ruminating on this we surmised that beyond the odd teaser demonstrating the starting procedure of a Velocette or a tame stroll up the street, the online availability of real imagery capturing these machines in close action may well have left off more than 60 years ago with black and white soft focus shots of Freddie Frith and Bob Foster following one another on the GP circuits of Europe, taps fully on circa 1949-50.įreddie Frith leads Bob Foster in the day. The mood in camp Velo was rather quiet with a bit of nervous polishing, checking of oil and fuels levels. Most riders spent the inevitable down time as the show slowly got underway, putting finishing touches on their winner’s acceptance speeches, or indeed speech itself for some, and motard riders practiced the clearly superior and not retarded as some suggest, straight leg out approach to corner exercises. The track new asphalt, in a commercial precinct, wide, long, and enough variety to get a small head of speed without being a boring race from right angle to right angle. Nervous anticipation and the crowd both grew as the morning progressed. World domination may have been in his minds eye but the sponsoring of a Street race in Invercargill some 65 years later? Maybe not but the ‘Honda Invercargill Street Races’ it was. Veloce had used this business method to great success and ‘The Old Man’ as a student of the history and evolution of the racing motorcycle would have been only too aware of the deep seated passion and determination that is street racing. Marketing through racing was not new, he already had demonstrated the right balance of market savvy, engineering nous, ambition, belief in himself, and his already established ‘dream’. A far reaching historical reference, but rolling with the theme of the unlikely, when Soichiro Honda visited the isle of Man in the early fifties he wanted to scope out the best machinery on offer in the world and to see whether a Honda might be built to compete there. Thankfully the sky is not threatening to deliver Southland’s norm of flagrant horizontal squalls, what were the chances? Team Velo lined up a string of Cammy pre-war racers all entered in what could be described as a ‘loose girder fork’ class, five prewar Velocette’s in total, two MKVIIIs, two MKIVs, and the Big Velo. Chris Swallow, Phil Price, Cloud Craig-Smith, Nick Thomson and Bill Biber line up for a team photo with the winning trio of the KTT MKVIII pair and the ‘Big Velo’ 500.Ī cool wind but clearing sky greeted our Sunday, race day, on the back streets close to town.