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- In his last year of full-time professional motorcycle racing, Rich Oliver took his Yamaha 250 GP machine to victory in every race on the 2003 calendar. Not only that, he led every lap of every race, completing a perfect season. Then the American Motorcyclist Association summarily cancelled the series, and Oliver was left contemplating retirement on a spread he owns outside Fresno.
With too much time on his hands, Oliver built a small track for dirtbikes in the yard, incorporating his own gravel driveway as one of the straightaways. The track grew over time into a small complex, with several layouts interlinked to provide alternative courses, and before very long Oliver found himself conducting flat-track riding classes for racers wanting to hone their sliding skills.
Now he runs the Rich Oliver Mystery School on a regular basis, teaching motorcyclists of all persuasions how to ride fast around a dirt track. Why the name Mystery School, you ask? Well, because Rich found that people involved in racing seldom share their secrets and that a racing career is a long voyage of discovery as you unravel the mystery.
Okay, but why a flat-track school run by a former national champion of a track-based series? Essentially because Oliver was once part of the Kenny Roberts organization, and King Kenny has always believed in flat-tracking dirt bikes as a way to hone one’s riding skills.
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- While he was part of that team, Oliver was expected to participate in flat-track races on the Roberts ranch, and he soon came to appreciate the benefits of riding on a loose surface at lower speeds.
“When you’re racing at a professional level, you have to slide the motorcycle if you want to be as fast as the good guys”, he says. “On the dirt you acquire the necessary skills at lower speeds, where the risks are not as great”.
We don’t doubt it for a second, and that’s how I came to be sitting on a 125cc Yamaha TT-R dirt bike in Rich Oliver’s backyard, wondering how a six-foot-five beanpole was ever going to ride a diminutive machine like that to any effect.
But before you even get on the bike, Oliver has you sit through some explanatory lectures about form and technique, as well as perform various stretching exercises to help prevent injury or strain while riding. Oliver and his wife Karin—herself a competent flat-tracker—are big believers in frequent stretching, and I think the practice is probably what made the second day of riding possible for me, after waking up with a stiff and sore body.
You certainly don’t want to miss the second day, because that’s when you realize how much progress you’ve made. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Oliver starts you off on the first day just riding around the various layouts in 20-minute sessions interspersed with lectures intended to reinforce the message about form and technique. The constant critique and reinforcement of earlier messages is necessary, because experienced riders quickly slip back into the habits acquired over a lifetime of riding.
Essentially, the technique for riding a motorcycle fast around an oval dirt track is to approach the corner at whatever speed you’ve achieved on the straightaway, then turn in and apply the rear brake, or—if you’re carrying the right speed—you just tap the gear lever down into a lower gear and let the back step out as the engine drag slows the wheel. You set your inside foot down (usually the left in a typical counter-clockwise layout), to skim the surface, pointing it directly toward the edge of the track.
Then, partly supporting the bike on your steel-shod left foot, you twist the throttle back on and maintain the slide out of the turn. Oliver stresses the need to keep the bike leaned well under the rider in corners, even suggesting the rider move to the outer edge of the seat. This is not a natural maneuver for street and track riders who’ve been practicing moving their bodies down and off the motorcycle in approved track riding style.
But the technique works brilliantly when you remember to do it, seeming to produce more cornering grip and better steering response. Once the riders have a fair grasp of the task at hand, Oliver stages timing sessions on each of the three layouts we’d run during the day.
These serve as a baseline for the next day’s exercises, which pick up again—after the requisite stretching exercises—with practice sessions and refresher lectures. Once warmed back up, we ran timed sessions again, and the differences were remarkable. Most of the students took several seconds of their lap times, and even those riders with prior experience of riding in the dirt picked up their performances appreciably.
On the Two-Day Fun Camp, as it is known, the second day peaks with a series of short races, culminating in a 25-lap event staged on the longest of the track layouts. As well as being great fun, the races showcased just how much everybody’s machine control had improved, particularly since we were overriding any natural sense of caution while desperately trying to beat each other.
At the end of the day, there was even a prize-giving ceremony, during which Rich Oliver presented various goodies, including some of his own surprisingly good abstract graphics. Clearly, Oliver is no one-trick pony.
As well as the two-day school, which costs $675 but provides discounts if you bring a friend, Oliver offers a POST-approved police training course and three- and four-day advanced courses, usually for seasoned racers, but open to graduates of the two-day camp.
For more information visit www.richoliver.net
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