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1/25/2012 5:50pm
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/1802/header1vm5.jpg[/img:77039]
(From Cycle Magazine - February 1967)
The World Moto-Cross Champion mopped up the West Coast then came East to New England's All-Star Scrambles...
Nobody can tell anymore whether Torsten Hallman is a natural or whether his excellence came by way of hard work and self-discipline. Riding the European Moto-Cross circuit for seven years straight will certainly hone away the rough edges from any rider's talent. Besides that, Torsten's a factory rider with a job to hold down and a nation's prestige to defend. So he rides hard and this year he brought home the 250cc World Moto-Cross Championship. His sponsors, the Husqvarna factory of Sweden, decided to reward him with a promotional tour to America. We at Cycle watched him ride here. It doesn't matter whether or not he's a natural, we know this for sure-Torsten Hallman outrode every rider the U.S. and Canada put up against him.
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/9061/imagepage2bxl1.jpg[/img:77039]
The champion winged in from Europe to his nominal host, Edison Dye of Med-International, importers of Husqvarna motorcycles in the United States. Using the firm's San Diego office as headquarters, Hallman entered a series of West Coast off-the-road events. His first race was the Pacific Coast Hare Scrambles Championship at Willseyville, California, where Torsten neatly took first over-all riding a Husky 360. In quick succession he then won the Canadian Championship MotorCross in Vancouver, British Columbia, and the district scrambles at Kiona, Washington, both in the 250 class.
A week later, on November 20, Torsten rode the Corriganville Grand Prix Scrambles in southern California. Immune to the enormous sanction controversy raging over the event (see page 60), he outran a field of almost 800 entries to take first in the 250 and the 500 classes. Here his professionalism paid off nicely: $800.
It was then that Torsten and his host headed east for new glory. Eastern riders from Quebec to Florida had been alerted and organized by a group from Massachusetts headed by Bob Hicks, editor of Cycle Sport magazine. We finally caught up with the champion at their track in a little town called Pepperell, Massachusetts. On hand were the top AMA Sportsman riders from every major racing group on the East Coast. The race was called the New England All-Star Invitational Scrambles, and, in honor of their visitor, it was to be run under international Moto-Cross rules.
On race day we threaded our way into the pits before practice, finding the champion sitting at ease on the tailgate of a pick-up truck. We introduced ourselves as Cycle staff members and chatted awhile. Torsten Hallman is above all else cool. His manner is polite, deliberate, and unemotional. In less than an hour he was to begin riding against other champions on a course that was almost totally unfamiliar to him. Yet he spoke without a trace of pre-race tension. He was neither casual nor condescending, just quietly impassive. Our talk was brief, but we guessed that this would be a difficult man to know or understand, a man whose powerful motivations lay a long way beneath that cool Nordic exterior.
The champion gave us a few of his impressions of American racing. "Too fast," he told us. "Your courses are laid out so that a rider must have the most powerful machine. In Europe the courses call for more skill from the rider. There are steeper hills, tighter turns, more obstacles. A good rider on an old machine can win. But not here." Since he had so far been a winner at both types of racing, we asked him which he preferred. "I would rather ride a rider's course," he said. The World Champion stated a simple preference without a trace of conceit. After the races, which had done no harm to his record, we asked him whether he thought Western or Eastern U.S. riders were better. "Here," he said. "I think they're better here."
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/9374/imagepage2asx7.jpg[/img:77039]
A politic answer, perhaps, but he does not seem a man disposed to guile. He had ridden thirty laps of intense competition. He had been on the road for over a month, riding at least twice a week. Yet just as his face did not betray emotion, it failed to show fatigue. The stuff champions are made of, we supposed. Physically, Hallman is tall, blonde, even-featured. For all his height, he is slight of frame and there is a disarming softness about his build. Compared to the chunky, muscular Americans, he displays a frailty that only his riding refutes. Nearly mute, physically contradictory, emotionally cool, the champion is more an enigma now than before we met him.
Weeks ahead of the races at Pepperell we had investigated his competition background. Born in Sweden in 1939, Hallman had begun riding off-the-road events under factory sponsorship at age 18. A brother, some nine years older, had been a successful international rider for many years. In that first year of sponsored riding, Torsten won the Swedish National Endurance Championship. Three years later, in 1960, he was to begin competing on the international moto-cross circuit, which includes events in nearly every European country.
