MOTOR RACING : Horse Racing Is in His Blood, but Motorcycles Are in His Heart

Billy Hamill comes from a horse racing family. His father, Gordon, is a former jockey who is now the flagman starter for races at Santa Anita. His grandfather, Keith Stucki, is a veteran trainer who saddled Ancient Title when he set a track record at Santa Anita in 1978.

The family expected Billy to become a jockey. Except for one thing.

“I’m scared to death of horses,” Hamill says.

Instead, he races motorcycles for a living.

Hamill, who won’t be 20 until May 23, has progressed so far, so rapidly, that he will leave his home in San Marino next week for England, where he will compete in the British Speedway League, the pinnacle for that unique form of racing in which 180-pound built-for-racing-only bikes have no brakes, only one gear, produce about 70 horsepower and will go from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in three seconds.

“Billy Hamill is the one rider whose name I would mention in the same conversation with Bruce Penhall’s,” said Harry Oxley, godfather of speedway racing and the person most responsible for developing Penhall from a Southern California surfer to two-time world speedway champion a decade ago.

“When kids come to me and say they’re planning on going to England to ride, I know they’re nearly always not ready, but Billy is light years ahead of his age and experience in ability. He uses strategy that you might expect from a guy who’s been riding 15 years. If anything, I would say that Billy has more early talent than Penhall had.

“I expect him to set the world on fire over there. He’ll be the world champion within five years.”

Hamill will have one last fling at the Southern California speedway scene when he rides in the annual March Spring Classic, a three-race series that starts Saturday night at Long Beach Veterans Stadium and continues Sunday afternoon at Glen Helen Park in San Bernardino and next Friday night at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa.

“It’s important that I do good this week because I want my fans to remember me for good rides,” Hamill said. “I’ll be in England for eight months and won’t be back except for the American Finals in June.”

Hamill, filled out to a muscular 140 pounds on a 5-foot-7 frame, will ride for Cradley Heath in the British League, the same team Penhall rode for when he won the world championship in 1981 and 1982.

“They’ve been after me for two years, ever since Bruce (Penhall) set up a trial for me over there when I was 17,” Hamill said. “I could have gone last year, but I felt I had some things I wanted to accomplish. The offer they made me this year I would have been foolish to turn down.”

Last year, in only his second year as a professional, Hamill won the season points championship for California tracks, finished second to veteran Bobby Schwartz in the U.S. Nationals and second to Steve Lucero in the state championships.

“This will be a big turning point in my career,” Hamill said. “I’ll be racing with the best in the world, and I’ll have (three-time world champion) Erik Gundersen as a coach. It should give me a chance to become a world contender.”

Gundersen, a Danish rider who won the world title in 1984, 1985 and 1988, suffered career-ending injuries in a spectacular four-rider crash during the World Team Cup matches last September in Bradford, England. Gundersen suffered a broken neck when he tangled with Lance King of Fountain Valley, Simon Wigg of Britain and Jimmy Nilsen of Sweden in what some observers called the worst accident in speedway history. All four were hospitalized.

Gundersen, 30, has been a Cradley Heath rider since 1979, when he became a teammate of Penhall’s and was the team captain at the time he was injured.

“Gundersen wants to stay involved with speedway, and he and I and Greg Hancock will live together. Hancock is from Costa Mesa, so I’ll have a Southern California buddy with me on the team and I’ll have Eddie Bull, who did the engines for Penhall’s bikes, as my mechanic, so I can’t wait to get going.”

Although everyone in the Hamill family thought Billy would become a jockey, the truth is that he has fantasized about becoming a speedway racer since he was 6 or 7.

“We lived in Duarte then, and I had a neighbor, Carlos Cardoza, who used to go to the races at Irwindale. He had a brother my age and we’d tag along. We’d come home and get on our bicycles and pretend we were speedway racers. We set up a course on Baylor Street and even had a starting gate we made with a bunch of rubber bands attached to a mailbox.

“All the guys wanted to be Penhall, because he was the world champion then, but I was the littlest guy on the block so I was always Kelly Moran (a two-time national champion). I was so short I could barely straddle the bike and touch the ground. We really felt great when we got some old, bent-up handlebars from the speedway riders and put them on our bikes.

“It’s funny, at the time everyone wanted to become a speedway rider, but I was the only one who followed through.”

When Billy reached 13, he talked his parents into buying him a small speedway bike and joined the junior speedway program at local tracks.

“I rode for three years but didn’t do much because I didn’t have a dad in the pits to help me. He was busy with his horses, and I did pretty much all my own work.”

In 1987, when Hamill became old enough to ride on the professional circuit, he astonished his fellow riders by qualifying as one of the final 16 in the national championships.

“I was still in school then and don’t think I realized what I was doing. I just went out and rode as hard as I could. I remember the first time I lined up for a main event and looked around and saw Bobby Schwartz and Sam Ermolenko and Mike Curuso, fellows I’d been following since I was back on Baylor Street.”

Hamill graduated from Monrovia High in 1988, but he didn’t make his graduation. The night before the big event, he was riding in San Bernardino when he and Jim Fishback tangled on the final lap and Hamill’s foot got caught between Fishback’s chain and rear sprocket.

“The tendons were severed and I ended up in the hospital. I guess that was the worst accident I ever had, unless you count last year when I fell at Ascot and a guy ran over my head. It cracked my helmet, but all I got was some chipped teeth and a couple of stitches in the corner of my eye.”

Hamill already has some international experience. After the 1989 season, he was invited to Australia to ride against most of the world’s best. In six races, he won two and finished second to Shawn Moran in an international meet.

Other area riders planning on competing in England this year include Hancock, King, Ronnie Correy, William Hill, Shawn and Kelly Moran, and later in the year, Ermolenko, who is recovering from injuries suffered toward the end of last season.

OFF ROAD--Ivan (Ironman) Stewart, winner of the Parker 400 season opener and last year’s Mint 400 in a V-6-powered Toyota truck, will defend his titles Saturday in the Nissan 400--a new name for the longtime Mint race. Stewart’s victory at Parker was the first by a pickup truck in the race’s 17-year history.

Nissan, in an attempt to win its own race, will counter with trucks driven by Roger Mears, Spencer Low, Jack Johnson and Sherman Balch. Low won the mini-metal class at Parker. Johnson, racing in the unlimited class, and Frank Snook, who drives a two-seat Raceco buggy, will be the first drivers off the line at 8 a.m. from the Las Vegas International Speedway, where the race will start and finish. More than 300 entries are anticipated by the sponsoring High Desert Racing Assn.

Jean Claude Wicki and Jean-Paul Forclaz of Switzerland, former winners of the Paris-to-Dakar rally, are entered in a four-wheel-drive GMC truck.

SPRINT CARS--The California Racing Assn., taking last week off while Ascot Park hosted the World of Outlaws, will return to action Friday and Saturday nights in Phoenix with the Walt James Classic at Manzanita Speedway. The CRA opener at Ascot will be March 17.

NEWSWORTHY--John Caponigro, former president of Championship Auto Racing Teams, the Indy car sanctioning body, has formed Sports Management Network Inc. to market athletes. His first clients include drivers Mario and Michael Andretti and basketball stars Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars. . . . Greg Zitterkopf of Chino won a Dodge Dakota pickup as champion of the Continental Motosport Club’s Golden State Nationals series. . . . Two-time Indianapolis 500 champion Rodger Ward has been named chief steward of the Machinists Union American IndyCar Series, which will open its 1990 season May 5-6 at Willow Springs Raceway.