Claiming Rule

[KTM47]

Apparently Roeder wasn't the first to try and claim a bike.  Mickey Boone tried before him, but lost the ballot.  The others teams also put claims in as soon as he did.

Anyway when Roeder did it he left it as late as he could and then put in two claims his and another rider's.  The teams were ready for it and also put in claims.  The claims apparently had to be from a rider so each team put in one on behalf of their riders. The odds were 14 to 2.  Roeder won, he then gave the bike to a magazine to do a test on it.  It probably made him some money, but I doubt he would have much of a MX/SX career after that.

[tony27]

I read the article including the points of views from the 3 main players, Marty Tripes as rider, John Roeder as the claimer & Gunnar Lindstrom as Honda team manager.
Very interesting read & you could understand just how much pressure the factory teams were able to apply to the AMA when the rule was suspended the next week & never reinstated, John Roeder's point of view was that the counter claim rules weren't stuck to as the factory teams didn't have the paperwork ready within the 30 minutes of race finish & were still allowed to lodge after the deadline

[JohnnyO]

Interestingly Scott Steger from Vintage Factory tracked down Roeder a few years ago and he still had the bike lying in a shed where it had been for many years.
Scott purchased the bike, cleaned it up and later on sold it to Terry Good.

[Tahitian_Red]

The bike was in a Sea Van about an hour and a half from my house.  I had the article on the tear down and never thought once to see how hard it would be to track Roeder down.
 

[JohnnyO]

The bike was in a Sea Van about an hour and a half from my house.  I had the article on the tear down and never thought once to see how hard it would be to track Roeder down.
 

An opportunity missed! Would love to find something like that, with the Internet today I think pretty much all missing works bikes have been tracked down.

[Lozza]

First time the claiming rule was enforced was in Ontario where canny US racer claimed a works Rocket 3 Triumph of Sammy Miller's (if my memory doesn't fail me) the claimer did it to prove a point but wasn't going to give the trumpy back, he felt for the team manager who had to return to the Old Dart with no trophies or bike. That was early 70's. Here is a rough outline of the story

BSA Rocket 3 that John Cooper won with at Ontario 1971 that was claimed. The BSA/Triumph management persuaded Bob Bailey that it'd be too complex for him to run, and ended up giving him a Trident of lower spec instead. Still a good get by Bailey, the fee at that time was $2500 US.

  Also the AMA Superbikes had a claiming rule on the forks.  Someone claimed Mat Mladin's forks.  I don't think the forks were much use when handed over.

Reg O'Rourke completely forked them on puropse, the claimer fixed them up and put new internals. There was a pretty good article in AMCN covering all the claimed bikes/bits when MotoGP had the rule a few years back.