Frankly, it's a story as old as time immemorial.

Every sport has its “back in my day” stories, but motorcycle racing might lead the league. Modern riders suit up in airbag-equipped leathers, race on tracks lined with air fences, and celebrate podium finishes with smiles and handshakes. In the late ’50s and ’60s, though, safety gear was thin, tracks were unforgiving, and finishing third usually meant you were furious at the two men who beat you.

Consider Bart Markel. He was one of the most successful racers in America during the late 1950s and 1960s.

To help understand Bart Markel, you have to start with where he came from. He was a Flint, Michigan kid, born into a big family that was as broken as it was crowded. With seven children to care for, his mother often had no choice but to lean on grandparents or relatives to keep food on the table and a roof overhead. The family was scattered as much as it was held together. Writer Joe Scalzo painted the picture starkly in the biography he wrote on Markel: before Bart ever became a champion, his connection with his father was so distant that the two might only recognize each other in passing—literally, meeting by chance on the street.

Bart never raced a true motorcycle as a teen like so many top racers who many times start racing at age 3-5. As a teen, Markel's passion was boxing; he became Michigan state champion, literally punching his way to the top.

So, after boxing he started racing? No.

After boxing Markel joined the US marine corps and did his stint in the USMC. Have you ever been around someone fresh out of U.S. Marine Corps boot camp? They scan every room the second they walk in, size up everyone in it, and carry themselves like they could, if necessary, single-handedly subdue a busload of small-town tough guys without spilling their coffee. It never leaves them.

That is the exact mentality that Bart Markel brought to racing.

Markel came out of the ring, then the marines, and onto the track with the same mindset—an amateur boxer who never liked following anyone. If a little shove was what it took to get by, so be it. He’d admit—barely—that he was rough, but in his world, settling for second one week meant you were already halfway to settling for third the next. So he rode like every lap was the last, because for him, anything less than flat-out was losing. Moreover one of his personality traits was that he didn't really care what others thought, of him or anything else. He never had more than a few very close friends in racing and those who knew him said that was the case for most of his life. His wife, once, confessed she didn't know him really that well, especially when he was racing.

There’s no shortage of “Black Bart” stories — and somehow, they never lose their spark. Nearly two decades since Markel left the paddock, his name still gets dropped any time a couple of old racers start bench-racing and remembering how things used to be.

Here’s some most have heard:

In the early 1960s, an indoor short track was staged on a tiny bullring in Nashville, and the promoter—looking to pack the stands—paid reigning Grand National Champion Bart Markel to appear.

Back then, “professional” short track events put novices, amateurs, and experts on equal footing. The surprise star of the night was a local novice who stunned the crowd by setting fast time and earning pole position for the main event—right alongside Markel.

When the green flag flew, the kid grabbed the holeshot, with Markel never more than a couple of bike lengths behind for 24 and a half of the 25 laps. Then, entering Turn 3 for the final time, “Black Bart” lived up to his nickname—knocking the hometown hero into the hay bales and cruising unchallenged to the checkered flag.

larry lawrence

Bart Markel stares down the AMA referee at the 1973 Indy Mile.

Asked in victory circle why, oh why Bart? had he so blatantly taken out the local favorite, Markel offered only: “Never saw him.” He then walked off amid a shower of boos, popcorn and beer cups, leaving the trophy behind.

Or the time he lost his goggles.

It was Daytona Beach in the sandblasted chaos of the old beach course, and on the blacktop portion of the track Markel had pulled his goggles off to clean them but they were swept away at 120mph. Now with no eye protection, he kept his head down on the straights, glancing up only when he dared. The wind and grit must have stung like needles. Barreling down the beach at nearly 120 miles an hour, he finally peered over his number plate—and saw a backmarker ahead, moving almost 40 miles per hour slower. The collision was instant and violent, sending Markel ricocheting off the other bike and straight into a spectator’s parked car. Markel's bike flew so high it landed and punched down the roof of the spectator's car. They say Black Bart woke up in the medical tent a few hours later. And then, years later, a fan casually walked up and told him he’d been the owner of the car Markel had destroyed that day.

A veteran racer once said watching the svelte and precise rider Sammy Tanner win a dirt track race was like watching high speed ballet. And Markel? "It was like what MMA is like today. Bart wasn't there to make it look pretty, but he for sure was there to win. If you were in front of him, on the groove, you were going to have a big problem if you could not drop Bart."