To the surprise of many and the joy of Husqvarna, twenty-one-year-old Torsten placed seventh over-all his first season out. The next year he placed fourth and, in 1962 at age twenty-three, he won the world championship. He retained the title the following year, placed second in 1964 and fourth in 1965. Lost year, 1966, he won the World Moto-Cross Championship in the 250cc class again, becoming the first rider ever to take the title three times. In addition he belonged to the teams that in recent years brought Sweden three World Team Championships.
The machines ridden to these victories were factory specials, but Husqvarna has been producing series bikes for over a decade-bikes which fare very well in the hands of privateers in both ISDT-type and Moto-Cross competition. Husqvarna's first world championship was won in 1959. The Huskys, rugged, durable, and expensive, are sold almost exclusively to proven competition riders and to the Swedish army. The bikes come in two sizes; 250cc and 360cc. The 250 ridden by Torsten Hallman at Pepperell had already completed two seasons and over sixty races-ridden by California's Malcolm Smith. It ran that brisk New England day in high tune and with apparently as much useful speed as the four-stroke 500s.
All business and no glitter, the bike looked menacingly efficient on race day at Pepperell. Our interview with the champion was interrupted when practice for the 250s was announced. Hallman started the machine and ambled onto the track to take a few easy laps. We were disappointed at his lack of flare. His approach was studious, yet we sensed that he was more concerned with sorting out the bike and getting the engine up to temperature than learning the course. Other riders shot by, gradually reducing their lap times as they mastered the track's lumps and turns, To a large percentage of the New England riders, the course was already quite familiar and practice was just a matter of reassuring themselves that the some jolts could be expected in the same places.
Not more than a mile in length, the circuit closed on itself in mostly left-hand turns (riding counterclockwise) with two very tight right-handers. There were practically no grades and there couldn't have been more than a hundred vertical feet separating the highest and lowest points of the circuit. As Torsten had said, it was a fast course, and would have been faster but for the jump on the back straight and the washboard surface pounded into permanence by countless bikes in countless races.
By the time they called the rider's meeting, we were half expecting to see the champion ridden into the ground. The sun was shining, the air was crisp, and the New England riders were fully charged for a go at Europe's best. A last-minute surprise entry added still more interest. Yvon Duhamel, the Canadian National Scrambles Champion, showed up to ride against Hallman in both the 250 and 500 classes.
As the riders gathered in the infield, we saw many familiar faces. Number-one- New-England riders Ed Smalley, Mel Ganscos, Joe Bolger and Bruce Maguire were present. North-vs-South Champion Ed Varnes of Cochranville, Pa., had arrived. Others from the New York and Middle Atlantic states area were Barry Higgins, John Rodi and the brothers Robinson-Dave and Tom. From Florida came a whole squad of highpoint riders including Dorsey Field and Bob McClanahan. As referee Leslie Beech read out the ground rules, a peck of good old New England winesap apples was passed out among this stellar assembly.
Moto-Cross rules called for three separate ten lap heats in each displacement class. Points were awarded to the first ten places in each heat, beginning with 400 for the winner. At the end of three heats, over-all winner is decided on the basis of accumulated points, 1200 being the maximum possible. At Pepperell, they were running four classes: 125cc, 250cc, 500cc, and Open. The referee introduced leading riders to the crowd and announced that Torsten Hallman would ride the same 250cc machine in both its own and the 500cc class.
Positions on the starting grid were decided on somewhat arbitrary ranking by merit, with guest-of-honor Hallman getting the pole position and the number-one contender placed beside him. Other positions were paired according to geography, number-one New Englander next to number-one Canadian, etc. Duhamel was paired with Hallman for the 250 and Big Gun Joe Bolger was also in the front line. Bolger has run away with the New England championship by large margins for several seasons going and the local fans were out in strength to see the European toppled.
In the first few minutes of the first event, everyone was pretty sure there would be a contest. At the flag, the riders were off in a great roar, Torsten's canary-yellow riding sweater leading off as a kind of beacon for the others. But the tough little Canadian champion was right behind him. Duhamel is barely five feet tall and must weigh less than 150 lb. In the first few laps he even passed Hallman a couple of times. But then he just sort of burned out, ran out of competitive juice, and fell back into the field with the others.
