Meet GT - Our Newest AHRMA Trustee

WORDS: STEPH VETTERLY PHOTOS: STEPH VETTERLY, ETECHPHOTO.COM, GREG TOMLINSON

If you want to talk about someone’s who’s done a little bit of everything, look no further than Greg “GT” Tomlinson. Not only is he a talented motorcycle racer, surfer, skateboarder, and former professional snowboarder, he hosted his own snowboard show on ESPN for five years, was an announcer at the X Games for 10 years, hosted and announced the World Championship Surfing tour for 10 years (personally handing Kelly Slater no less than eight world titles), and was co-founder of VonZipper. The list just goes on and on...

You can find GT in every race paddock (at times it feels like playing “Where’s Waldo” because he is everywhere). He enjoys every discipline that AHRMA offers, and has bikes to fit them all. He can also be found helping with award ceremonies and enjoys celebrating people with amazing skills.

GT recently ran for, and was elected to, the AHRMA Board of Trustees. As the only current Trustee who’s never previously served on the Board, we figured it would be nice to chat with GT, learn how he got his start with motorcycles, how he found AHRMA, and what his vision is for his new position. It’s my please to introduce - Greg Tomlinson.

HI GT! LET’S START AT THE BEGINNING. WALK US THROUGH A BIT OF YOUR BACKGROUND AND YOUR START WITH MOTORCYCLES.

Growing up in Southern California, I was pretty fortunate. In the seventies, there were several vibrant tracks; it just so happened that I grew up in the shadows of Saddleback, which was a legendary [motocross] track. There was another one called Escape Country that was quite near me, and then Carlsbad. Basically, I could ride out my back door and there were hills and trails that my dad and I would go riding.

I got my first motorcycle in 1978 or 1979; it was an XR75. One of the guys who lived near me was a guy named Jeff Ward who went on to win several AMA Pro Motocross and Supercross Championship titles. He and I were buddies, so we would go ride dirt bikes together at Saddleback.

I was also a surfer and a skateboarder. At a fairly young age, around 13, I started touring skateboarding because I was a bit of a ripper on a skateboard, but all I really wanted to do was surf. So subsequently I became a pretty good surfer and began chasing a pro career in surfing.

It wasn’t until the mid-eighties when I bought a street bike, a Norton Commando. There’s a pretty rad canyon run right out my back door called Ortega Highway. My buddies and I would always go race through the canyons on our street bikes and we all thought we were pretty fast.

HOW DID YOU FIND AHRMA?

In 2010, a buddy of mine heard there was a vintage road race at Willow Springs, so we rode our street bikes to go check it out. When we got to the track, we saw all these vintage motorcycles, one of which was a Norton Commando. And I’m like, “Wait, I got one of those. We’re really fast. Let’s join the club and go out and race.” So, the next year, I went to Willow, got my license. My buddies and I all took the class, and that’s where I started road racing.

It’s funny because when we showed up at Willow Springs that first year, there were some fairly older racers. I remember looking at my buddy and thinking, “Oh my God, we’re going to smoke these guys!” I learned really quick that you don’t judge a book by the cover. At the end of that race weekend, some of those guys ended up with like eight trophies and I think I might have gotten third my class. And to this day, those guys are faster than I am. But that’s when the light bulb really went on for me like. I realized this is what I wanted to do.

The first two years, I raced my street bike. It was a bike that I rode to work and then would race when there were local events like Willow Springs, Sonoma, and Utah.

The first few years I raced with AHRMA, I would do anything on the West Coast that I could get to based on my schedule and timing. At that point, I had a basket case Triumph in my backyard that I traded two snowboards for that I figured I would make into my road racer.

I didn’t know much about it, except that there was a class I had a bike for; I started racing Classic 60’s 650. I became a little bit more serious about it. I became a little bit faster, and started traveling nationally, and on that little blue Triumph, nicknamed “Speedy Magoo,” I ended up winning five titles. Fairly similar to my surfing experience, my skateboarding experience, and ultimately my snowboarding experience, I always just wanted to go check out places I hadn’t been, and one of the things that I always found a lot of fun with motorcycle racing is I always wanted to go to different tracks.

It was a lot of fun - the competition was one aspect of it, but I just really always enjoyed trying to figure out a new track. At first, it was really centered around road racing. I was pretty fortunate that I won a few titles along the way. At that time, and I still say this to this day, for vintage road racing, quite frankly AHRMA is the only game in town.

At the same time, I have old junky dirt bikes, but the thing is, in Southern California, there’s so much opportunity to ride dirt that I didn’t necessarily need to travel nationally to ride my dirt bikes. There was plenty of vintage racing available to me in Southern California. It wasn’t until the last three or four years that I really started getting involved with vintage off-road racing with AHRMA. It wasn’t because I wasn’t interested in it; I was spending all my travel money road racing and just racing either dirt track or motocross locally because I didn’t necessarily need AHRMA. What really became a thing for me with vintage dirt was the AHRMA Classic MotoFest™ concept. I was going to Kansas, and when I saw they had dirt, too, I figured I’d bring a dirt bike as well as my road race bike. It became a lot of fun because it allowed me the opportunity to ride more tracks outside of the traditional Perris or Elsinore or Glen Helen. All of a sudden, I’m traveling up to the Northwest and racing places like Chrome on grass tracks. It was so much fun, and there were new venues for me to check out. I never showed up on a weekend with the thought that I had to win at all costs. I just wanted to go out and have fun and ride whatever machine was still running at that time.

