‘We ended getting smoked badly in that first series’
(on Romero’s Daytona Triumph) would also be on ‘Low Boys’, the remainder of the US team of Jim Rice, Dave Aldana, Don Castro and Don Emde, were on taller, heavier, year-old ‘High Boy’ versions. “We ended getting smoked pretty badly in that first series,” Mann remembers. “But we still had fun and set the stage for a series that eventually would see Americans winning over there.”
Fun they certainly had, too. Trippe recalled how the US racers he was chaperoning, plucked from their dusty flat-tracks and pick-up trucks, suddenly found themselves in five-star London hotels.
“We were lodged in luxury near Hyde Park. Nixon bet Aldana he couldn’t persuade one of the many lovely ladies they were observing from their balcony to join them in the suite upstairs. Dave duly won the bet, but on the way up to the room, who should step into their lift but Hollywood A-lister Kirk Douglas. The girls obviously attracted the star’s attention and as they got out of the lift, the boys gave Douglas a cheeky grin and said: ‘Get your own.’ This sort of behaviour continued on and off the track throughout the entire series.”
So it was no surprise when, although the Brits – and particularly Pickerell and Smart – dominated the inaugural series with only Mann and Castro able to retain some American pride with podium finishes, the Americans were more than up for a rematch.
American hope
The success of 1971 helped Trippe gain major cigarette sponsorship for 1972, the series was renamed the John Player Transatlantic Trophy and its one-make formula was dropped, allowing an influx of riders and machines: Phil Read now captained the British team on a JPS Norton (along with Peter Williams), with Dick Mann leading the Americans, again on his BSA, but now with newcomer Cal Rayborn on his XR750TT Harley, the road racing version of his XR750 flattracker. And although the US team was again trounced, Rayborn was the surprise star, winning three races to be joint-overall top points scorer and giving the Americans hope for the future.
In 1973 the US lost again – just – by 398 points to the Brits’ 416 with each squad’s top riders, Williams (JPS Norton) and ‘Flying Frog’, French Canadian Yvon DuHamel (Kawasaki H1R) on 84 points. In 1974 it was a nail-biter again as a new generation of stars and machines emerged. For the Brits, Barry Sheene led a trio of Suzukis to overall victory although, for the Americans, a new young star, Kenny Roberts, dominated in his first trip outside the USA, winning four races on his yellow and black Yamaha TZ.
Then, in 1975, the Americans finally grabbed the overall victory they’d long promised after a team including Roberts, Pat Hennen and Steve Baker narrowly defeated a home squad depleted of Sheene after his infamous Daytona smash. With the Brits bouncing back in 1976, the thrilling, see-sawing template for Transatlantic Trophy success was set for the rest of the decade. In 1979 Marlboro took over from John Player as title sponsors and 1980 stands out for Freddie Spencer’s stunning European debut: at Brands Hatch on Good Friday the 18-year-old blitzed both races on a privateer TZ750, thrashing Roberts, Sheene and co.
The superbike era
With hindsight, however, the Transatlantic’s best days were already behind it. Although Britain won again in 1981, helped by Roberts’ absence testing Yamaha’s new V4, and again in 1983 due largely to miserable weather, by 1984, with the US having Roberts, Mamola, Lawson and Spencer with Britain’s most competitive GP representative being Ron Haslam, the Americans were now utterly dominant and the series’ appeal diminished somewhat.
That year saw a new format, track owners MCD abandoned the series after 1983’s dismal attendances with Donington taking on a threeyear deal and reformatting it as the ‘Transatlantic Challenge’ with the US racing a Commonwealth team. Even that, however, wasn’t enough. But 1984 witnessed an upturn in fortunes with 85,000 attending plus the strongest American team so far, sadly it also saw Honda GP stars Haslam and Spencer both crash, the latter breaking bones in his feet forcing the reigning 500 world champion out of the following Spanish GP. Honda thereafter decided it was no longer worth risking their top riders in a nonchampionship event and Yamaha quickly followed suit.
In 1985, with Spencer, Roberts and Lawson all out, their places were taken by little-known American privateers on AMA superbikes rather than GP machines. As a result, for 1986, the last year of Donington’s exclusive deal, a new Superbike formula was adopted, although even then, leading Americans Schwantz and Fred Merkel had to borrow bikes. For 1987, the Challenge was spread over Brands and Donington, with Schwantz and Rainey the leading Americans against a Commonwealth team again headed by Haslam. While for 1988 it was reformatted again as the ‘Eurolantic Challenge’, although with superbike machinery and a distinct lack of GP stars it had fallen a long way from its 1970s glories and glamour and that format wasn’t repeated again.
The series was revived, again called the Transatlantic Challenge, for one final fling in 1991, with three races each at Mallory and Brands. But, despite well-known British names and an under-par Freddie Spencer, it was a shadow of its former self with American riders few had heard of.
But even though the glory days of the Transatlantic Trophy were well and truly over those heady, starstudded days of the 1970s are still cherished to this day.