Roger Edmondson (right) talking with racer Donny Greene at Mid-Ohio in 1987. (Larry Lawrence photo)
The announcement today by the DMG that Roger Edmondson “will be leaving his position as Chairman, Managing Member and Chief Executive Officer of AMA Pro Racing” as of January 1st, means that Edmondson’s involvement in professional motorcycle racing is likely over.
The DMG release states that Edmondson is leaving to deal with unforeseen health issues.
The first thing I would like to say is that I hope that Roger has a full recovery and lives a healthy and long life. No matter what one might think about Edmondson and what has happened to AMA Pro Racing in the last year, the fact remains Roger is a motorcycle enthusiast, a former racer and I’m certain he had the best intentions when he took the reins. That he made wrong moves and as a result the DMG’s best laid plans went awry simply means that things didn’t go as Edmondson had envisioned. No more, no less.
I will never forget March 7, 2008, the day the announcement was made at Daytona International Speedway that the AMA was selling Pro Racing to the DMG. I also clearly remember the mood of the journalists and industry people on hand. It seemed that I was one of the very few that viewed the announcement with trepidation. Most thought that Edmondson, with the financial backing of the Jim France and the DMG, was just what AMA racing needed to rise to the next level. Even Cycle News columnist Henny Ray Abrams, who would later become the DMG’s harshest critic, viewed the move in its early days as a potentially positive one for racing.
Edmondson had a good track record of running racing. The AMA/CCS Series was a success story in the 1980s. Teaming with the AMA helped usher in much needed greater participation in AMA Professional Road Racing. During the 1980s Edmondson was viewed as a strong leader, sometimes bordering on dictatorial in his decision-making process.
In spite of heavy-handed approach to dealing with riders, specifically when it came to safety issues, the overall trend of racing during his leadership of the AMA professional road racing was a positive one. Plus Edmondson had the backing of the promoters. He generally took their side when a disagreement arose and as a result, when he and the AMA split in the mid-1990s, it looked for a time like Edmondson’s North American Sport Bike Series might become the primary motorcycle road racing series. The tradition-bound factories stuck by the AMA and NASB gradually withered on the vine.
Edmondson won a settlement in the resulting lawsuit between the AMA and himself and he then helped launch the Grand American sport car series. At that point Edmondson’s legacy looked to be one of a man who fought the establishment and came out on top.
Act Two of Edmondson’s involvement in professional motorcycle racing started off well enough. He assembled a talented group of industry insiders to help him run the show, but it wasn’t long before the missteps began. Instead of coming in slowly and establishing the respect of the paddock before making wholesale changes, Edmondson’s old tendency towards heavy-handed management style came back to haunt him. The changes were too quick and not favorably received by the factories, promoters or fans. Class structures were drastically altered; long established motorcycling traditions were sloughed off like so much dust in favor of car racing traditions; promoters were forced to dig deeper financially to host AMA races in a time when sponsorship money was drying up and as far as safety was concerned Edmondson publicly said that motorcycle racers had “the comfort zone of a gnat.”
And it got worse. The formerly respected staff Edmondson gathered, mystifyingly made mistake after head-scratching mistake. To me there was no worse sin than that of one high-level staffer, who had been chiefly responsible in healing relations with riders in AMA Supercross a decade earlier, who seemingly forgot all the lessons he learned then and made what was supposed to be a DMG field staff rallying speech at Mid-Ohio where he basically said “F#*K the riders.” With the adversarial tone set another staffer, seemingly inspired by the speech, went ballistic on a rider and it was caught on video.
In the end DMG staffers who I’d known for years were throwing Edmondson under the bus when talking off the record, not just to me, but to other journalists and factory team representatives as well.
When John Ulrich, race team owner, AMA board member and editor/owner of the most popular publication in road racing, who carried water for the DMG all year, turned against them, there was not a single important voice left in support of America’s new managers of motorcycle racing.
The handwriting was on the wall. Even the extremely loyal Jim France could no longer ignore the chorus of discontent. Edmondson’s days at the helm of the DMG were numbered.
To be fair no one could have predicted just how quickly the bottom would fall out of the economy after the DMG took over racing. It’s highly likely that the decrease in racing activity would have happened regardless of who was at the helm.
As poorly as Edmondson’s return turned out, I can’t help but feel some sympathy for the man. At times you can talk to Roger Edmondson and he has a way of making you feel like the most important person in the world. At last year’s AMA Congress while the current AMA leadership was so enthusiastically telling delegates how bad the old AMA was, it was Edmondson who amiably reminded the crowd that it was in fact the old AMA who’d given him the opportunity to become involved in Pro Racing in the first place.
In spite of the lawsuit and the ugly way things ended, Edmondson showed the capacity to forgive and see the good in people.
