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1973 Starting Grid at Lincoln Trail
Motosports.
Jean And Bill Ramsay ready to start
them. Dal is on the #42 Penton.
Publication date: Jul 3, 2003
DIRTY FUN
Lincoln Trail Motorsports celebrates
30 seasons of off-road
racing
By KIRBY PRINGLE News-Gazette Staff Writer
RURAL CASEY — Cody Gilmore blasts around a sweeping curve, his
cycle's knobby tires spraying out chunks of earth, then launches his
lime green Kawasaki into the air WAY into the air.
The motocross bike goes nearly 20 feet vertical and another 100 feet
or so horizontal — with nothing between Gilmore and the track
at Lincoln Trail Motorsports. He dazzles the crowd with his amazing
feats on a 220-pound motorcycle.
Gilmore, of Spencer, Iowa, went on to win several of the 125cc and 250cc
classes at the big regional motocross race and is among the top finishers
heading to the Loretta Lynn National Amateur Motocross Championships,
held in August at Hurricane Mills, Tenn.
The hair-raising exploits of Gilmore and other motocross racers is
par for the course at Lincoln Trail Motorsports, one of the largest
and oldest
motocross and off-road facilities in Illinois. The motorsports park
celebrates its 30th season this year. It is located 5 miles west
of Casey, just
south of U.S. 40, approximately 75 miles south of Champaign-Urbana.
There aren't many small businesses that last 30 years, let alone
a motocross track. It's amazing. It's also amazing that it's been
that
long ago, says
Dal Smilie, a Paris, Ill., native and attorney who runs Montana's Consumer
Protection Office.
Smilie was among a core group of people who helped brothers Jean
and Bill Ramsay build the first motocross track at Lincoln Trails
in 1974. He also helped organize
the first party to christen the track, the memorable Cornstock, complete
with bands and buckets of beer, held over Memorial Day weekend that year.
I can still remember Jean and Bill and I walking around, deciding
where
the track would be, says Smilie, who also serves as vice chairman of the
American Motorcyclist Association and still races vintage motocross events.
He returned
to Lincoln Trail in early June for a race and to celebrate the track's three
decades in operation.
Jean is a gifted guy in so many ways. He's done so much amazing stuff
in his life,´ Smilie says. ´Jean really cares. He gives people
real value. He doesn't cut corners or try to chisel you. And having been a
racer, he understands what it takes to operate a great motocross facility.
Jean Ramsay bought out his brother's share of the track in the late 1970s and
has been the sole owner since then. It boggles my mind how well the track has
done,´ he says. ´If
someone had told
me, You're going to be doing this when you're 61,' I would have never believed
them. It started out as a hobby and then became an excellent small business.
It just kept growing and growing. I think it's just tenacity and perhaps
a bit of dumb luck,´ he adds. We
just
keep running. I do it because I still like motorcycles. I'm still involved
with bikes. I still race vintage bikes — sometimes. Ramsay started
out with 40 acres and the facility has grown to 280 acres — and
will likely grow even larger in the near future. The schedule of 60-plus
races runs from February through November and includes everything from motocross
bikes to vintage bikes to hare scrambles to ATVs and off-road cars. The focal
point of Lincoln Trail Motorsports is the 1.1-mile motocross track, which
includes tight turns, whoop-de-dos, washboards, hills, jumps, berms and all
the other obstacles that make motocross racing one of the most exciting motorsports
in the world to watch.
"I like this track a lot," says Richy Shehorn of Wauseon,
Ohio, who raced his Honda in the 250cc open class. "It seems like a fast
track — what
I'm used to back home."
The terrain around the Casey and Greenup area is more rolling than
Champaign County, but it doesn't feature the big hills that can be
found at places like Motorsports Park at Byron, near Rockford, the
only track in Illinois about as old as Lincoln Trail. The two tracks
also have about the same number of races.
And so Lincoln Trail, even though the track offers plenty of challenging
obstacles and tight turns, is known more for speed than lots of steep
jumps. "This is known as the best-groomed track in Illinois," says
Nadine
Darling, the track manager. "That's Jean's specialty." Sam Hutchason of Owensboro,
Ky., agrees. He's watching his son, John, race in the 250cc B-modified
and B-stock classes. "I like all of it," Hutchason says. "They really
keep the track
prepped. My son loves it here. This is one of the fastest tracks in the country.
