There are gems tucked away in the Dirt Bike Magazine file cabinets. Here’s a perfect example: in 1972, Malcolm Smith sat down in the Dirt Bike office with Rick “Super Hunky” Sieman to talk about riding bikes and having fun. What a pair they were and what a conversation it was. Here are the transcripts of that interview, which was eventually published in the April, 1971 issue. It’s the next best thing to being there.
Malcolm Smith: What Makes Him Run?
An interview with the world’s cross-country king
Dirt Bike: Malcolm, when did you first start riding?
Malcolm: In 1954, when I was 13. I’d saved some money from working and stuff, and my mother said she’d pay half if I paid the other half. We bought a Lambretta scooter. I rode that on the fire roads around San Bernardino for about two years.Then I saw an old ’49 Matchless for sale in front of a guy’s house, stopped there and talked to the guy. He said, “Why, you can’t ride that. You only weigh a hundred pounds. You can’t start it or anything!” I was real little for my age, really small. He pushed me to start it, and I rode it and bought it. Always had to park on a hill so I could coast down and start it.
What got me thinking about racing, I used to go to Little Mountain by San Bernardino, where they had little informal things–guys would get together and practice. I could always go faster than everybody there, so I thought maybe I ought’a do that. After that I did a lot of hanging around Pappy Mott’s Matchless shop. He let me ride one of his racers. They had to start it for me and hold it up while I got on it, because my feet wouldn’t touch the ground on the starting line–and away I went. I rode a couple of scrambles, then I bought another Matchless…