Tell Us a Story, Ron Lechien

Another epic story-telling session with the Dogger. Click on the picture to make it bigger.

"This is a shot from the Rodil Cup at the end of 1985. It was my first time racing a Kawasaki in America.  You can see I’m wearing my old helmet that I wore all year on a Honda. I must’ve been real early into my new deal because this was the helmet I wore in the nationals the previous year. The actual first time I raced a Kawasaki was at a race in Veronica Beach race in Holland. It was a 500 though. They paid me some money to go over there and I thought, shit, I’ll check out what this beach racing thing is all about!

I didn’t really have a chance to do anything though, I took off on the front row and when I got on the first fast straight, right along the water, the thing seized. I had to walk back to the pits and they switched the motors. It took them so long, I missed the second moto. When they finally got it all done, I went out for the third and final moto and got maybe a hundred years and the thing seized again. It wasn’t a very good day.

I test rode one of Wardy’s works Kawi’s before I signed and I had it in my garage for a little while. They gave me a works bike and I was practicing on it. When I got the works bike, it was built for Wardy and they were short.

To be honest I was coming off works Honda’s and this was the first year of the production rule and I wasn’t too pumped when I got on the stock Kawi. I did have a set of works forks and a brake from my Honda laying around that I gave Kawi. They went and took the forks and put the Kawasaki bottom legs on and I used them. They were so much better, I couldn’t stand the stuff that I had on the stocker. The brakes were junk also and I gave them the works brake and said ‘this is how a brake should work.’ I raced with the forks and brake but I don’t think they’re on in this picture. I just told them, this stuff is junk.

I had a hard time getting used to the Kawi’s to be honest, it was about ’88 or so and when the fog lifted in my head a little bit as well, before I felt at home on them. I think the bikes were getting more set for me and I felt better but ’86 and ’87 were kind of lost years for me there. I signed a three year deal with them in ’86 so I knew I had some time to sort things out (laughs.)

In ’86 I just kind of wasn’t into it. My mind wasn’t into it that year, I’d show up and just go through the motions. Obviously, I’d give it my all on race day but I wasn’t into it off the track. I did alright this year in the 500 nationals, I had some good rides. Some decent supercross races but kind of a lackluster year. I dislocated my shoulder at Gainesville and struggled with that. 1986 was the first year in a while that I didn’t win a race but the competition was tough this year, those guys stepped it up. RJ, Bailey and O’Show were all on it.

The Rodil Cup was featured in Racer X not too long ago, I remember my mechanic was Rick Asch but I’m not exactly sure about that. They had the whole thing with the second row start and a lot of the guys were going to pretend to fall or pretend something happened to them to make sure they started on the front row but I went in with a totally different attitude that those other guys. I was going to go out and tank on purpose and make the promoters realize just how bad the idea was. I went out in my heat and rode as hard as I could, then just pulled over before the finish and waited there. I was waving to the fans and they were like ‘What are you doing?’ Then Jon Van De Berk came up behind me and he knew what was going on and he acted like was shot or something!  He was just looking at me, he didn’t want to start in the front row either.

I remember this cover, I have this magazine for sure. I pretty much remember all my covers and have them all also. I think my first full color cover of just me was Motocross Action. I think the very first cover I got was on Moto Verte (magazine in France) when I was on my Yamaha. I was on my practice bike out at in the sand pits doing some photo shoots.

You can see that I cut off the little white pieces of leather on a couple of my fingers, I used to do that all the time. It was so it was less work to bend my fingers (laughs.) I used to be all anal about my gear and the stickers. I always wanted to look good. JT used to make me special boots because my foot was so long and my calf was so skinny. They used to get them custom made and send me 25 pairs for the year. They didn’t last long, they were tennis shoes after like one race. I used to take them right out of the box and run them that night."

I brought something up about the Mark Barnett podcast that I did and Ronnie went into this-

"You know I didn’t really know Barney that well, he was older and on different teams than me. He went to Kawi at the end but I was still on Honda then. When Yamaha had that race of champions a few years back, I got to hang out with him and really talk to him for the first time there. We really hit it off and got to know each other better. I got a lot of respect for him from the day for sure. He retired when he was 25 but I retired when I was 21. I had some other issues going on but I was done when I was 21. We both left the sport early, sure I tried a few comebacks but basically was done as a factory guy."