In return that’s how I’ll try to remember Roger Edmondson and his overall leadership of motorcycle racing. I’ll balance the reality of today’s racing state of affairs by remembering the good Edmondson did for the sport, the rapid growth it experienced under his leadership in the 1980s and early 1990s, the passion he brought to his work and his optimistic outlook for the future of the sport.
Rider Files 
Larry, As you know I’m a dirt tracker at heart and have no business commenting on roadrace affairs but I have to on this one. I can not fathom Mr. Edmondson would have done anything to destroy or harm pro roadracing. I say this not from your view but other stuff I see on the “NET”. I think he simply had the balls to try to “save the ship” in one big leap. Sadly, everything he tried failed. If it had worked he would have been a hero… As for Donnie Greene, I once told him “dirt is for racing… asphalt is for getting there” He told me… Dirt is for planting taters! Happy New Year! John
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John
Thanks for the comments. I agree to the extent that the one thing I’ve learned in life is that it’s usually never black & white, but shades of every color.
From the outside it looked that Roger had lost it and was trying to ruin racing, but I’m sure he tried to do what he thought was best. Bringing the rules to the point that more teams could be competitive, putting an emphasis on the fan experience and trying to get riders to be more positive about the sport that brought them a handsome living. All good directions.
Unfortunately some of his statements were so off base that he nearly instantly lost the faith of the riders and the factories. Things seemed to become confrontational instead of collaborative. Hopefully the new leadership will realize these mistakes and make adjustments.
Many things Roger tried were positive. He just happened to fall short, some of it by his own doing, some outside his control.
Larry
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John
“Dirt is for planting taters”. That was a popular phrase with road racers back then. And Donny was so good on pavement I can see why he stuck with that philosophy. As for me for all the surfaces I’d argue there’s nothing quite like racing on grass. I love the first motos at Unadilla where the track is nothing but grassy hillside. I wish we had a grass track Grand National. Grass races were all the rage in Britain in the 1930s. Bring back the blades of Bluegrass I say.
LL
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Well Larry, Sadly, I never made it to Unadilla or the “Grass Tracks” over seas. However, being a teen in the late 70’s I must say grass may beat dirt and asphalt on some occasions!
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Larry, I must agree with you on most points, great article.
Roger burst on the scene in ’84 with CCS and grew it to a great organization. But then it faltered after too many changes too quickly. Kind of like our wars in Vietnam and Iraq. No one new what was happening from month to month much less year to year. A class would start then be gone in a season or two. Rules became “todays” rules. Too much experimentation in my opinion. The same as what happened last year in AMA.
Roger gave me some great opportunities working in CCS and I passed up some others. I often wonder where I would be now had I taken him up on some offers. We differed on many points towards the end of my time as a CCS official. But I will always consider Roger a friend and wish him the best, especially in this trying time of health issues.
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Thanks for sharing you insights Gordo. I also wish Roger well, I mean the guy is a true motorcyclist at heart. He made some mistakes sure, but he wasn’t trying to ruin racing. He was trying to implement policies to bring the cost down to the teams. In retrospect he should have taken things more slowly, but hindsight is always 20/20. And all this bull about him not really having health issues is bunk. He does have some serious health problems and my best wishes go out to him.
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Very fair article on Edmondson and the DMG mess. Let’s hope they can get it turned around under new leadership.
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Larry,
Very well written (as usual) and balance. I was at the very first rider meeting Roger held before CCS had turned a wheel… He presented passionately his vision for the series, and you are absolutely right, he had a way of making you feel like one of the key people, around which the series turned. He made all of us feel that way that day, and it’s the reason that during the first season, I ran every CCS race, along side every WERA race. As I recall, 14 weeks in a row, a week break, and 16 weeks to finish the season. But I wasn’t the only one… Roger engendered these feeling in all of us who fought out that “Best of Seasons”…
Roger, for all his faults (impatience being the biggest), is a man who had/has a singular vision of what things could/should be, and worked hard to achieve them. As with all of us in life, some efforts fall short, and some hit gold. I believe that a series of changes, instituted at the correct times, layed out for everyone to see, and with time to implement them would have been a better way to go. Selling everyone on the program and it’s untimate vision would have made things go more smoothly.
I wish Roger all the best, and whatever his current challenges are, I know you will surmount them… Just have patience! 🙂
Thanks for the thought provoking Larry!
Brian
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Thank You Everyone for the comments. I also know for a fact that there were some less than loyal staff on Rogers Team that were chomping at the bit to have Roger removed so that they could step up…. Mark my words. They cannot even come close to doing for motor sports what Roger Edmondson has done. I smell a rat….. as a matter of fact a few of them. This has been in the works for some time and the responsible party is laughing it up now but it will be interesting to see what transpires in the future. Roger Edmondson is a hell of a leader and Road Racing is what it is today because of Him…. Not this new batch of Management ….. Roger brought every single one of these people in and they turned right around and stabbed him in the back, thru him under the bus and then backed over him. WEASELS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God Speed Roger Edmondson.
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