I hate places where you can't see the whole track. But here you can make
a loop and see everything."
That attention to detail comes from Ramsay's farm background and also
his racing experience. Always a free spirit, he hitchhiked in 1960
from his rural Casey home to California, where he ended up going to
college. He graduated from UCLA in 1965 with a degree in civil engineering
and was working as an engineer in east-central California and western
Nevada when he got motocross fever. The sport had just been introduced
to the United States from Europe and the
best riders where giving demonstrations. "It was in California that I got interested.
The Europeans were coming
over here and giving exhibitions against Americans. It was all brand new. I got
to
watch riders like (former world champions) Joel Robert, Torsten Hallman and
Jeff Smith. There were no Japanese bikes at the time. All the bikes were European,´ Ramsay
says. Ramsay entered desert races and motocross, competing against riders like
Brad Lackey, the only American to win the Federation Internationale Motocycliste
(FIM) World 500cc Championship. He even trophied at Evel Knievel's Snake River
Motocross, still reportedly the biggest purse ever for an outdoor motocross
race. With motocross now in his blood, Ramsay opened a dirt bike shop in Bishop,
Calif., and sold Maicos and Husqvarnas, the top European makes of the day.
"I got pretty heavily involved in motocross in California and I raced for
three years on the pro circuit. Motocross was happening big time in California
and pretty heavy on the East Coast, but hadn't really happened yet in the Midwest.
I was back here visiting and Bill and I got to talking about it, and we thought
it would be neat to build our own track," Ramsay says.
Bill Ramsay also got heavily into motocross and had a Maico dealership stuck
in a corner of his Standard Oil gas station in Casey. "We decided to see if
we could find some land and have our own practice
track. We could also have races and make it self-supporting,´ Bill Ramsay
says. " We had no idea at the time how successful it would become. "
Jean is
pretty
tenacious. He's hard working and focused. Running a track
is pretty overwhelming to most people. A multitude of things can go wrong.
When you have problems, you're success depends on how well, or how poorly,
you respond,´ he adds. ´There can be a lot of headaches.
It amazes me sometimes how well he handles everything.´
A perfect example was at the recent regional motocross race, which attracted
760 of the best amateur riders from all over the country — from Georgia
to Montana to Minnesota — but the emergency medical technicians didn't
show. ´This is going to make me old yet,´ Ramsay says as he scrambled
to find EMTs. Still, his calm demeanor in the face of disaster is a trademark.
´Both Jean and Bill are pretty laid back,´ Smilie says of
the brothers.
Besides EMTs on hand during races, Lincoln Trail has five full-time employees
and 22 part-timers. And every one of them are needed on busy race weekends,
which can draw 1,500 racers and spectators.
´We have a huge economic impact on the area on race weekends,´ Darling
says. ´ All the hotels and motels are full, and the restaurants have
to know
when we have a big race so they can have extra staff on hand.´ Even when
a race isn't scheduled, Lincoln Trail can be a busy place. It offers club memberships
($60 individual, $75 for a family) that allow people to ride the motocross track,
the European-style grass track and the miles of trails winding through the surrounding
woods. ´That's been a surprising supplement,´ Ramsay says. ´We
have close to 1,000 club members now.´
Despite nearing the age when most people consider retirement, the
youthful-looking Ramsay will continue running Lincoln Trail for the foreseeable
future. ´I still enjoy it,´ he says. ´I don't have
a plan. My plan is no plan.´ Bill Ramsay says it all goes back
to his brother's forever-young outlook and love for motorcycles (Jean
still takes long trips on his BMW and Buell motorcycles).
´We used to have sort of a sandbox area that we played in a lot
as kids,´ Bill Ramsay remembers. ´We'd have our toy trucks
spread out and move the sand around. We were talking not that long ago
and he said, 'You know, Bill, this is just like when we were kids playing
in the sand. I have all my toys set out right in front of me. That's
a pretty good attitude to have,´ he adds. ´Jean
is
doing something that still really interests him.´
On the Web: www.ltmoffroad.com
You can reach Kirby Pringle at (217) 351-5222 or via e-mail at
kpringle@news-gazette.com.
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