He was suspended by the AMA for rough riding, which began when Markel knocked down the aforementioned Sammy Tanner. Was there a long blood-feud between Tanner and Markel, then? "Sammy never had a bad word to say about Bart," a friend says, suggesting Sammy didn't really hold a grudge. When interviewed about his career before he died, Tanner never even mentioned Markel. Not once.

Or how about the Markel Fence Story? In some now long-forgotten Midwest dirt track race Markel was leading on a county fair "money race". Mid-race he wobbled off the groove and was dramatically ejected from the track by a deep groove. Racing lore has it Markel and his bike went straight through the wood fence lining the track, almost leaving a man-and-machine outline of a hole in the fence, like something out of an old cartoon. Better send the ambulance, or a hearse, they thought, and stopped the race. The ambulance was rolling when Markel, still on the bike, rode back through the giant hole in the fence he'd made, and then he rode to the pits to pound his bike straight. He made the re-start.

And won.

"Markel had a psychological edge on a lot of the riders," confided race photographer Allen Ivins in 2003.

A veteran racer once said watching the svelte and precise rider Sammy Tanner win a dirt track race was like watching high speed ballet. And Markel? "It was like what MMA is like today. Bart wasn't there to make it look pretty, but he for sure was there to win. If you were in front of him, on the groove, you were going to have a big problem if you could not drop Bart."

He had seen Markel race in the Midwest fair circuit in the 1960s. "He'd walk the track alone while the other riders were working on their bikes in the infield. He'd spend time looking at the dirt in the corners and pacing off how wide the track was in places. He'd kick rocks out of the dirt and pile them against the infield fence. It was all to psyche-out the other riders. You'd see them watching him, 'What's Bart doing out there? Hey—look at Bart'. It worked."

Also, Markel was infamous for jumping in the car as quickly as possible after the race and festivities ended. He wasn't headed for the local airport although he was headed back to his native Michigan. Because he had to be at work at 8:00 AM Monday morning—Markel worked for General Motors nearly the entire time he raced professionally. If he was injured in a race then he'd make his wife drive. They drove all night, as long as possible, so Bart could punch in, on time.

For some sporting heroes the old adage becomes reality: You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain. Markel remained race fast into the early 1970s. Late in his career he continued to win races but his championship runs were done. Then as more years passed, Markel continued to race with the newest generation of riders but success eluded him, so eventually, he went home and stayed home.

George Roeder III, of the American motorcycle racing dynasty, said on the subject of Bart Markel, who was a friend of his father's, "I can only remember a couple of stories my dad told me about Bart: the first one is from some race they were both in where Bart borrowed the front end off one of my dad's spare bikes. Dad said a few days after the race he was out in the field on a farm tractor and he looks up and here comes Bart on his road bike. He had the whole borrowed front end strapped on his back!"

And the second?

"My dad said that once he and Bart rode to California together. Bart brought a pistol for protection. The ride was long and boring so Bart shot at road signs all the way to California."

New riders like Kenny Roberts and Jay Springsteen were now at the front and winning. Markel had retired from racing with 28 wins. Then, when Roberts and the new kids inched closer to his 28 win record, Markel, at age 44, attempted a comeback. His aim was to win one more race and make it 29.

The 44-year old comeback happened in 1979 at the Syracuse Mile in New York. Consider that in 1979 Jay Springsteen was just 22 years old.

Markel, again, 44, qualified for the race—incredible—but in his heat race someone behind him on the racing line thought he was slowing their progress, thus they, ironically, put him in the fence. It wasn’t the outcome he had envisioned, and Markel walked away from the track for the last time—humbled.

"If I'd known I was going that slow, I'd never been out there," he told Popular Cycling. "I knocked a lot of guys down in my time. Now they are knocking me down."

Before his death, Markel was interviewed for the cult racing film The Thrill is On. The interviewer opens the session by asking Bart, cold, how it was that he came to have the nickname "Black Bart". (50:32).

Clearly taken aback, Markel does not immediately answer, looks around uncomfortably before breaking into laughter.

"I guess it was because I was a pretty rough rider," he explained.

thanks, Larry Lawrence