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/2739/imagepage2cit3.jpg[/img:77039]
Nobody could touch Hallman in either class. The slender Swede didn't ride, he flew. His progress around the course was swift, graceful, remarkably smooth. He looked like some kind of skinny wraith, cutting his way effortlessly through the slower riders whom he had soon lapped. If you blocked out his bike as it leaped and bucked over the bumps and if you focused on his upper body alone, you'd swear he was riding a road race. We actually tried to single out a specific element which gave to Hallman's riding style its overwhelming impression of completely integrated unity. The base of his skull, somebody suggested: It traces a smooth, uninterrupted line about five feet above the dirt, completely around the course, almost like a diamond needle in a record groove, floating almost as lightly and tracking as surely.
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/2522/imagepage3azr9.jpg[/img:77039]
Suffice it to say, he could ride on a scrambles track like no one we had ever seen. He easily won all three heats in the 250 class. He may even have been holding back, as he always finished with a comfortable lead of about one- third the course over the number-two rider. On the same machine, riding against four strokes of twice its capacity, he almost captured his second win by the same margin. But Barry Higgins on a BSA gave him a better run, though the two of them left the field far behind. Torsten even had to cut the clowning on the front straight, two-thirds of which he had been riding on the rear wheel of his fully wound-out Husky. Again, he won all three heats.
After the races, we saw the World Moto-Cross Champion resting quite placidly on the back of the pickup truck. He had bruised his leg badly in the day's run and broken seven spokes in the Husky's rear wheel. His yellow jersey was as immaculate as when he had set out. Organizer Bob Hicks came over in dust-covered leathers. He, too, had ridden a remarkable race, outpacing the East's best to take a second to Hallman in the 250. "I had to do it," he said. "I just couldn't see him lap us like he did on the West Coast." When we left, one of the local stars was trying Hallman's machine on the course. Its note was flat and limp, the song gone out of it as if Hallman alone knew the secret of that tone and carried it with him.
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/9826/moto317py7.jpg[/img:77039]
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/8478/moto316xn7.jpg[/img:77039]
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/7154/moto032fc7.jpg[/img:77039]
(From Cycle Magazine - February 1967)
The World Moto-Cross Champion mopped up the West Coast then came East to New England's All-Star Scrambles...
Nobody can tell anymore whether Torsten Hallman is a natural or whether his excellence came by way of hard work and self-discipline. Riding the European Moto-Cross circuit for seven years straight will certainly hone away the rough edges from any rider's talent. Besides that, Torsten's a factory rider with a job to hold down and a nation's prestige to defend. So he rides hard and this year he brought home the 250cc World Moto-Cross Championship. His sponsors, the Husqvarna factory of Sweden, decided to reward him with a promotional tour to America. We at Cycle watched him ride here. It doesn't matter whether or not he's a natural, we know this for sure-Torsten Hallman outrode every rider the U.S. and Canada put up against him.
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/9061/imagepage2bxl1.jpg[/img:77039]
The champion winged in from Europe to his nominal host, Edison Dye of Med-International, importers of Husqvarna motorcycles in the United States. Using the firm's San Diego office as headquarters, Hallman entered a series of West Coast off-the-road events. His first race was the Pacific Coast Hare Scrambles Championship at Willseyville, California, where Torsten neatly took first over-all riding a Husky 360. In quick succession he then won the Canadian Championship MotorCross in Vancouver, British Columbia, and the district scrambles at Kiona, Washington, both in the 250 class.
A week later, on November 20, Torsten rode the Corriganville Grand Prix Scrambles in southern California. Immune to the enormous sanction controversy raging over the event (see page 60), he outran a field of almost 800 entries to take first in the 250 and the 500 classes. Here his professionalism paid off nicely: $800.
It was then that Torsten and his host headed east for new glory. Eastern riders from Quebec to Florida had been alerted and organized by a group from Massachusetts headed by Bob Hicks, editor of Cycle Sport magazine. We finally caught up with the champion at their track in a little town called Pepperell, Massachusetts. On hand were the top AMA Sportsman riders from every major racing group on the East Coast. The race was called the New England All-Star Invitational Scrambles, and, in honor of their visitor, it was to be run under international Moto-Cross rules.
On race day we threaded our way into the pits before practice, finding the champion sitting at ease on the tailgate of a pick-up truck. We introduced ourselves as Cycle staff members and chatted awhile. Torsten Hallman is above all else cool. His manner is polite, deliberate, and unemotional. In less than an hour he was to begin riding against other champions on a course that was almost totally unfamiliar to him. Yet he spoke without a trace of pre-race tension. He was neither casual nor condescending, just quietly impassive. Our talk was brief, but we guessed that this would be a difficult man to know or understand, a man whose powerful motivations lay a long way beneath that cool Nordic exterior.
