Two German Giants of the ISDT ‘Bull Rider’ Class

23 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by Highwayman in Europe, ISDT, Motorcycling, Motorsport, Uncategorized

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German riders Rolf Witthoeft and Herbert Schek were legends in their riding era which was partially due to the longevity of their time riding and also they became best known for riding some of the largest bikes to ever, later known as the Bull Rider Class. These bikes over 750cc may not have had the greatest power to weight ratio but they were powerful and it took a good rider to get these items of heavy metal around a typical ISDT course.

Photo of four-man BMW team in the United States including #295 Herbert Schek ISDT 1973

Photo of Rolf Witthoeft as a BMW factory rider in 1979

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Recovered classics Vincent HRD, BMW and Jawa

08 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by Highwayman in Enduro, Europe, ISDT, Manufacturers, Motorcycling, Motorsport, restoration

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BMW, Jawa, Vincent HRD

Now there’s a mixed bag title but rest assured each of these 3 bikes we have just added to the ISDT History web site at Speedtracktales is exactly that two heavy weights post war one British and one German and of course the lightweight Eastern European classic that ultimately led to the demise of the heavyweight enduro bike and also saw mass produced competitive bikes coming straight out of the delivery crate rather than the preserve of the favoured works supported rider. Here are the pictures and links

Arthur Merrett’s works 1948 ISDT Vincent HRD

Georg Meier’s works 1953 ISDT BMW

Photo in a studio of the Jawa 250cc of 1961

The ex-works 1961 ISDT JAWA 250cc

If a Picture paints a 1000 words what about a video

07 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by Highwayman in Uncategorized

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Our panic last week when a lot of our historic images were lost when a server provider evaporated our data is close to being resolved as we have moved a backup of the images to another server. The remaining url’s linking to the old images need to be updated and unfortunately WordPress.com does not have an automated batch text update so I’ve got to correct each link one paste at a time.

Back to the good news of more new content we have recovered from the internet. This time amongst the fantastic treasure trove of the internet’s video libraries we discovered a film created by Christian Sulleman of the 55th International Six Day .In an amazing timeless classic dedicated to the period I recall very well I would hope our site’s visitors enjoy this unique footage. Please enjoy and check out the other videos on our ISDT Tube page dedicated to collecting these fantastic troves of ISDT treasure.

Next post should be a collection of new ISDT material

Small Technical Hitch at Speed Track Tales

01 Sunday Jul 2012

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ISDT

Unfortunately, it has come to my attention that the WordPress site, to save time during compilation, took direct links to many of the images from a previously archived website that was still accessible on line. We have now noticed that it appears the host has now taken the entire archive site off-line which means many of the images have now gone and will not show in our articles.

We have access to the old images and will slowly correct this and we are grateful for your patience whilst we do so.

In the meantime there is a further unmanaged archive of the original Speedtracktales site which is associated with the National Library of Wales. If you are wanting to see images before we restore them we hope you can see them here.

http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20110228233545/http://www.speedtracktales.co.uk/4598.html