Motorsports
By Art Bone

One-track mind: A world champion visits San Miguel

Kevin Schwantz, former 500CC Gran Prix World Champion, was in town this week to visit his parents, Jim and Shirley Schwantz, on the occasion of Jim’s 68th birthday. Jim and Shirley have a house in Centro and divide their time between San Miguel and their ranch near Austin, Texas.

Kevin Schwantz is not a household name in the US or Mexico, unless your household includes a motorcycle racing fan of a certain age who remembers his “win or crash” style from the eighties and nineties. Kevin started his motorcycle competition career at the age of six on a trail bike. Later he moved to flat-track racing and, in the early eighties, roadracing on the amateur level. In 1984 he decided to get serious about roadracing, prepared a bike for the season, and won the first race he entered as a novice. Before the year was over, he had a contract to ride a Yoshimura Suzuki, the Suzuki factory team in the US, for the 1985 season.

From 1987 to 1995 he was on the pointy end of the spear of motorcycle racing, riding the fastest, most powerful roadracing bikes on earth—500 CC Gran Prix machines with top speeds of over 200 mph, going from 0 to 100 mph and back to 0 in under 10 seconds...

and also capable of spitting the rider down the road like a rag doll. In this arena, he captured the pole position 29 times and won 25 Grand Prix races. He was fourth in the championship three times, third once, second once, and won his 500CC World Gran Prix Championship in 1993.

I sat down with Kevin a few days after his dad’s birthday party to ask him a few questions, hoping they weren’t questions he had been asked a thousand times before. He and Jim were just back from a dirt-bike ride outside of town.

Art Bone: Kevin, if you could describe your dad in one word, what would that word be?

Kevin Schwantz: I would have to say “caring.” And if I could have two words, the other would be “hard.” We had a motorcycle shop near Houston when I was a kid and I had to work there after school and on weekends, when I wanted to be at the beach with my friends. At the time, I thought that was hard.

AB: And how would you describe your mom?

KS: Loving. That’s the only single word I can think of for her.

AB: To what do you think you owe your success as a racer and sportsman, and as a business man?

KS: I think I’m as successful as I am because of the work ethic my folks instilled in me as a kid. I was told from the time I can remember that I was going to own that shop one day and I needed to be one of the first ones there in the morning and the last to leave at night. My dad was there an hour before opening and my mom just before opening and I was expected to do the same.

AB: Are you satisfied with what you accomplished in your career? Did you meet your own goals as a racer? 

KS: Yes I am. When I see the respect I receive from the fans and from Suzuki, for whom I raced my whole professional career, I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved.

When I started racing I thought it would be the greatest thing in the world if someone would pay me to race and I didn’t have to have a regular job. At every step, say when I was offered a chance to go to England and ride a Gran Prix bike, I thought, “What’s the worst that can happen? I get to ride a Gran Prix bike! If I do good I’ll get to ride it again. If I do bad I still got to ride something most riders never even get close to.”

Now I would like to give back to this sport that’s given so much to me and my family. I teach at Kevin Schwantz Suzuki School, based at Road Atlanta, I’m a coach for the Red Bull Rookie Cup races in the US for 2008, and I travel to many of the Moto GP races, doing PR work for Suzuki.

There are some things I wish had not happened. I wish Wayne Rainey had not been injured in 1994, when we were both in the hunt for the championship, and we could go ride dirt bikes together. (Rainey crashed in a race and is now a paraplegic.) I would give up my championship if that could be true.

AB: Why do you think motorcycle racing isn’t as popular in the US as it is in the rest of the world.

KS: I’m sure that’s because bikes are toys in the US and transportation in the rest of the world. More people ride on a daily basis over there and there’s not that outlaw image. When I was a kid and would go to new friend’s houses for the first time, and their parents found out my folks ran a motorcycle shop, I could see them checking me out for tattoos and asking, “Do they build choppers?”

Also, with insurance and safety regulations, the fans have to be far away from the track and there is no impression of speed. At Daytona and most other tracks they’re just little fast-moving dots, but if you stand on a straightaway on the Isle of Man or at Road Atlanta, and watch Superbikes or GP bikes come by at 180 or 190 mph, 20 or 30 feet away, new fans are impressed.

Even on TV they don’t show as much of the bikes and how they move around at speed because all the camera operators are instructed to get the big billboards that surround the track in the shot. That’s what pays for the program.

When we finished our talk, I asked Kevin if we could take a picture of him and his dad. Kevin said, “We need to get some bikes in the picture.” We moved over to the two Suzuki dirt bikes and, as I was lining up the shot, Kevin said, “Be sure to get the Suzuki logo in the picture.” And that’s the reason he’s had a long relationship with the company and it will continue into the future.

Art Bone started racing motorcycles about the same time as Kevin Schwantz. His brief but undistinguished career was cut short by a tragic lack of talent.
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