The champion gave us a few of his impressions of American racing. "Too fast," he told us. "Your courses are laid out so that a rider must have the most powerful machine. In Europe the courses call for more skill from the rider. There are steeper hills, tighter turns, more obstacles. A good rider on an old machine can win. But not here." Since he had so far been a winner at both types of racing, we asked him which he preferred. "I would rather ride a rider's course," he said. The World Champion stated a simple preference without a trace of conceit. After the races, which had done no harm to his record, we asked him whether he thought Western or Eastern U.S. riders were better. "Here," he said. "I think they're better here."
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/9374/imagepage2asx7.jpg[/img:77039]
A politic answer, perhaps, but he does not seem a man disposed to guile. He had ridden thirty laps of intense competition. He had been on the road for over a month, riding at least twice a week. Yet just as his face did not betray emotion, it failed to show fatigue. The stuff champions are made of, we supposed. Physically, Hallman is tall, blonde, even-featured. For all his height, he is slight of frame and there is a disarming softness about his build. Compared to the chunky, muscular Americans, he displays a frailty that only his riding refutes. Nearly mute, physically contradictory, emotionally cool, the champion is more an enigma now than before we met him.
Weeks ahead of the races at Pepperell we had investigated his competition background. Born in Sweden in 1939, Hallman had begun riding off-the-road events under factory sponsorship at age 18. A brother, some nine years older, had been a successful international rider for many years. In that first year of sponsored riding, Torsten won the Swedish National Endurance Championship. Three years later, in 1960, he was to begin competing on the international moto-cross circuit, which includes events in nearly every European country.
To the surprise of many and the joy of Husqvarna, twenty-one-year-old Torsten placed seventh over-all his first season out. The next year he placed fourth and, in 1962 at age twenty-three, he won the world championship. He retained the title the following year, placed second in 1964 and fourth in 1965. Lost year, 1966, he won the World Moto-Cross Championship in the 250cc class again, becoming the first rider ever to take the title three times. In addition he belonged to the teams that in recent years brought Sweden three World Team Championships.
The machines ridden to these victories were factory specials, but Husqvarna has been producing series bikes for over a decade-bikes which fare very well in the hands of privateers in both ISDT-type and Moto-Cross competition. Husqvarna's first world championship was won in 1959. The Huskys, rugged, durable, and expensive, are sold almost exclusively to proven competition riders and to the Swedish army. The bikes come in two sizes; 250cc and 360cc. The 250 ridden by Torsten Hallman at Pepperell had already completed two seasons and over sixty races-ridden by California's Malcolm Smith. It ran that brisk New England day in high tune and with apparently as much useful speed as the four-stroke 500s.
All business and no glitter, the bike looked menacingly efficient on race day at Pepperell. Our interview with the champion was interrupted when practice for the 250s was announced. Hallman started the machine and ambled onto the track to take a few easy laps. We were disappointed at his lack of flare. His approach was studious, yet we sensed that he was more concerned with sorting out the bike and getting the engine up to temperature than learning the course. Other riders shot by, gradually reducing their lap times as they mastered the track's lumps and turns, To a large percentage of the New England riders, the course was already quite familiar and practice was just a matter of reassuring themselves that the some jolts could be expected in the same places.
Not more than a mile in length, the circuit closed on itself in mostly left-hand turns (riding counterclockwise) with two very tight right-handers. There were practically no grades and there couldn't have been more than a hundred vertical feet separating the highest and lowest points of the circuit. As Torsten had said, it was a fast course, and would have been faster but for the jump on the back straight and the washboard surface pounded into permanence by countless bikes in countless races.
By the time they called the rider's meeting, we were half expecting to see the champion ridden into the ground. The sun was shining, the air was crisp, and the New England riders were fully charged for a go at Europe's best. A last-minute surprise entry added still more interest. Yvon Duhamel, the Canadian National Scrambles Champion, showed up to ride against Hallman in both the 250 and 500 classes.
As the riders gathered in the infield, we saw many familiar faces. Number-one- New-England riders Ed Smalley, Mel Ganscos, Joe Bolger and Bruce Maguire were present. North-vs-South Champion Ed Varnes of Cochranville, Pa., had arrived. Others from the New York and Middle Atlantic states area were Barry Higgins, John Rodi and the brothers Robinson-Dave and Tom. From Florida came a whole squad of highpoint riders including Dorsey Field and Bob McClanahan. As referee Leslie Beech read out the ground rules, a peck of good old New England winesap apples was passed out among this stellar assembly.
