Freddie Spencer Sr. Dies
Father of three-time world champion succumbs at 73
 

Frederick Burdette Spencer Senior, father of three time world champion and full-time racing hero Freddie Spencer, died on October 27. The only inside industry indication that this happened was a recent notice on Freddie Spencer's web site.

Freddie Spencer Senior was a former dirt track racer who helped groom his youngest son for greatness by getting the lad's start in racing before he was six years old. After an aborted attempt to go racing with his eldest son, Dan, Senior concentrated on working with Freddie and got the young talent as much track time as he could on a variety of dirt track and roadrace machines. They traveled throughout the country together in the proverbial beat-up van when young Freddie was a teenager, racing countless amateur dirt track races and WERA roadraces. Spencer would ride as many as five motorcycles a day from RD250s to Z-1 900 Kawasakis.

When interviewed by this writer in 1990, Spencer stated in an unpublished interview regarding his father's involvement in his career: "My dad is incredible. He was thirty-six when I was born and was almost fifty when we were racing so he was not a young man. But there was never a problem. He could drive all night and then work all the next day, keeping all my bikes running well enough to win." If that wasn't enough, the Spencer family ran a small grocery store in Shreveport, Louisiana for most of their lives.

Spencer Senior also was the initial catalyst between Freddie Spencer and Erv Kanemoto, approaching Kanemoto at Mid-Ohio in 1977 at a WERA event and asking him to start working with his son. "I've done all I can for him, and I can't take him where he needs to go. I'd like you to work with him," Kanemoto once recalled Spencer Senior saying to him that (rainy) day.

Later, after Superbike rides on a Leoni Ducati and the factory Kawasaki, Spencer left Superbike racing for Grand Prix. He and Kanemoto won three world championships together, culminating with the thought to be impossible 500/250 double world championship in 1985. Spencer returned to AMA Superbike in 1990, riding for two season for the Two Brothers Racing Honda Superbike team, winning two races. He raced Grand Prix after that, and returned again to AMA Superbike on a Ferracci Ducati, notching his last win at Laguna Seca.

When asked in the early 1990s why his father did not attend many of his Grand Prix races, Spencer said with a laugh, "If there was a bridge across the ocean, I think he would have came to more. My dad is not too crazy about flying."

It is generally unknown by many that Spencer's father almost died in a powerboat crash in 1984 and has been in slightly declining health for the past few years.

To say that Freddie Spencer Senior was a huge influence on his son's racing success is probably the biggest understatement of Fast Freddie Spencer's career.

-- Dean Adams