I’m a very average mechanic, at best. But part of the fun became working on the bikes. If I was going all the way to Kansas, the one thing for sure was that I was not going to come home without points. So you go all the way to Kansas and if you have a mechanical, half the fun was trying to make sure the bike ran through the weekend.

For me, AHRMA has always been the best game in town to go out and race, talk about it (bench race), and basically just have a good time celebrating those old machines. I just think there’s an art to those old bikes; not only are they a lot of fun to race and screw around with, but they’re also a lot of fun to talk about and share experiences. The racing community is just a lot of fun because there is a rad community that revolves around that.

If a win came, great, but it was always about having more fun than everybody else, and hopefully driving home in one piece. Trophies were about third or fourth on the list for me. It was always more about having fun and was just an extension of all the goofy hobbies that I’ve always been interested in, similar to surfing or snowboarding or skateboarding. I’m really grateful that AHRMA has provided those experiences for me; that’s really where it starts and stops.

TELL US A BIT ABOUT THE BIKES THAT YOU OWN AND RACE WITH AHRMA.

There is a skill to ride those old bikes and, quite frankly, maintain them, and it’s really an art form. I enjoy riding modern bikes and I’ve ridden a few, but most everything I race is pre1970s. I enjoy the bikes, I enjoy the way they look, I enjoy the way they ride, the way they handle.

In dirt, I race a 1967 Triumph T100 (aka “Lil Buckaroo”), a 1958 Triumph T110, and a 1973 Honda Elsinore. For road racing, I have a 1968 Triumph TR6C (aka “Speedy Magoo”) and I have a 1947 Norton Manx (aka “Handsome Brute”). My trials bike is a 1950 Triumph TR5 (aka “Dusky”), and my dirt tracker is a 1965 Triumph T120 (aka “Slip Van Eel”).

SINCE YOU HAVE EXPERIENCE WITH SO MANY DIFFERENT DISCIPLINES, DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE?

Picking a favorite discipline is like trying to, you know, pick a favorite kid. I love them all. I’ve been pretty fortunate to win a few titles road racing, and I absolutely adore it, but if I had to pick one discipline, it might be cross country. I love racing flat track, I love doing trials, I love motocross, but I gotta be honest, there’s something about cross country where the courses are bigger and it’s a dead engine start and you’re not sure who you’re racing against; you’re just trying to pass anybody you come up on, there’s just something about that.

Especially some of the Northwest courses, you’re talking an eightmile loop through rolling green hills and over creek beds, up through canyons and muddy up-hills. There’s just something to it. Every bit of experience that I’ve learned from either trials or flat track or road racing or motocross all really apply to cross country.

There’s just something about cross country that’s pretty hard to beat. You don’t get a sighting lap, you don’t know what’s coming next, at least for the first lap. I just love that challenge. It’s fun to be able to apply those different techniques into other disciplines. And again, that’s what’s so fun about it, because one thing leads to another and it really rounds you out as a motorcyclist.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH WITH YOUR POSITION ON THE BOARD?

I’ve always been involved either as an athlete and then as an announcer and in some cases even a promoter. I’ve just always been interested in events and celebrating the unique talents that the athletes have across any of those sports. I’ve always been really fortunate to be around amazing people that do incredible things and that spirit of competition and what it takes to win.

I’ve had some pretty profound lessons, not only in terms of competition, but also just in terms of life through those experiences. I’ve been really fortunate to have been around some pretty incredible moments in those sports. I’m really proud of that because I’ve been a voice to it for a long time.

I’m really, really grateful and proud of all of the support that I got through the recent election. The fact that people have entrusted me to have a voice for them within the club is super important, and I don’t take that lightly.

I’ve founded a few brands along the way and have some pretty interesting business experiences that I think can help the club. Between inflation and the economy and the rebound of the pandemic and everything, we have some challenges on a business level that we’re going to work through. And similar to how I’ve approached my business, if it was easy, everybody would do it. It’s about having a vision, ultimately applying strategies and objectives to the vision, and staying with it. It’s also about seeing it through to course correct in some cases, while being adaptable enough to change the business plan if and when circumstances change on the ground.

I think one of the things that I also lend to the club as a trustee is the fact that I race and compete in every discipline AHRMA offers. I’ve spent a lot of time from trials to flack track to road race to moto. I’ve been in all the paddocks and have a bit of a perspective on some of the challenges.

With road race being self-promoted versus motocross being more independently promoted, those two business models, although they’re different, can work together for great effect. That’s what I’m hopeful to help tie the knot on.

I think also being a freshman trustee, I’m not expecting to come in and change the world. I want to learn the subtleties of what’s expected of us as trustees and then try and be an objective voice to the different issues that we’re confronted with.

What I always say in business is - hopefully what we can do is do a really good job at the things we can control so it makes us more adaptable and responsive to the issues we can’t control. For the things that we have under our control, let’s do a really good job at that. I don’t play favorites. I try and do the things I say I’m going to do and keep the word that I give. That’s really what I’m going to apply as a trustee to AHRMA.