Larry Lawrence | September 26, 2021
Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
This Cycle News Archives Column is reprinted from the October 31, 2007 issue. CN has hundreds of past Archives columns in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road -Editor.
The Would-Be Champion
To this day, Mike Runyard believes he won the 1973 AMA 500cc Motocross Championship. The record books say Pierre Karsmakers took it, but Runyard claims that it was a quirk in the rulebook that cost him the title.
Second-placed Runyard was the top American-born racer in the 1973 AMA 500cc National Motocross Championship. Dutchman Pierre Karsmakers, racing with an American license, won the championship. There is debate as to who really won the title.
When motocross was formally sanctioned by the AMA in 1970, the association realized that the American riders would stand little chance of beating the more established European riders. So, a policy was implemented that would essentially name AMA champions based on the top finishing American riders in the Trans-Am and later the Inter-Am series. Dick Burleson, for example, won the 1970 AMA 500cc Motocross Championship, even though he was ranked fourth overall in the Trans-Am Series. He was the top American finisher, so he was the American champ.
The AMA launched its own National Motocross Championship in 1972, in both the 500cc and 250cc classes. It’s a bit confusing because points for the top finishing Americans in select Trans-Am (500cc) and Inter-Am (250cc) still counted toward the separate AMA National Motocross Championship through the 1973 season.
In any case, the AMA Motocross Championship was specifically designated for AMA-licensed riders—a closed series, if you will, to highlight America’s rising motocross talent. Most felt that the new AMA series was exclusively for American riders, but Yamaha saw the large loophole in the rulebook language that simply specified AMA-licensed riders. Yamaha brought in Belgium ace Karsmakers (that’s right, the “Flying Dutchman” was actually from the small Belgian village of Achtel, on the Holland border), signed him up under an AMA license instead of an FIM license and—voilà—Karsmakers was racing for an American title.
So, in the 1973 AMA 500cc Motocross Championship, Runyard, riding for Suzuki, did what he could against the vastly more experienced Karsmakers. He won two rounds that year, one in Memphis and the other at Pocono, Pennsylvania, on his factory Suzuki RN370. Runyard backed up those wins with a slew of podium results, but Karsmakers, on the factory Yamaha YZ360, ultimately won seven rounds and the title.
The other factories cried foul. Meetings were held, and it was decided to implement a two-year residency requirement before a foreign rider could be eligible to race for an AMA Motocross Championship. So, in a very strange twist of fate, after winning the title in ’73, Karsmakers was deemed ineligible to defend the title in ’74.
“The one year there was a loophole in the rules is the year I should have won the title,” said Runyard. “It was kind of a weird deal. I mean, I beat [Brad] Lackey, I beat [Mark] Blackwell, I beat all the other Americans, I just didn’t beat Karsmakers.”
Runyard came out of the Southern California motocross explosion in the late 1960s. His father, Godfrey, was a Brit expatriate who’d been Lawrence of Arabia’s mechanic as a youngster. By 1969, Mike had won a pair of California State Championships as an amateur riding a 125cc Sachs for Norm Reeves Honda. After graduating from high school in 1969, Runyard, at 17, turned pro and began racing in Edison Dye’s Inter-Am Series with backing from Dan Gurney’s American Eagle. In his first year as a pro, he was the third-ranked American in the Inter-Am, behind Gary Bailey and Barry Higgins.
Runyard turned a lot of heads in an Inter-Am in Boulder, Colorado, in November of ’69.
“I remember that race,” Runyard says. “The CZ team had just received the first 360cc single exhaust pipe with a dual stinger. Joel Robert was going to leave the 250 class and ride the new bike for CZ in the 500 class. I remember I was very inspired watching Joel in practice. When he came back to the pits after practice, he took off his gloves and his hands were nothing but blisters. He just laughed and told the mechanics how fast it was compared to his 250.
“In the first moto, I was first out of the gate and led the race for 28 minutes over Torleif Hansen, Torsten Hallman, Dave Bickers and Roger DeCoster. Here, I was on an American Eagle with a red-white-and-blue tank. An American rider leading with two laps to go! I was proud. And then it happened: On the last jump before the straight-away to the finish line, I snapped the swingarm bolt and was unable to finish. The second moto, I finished sixth overall and first American, but I’d come so close to beating the best in the world in that first moto. It was so excited with what I almost did that I wasn’t too disappointed.”
Frustrated with the lack of reliability, Runyard took an offer to race for Montesa. He was a factory rider for Montesa for four years. During that time, he dominated the very first Winter AMA Series race in Orlando in January of 1971, turning in a Ricky Carmichael-like performance and lapping everyone except second place in one of the motos.
Just when it appeared that Runyard was ready to take his riding to the next level, Jimmy Weinert crashed into him over a jump in an off-weekend race in Selma, Alabama. It hyperextended and severely dislocated his left knee and kept him out of competition for seven months.
Runyard came back and finished sixth in the 1972 AMA 250 Motocross Championship with Montesa, but come fall and the Trans-Am, he moved to CZ, where he was the third-ranked American in the Trans-Am and was eighth-ranked in the AMA 500cc Motocross Championship.
That led to his year with Suzuki in 1973, where he finished runner-up to Karsmakers in the 500cc Championships. Runyard remembers he was making the princely sum of $350 per week (the equivalent of about $75,000 per year in today’s dollars) with Suzuki.
In 1974, Runyard continued with Suzuki and had some strong results. He was fourth overall and the top scoring American at the Trans-Am in Livermore in November of that year, but Runyard’s luck was about to take a turn for the worse.
“I was let go by Suzuki in December of 1974 and I purchased a 360 Husqvarna a month later and started the 1975 season from scratch as a privateer in the Florida Winter Series,” Runyard recalled. “Here I was used to staying home and training, flying to the races and having mechanics take care of my bikes, and suddenly I was making no salary and doing everything myself. I was recently married with a ready-made family, so it was a big shock. I scored a couple of podium finishes, then had my motorcycle stolen. I’d lost everything. I called and begged for a ride from Can-Am and got a factory ride with them starting at Daytona in March of ’75.”
With Can-Am, he finished sixth in the 250 Nationals. Can-Am wanted him to race in the Canadian Motocross Series. He finished second in 1975 and won the Canadian National title in 1976. That was his final full season in racing.
Fellow racer Peter Lampuu got Runyard involved in movie work in Hollywood. At first he was on the construction crews, but eventually he became a well-respected stunt man.
“I feel fortunate to have been involved in motocross during its formative years,” Runyard says. “Everything was so fresh, and the sport just grew so rapidly. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen in motorcycling. And getting to race against the world’s best and sometimes giving them a run for their money was a memory that I’ll always cherish.” CN