Moto-Cross rules called for three separate ten lap heats in each displacement class. Points were awarded to the first ten places in each heat, beginning with 400 for the winner. At the end of three heats, over-all winner is decided on the basis of accumulated points, 1200 being the maximum possible. At Pepperell, they were running four classes: 125cc, 250cc, 500cc, and Open. The referee introduced leading riders to the crowd and announced that Torsten Hallman would ride the same 250cc machine in both its own and the 500cc class.
Positions on the starting grid were decided on somewhat arbitrary ranking by merit, with guest-of-honor Hallman getting the pole position and the number-one contender placed beside him. Other positions were paired according to geography, number-one New Englander next to number-one Canadian, etc. Duhamel was paired with Hallman for the 250 and Big Gun Joe Bolger was also in the front line. Bolger has run away with the New England championship by large margins for several seasons going and the local fans were out in strength to see the European toppled.
In the first few minutes of the first event, everyone was pretty sure there would be a contest. At the flag, the riders were off in a great roar, Torsten's canary-yellow riding sweater leading off as a kind of beacon for the others. But the tough little Canadian champion was right behind him. Duhamel is barely five feet tall and must weigh less than 150 lb. In the first few laps he even passed Hallman a couple of times. But then he just sort of burned out, ran out of competitive juice, and fell back into the field with the others.
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/2739/imagepage2cit3.jpg[/img:77039]
Nobody could touch Hallman in either class. The slender Swede didn't ride, he flew. His progress around the course was swift, graceful, remarkably smooth. He looked like some kind of skinny wraith, cutting his way effortlessly through the slower riders whom he had soon lapped. If you blocked out his bike as it leaped and bucked over the bumps and if you focused on his upper body alone, you'd swear he was riding a road race. We actually tried to single out a specific element which gave to Hallman's riding style its overwhelming impression of completely integrated unity. The base of his skull, somebody suggested: It traces a smooth, uninterrupted line about five feet above the dirt, completely around the course, almost like a diamond needle in a record groove, floating almost as lightly and tracking as surely.
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/2522/imagepage3azr9.jpg[/img:77039]
Suffice it to say, he could ride on a scrambles track like no one we had ever seen. He easily won all three heats in the 250 class. He may even have been holding back, as he always finished with a comfortable lead of about one- third the course over the number-two rider. On the same machine, riding against four strokes of twice its capacity, he almost captured his second win by the same margin. But Barry Higgins on a BSA gave him a better run, though the two of them left the field far behind. Torsten even had to cut the clowning on the front straight, two-thirds of which he had been riding on the rear wheel of his fully wound-out Husky. Again, he won all three heats.
After the races, we saw the World Moto-Cross Champion resting quite placidly on the back of the pickup truck. He had bruised his leg badly in the day's run and broken seven spokes in the Husky's rear wheel. His yellow jersey was as immaculate as when he had set out. Organizer Bob Hicks came over in dust-covered leathers. He, too, had ridden a remarkable race, outpacing the East's best to take a second to Hallman in the 250. "I had to do it," he said. "I just couldn't see him lap us like he did on the West Coast." When we left, one of the local stars was trying Hallman's machine on the course. Its note was flat and limp, the song gone out of it as if Hallman alone knew the secret of that tone and carried it with him.
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/9826/moto317py7.jpg[/img:77039]
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/8478/moto316xn7.jpg[/img:77039]
[img:77039]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/7154/moto032fc7.jpg[/img:77039]
I never knew that about Yvonne Duhamel. I thought he was always a Road Racer with an occasional run at the flat-tracks in the 70's.
The Shop
In '69 I saw DuHamel at the Peoria TT. Kawasaki had one of those British twin knock offs at the time and he was tying to run one there. You could always tell him from behind. About 5 foot nothing with a chest like a barrel. Didn't make the show as I remember.
Never knew he was a motocrosser though.
In '69 I saw DuHamel at the Peoria TT. Kawasaki had one of those British twin knock offs at the time and he was tying to run one there. You could always tell him from behind. About 5 foot nothing with a chest like a barrel. Didn't make the show as I remember.
Never knew he was a motocrosser though.[/quote:8613f]He was a heck of a snowmobile racer too.
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