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COLUMN
1974 National Powder Puff Champion
By Kent Taylor
He may have jumped his Triumph out of a POW camp in The Great Escape, chased down bad guys in his Mustang GT in Bullitt, and kept pace with Mert Lawwill and Malcolm Smith on his Husky in On Any Sunday, but on an early ’70s ride day at Indian Dunes, Steve McQueen messed with the wrong motorcycle racer.
“Don’t you ever,” said the future MX champ, “do that to me again!”
McQueen was getting an upbraiding from a 17-year-old SoCal kid named Nancy Payne, and even though she had only been riding for a few years, she wasn’t going to be intimidated by anybody—not even the “King of Cool.”
“I was practicing at Indian Dunes,” she recalls from her home in South Carolina, “when I heard a rider behind me. I thought he just wanted to go around me, so I held my line. Well, he comes up alongside me and pulls up, really close, and we lock handlebars. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ And then I looked over, and it was Steve McQueen, just grinning at me! Then, he leaned his bike away and just took off!”
The journey from “Hey Dad, I want a motorcycle” to banging bars with an ISDT-level rider like Steve McQueen had been a pretty quick trip for Nancy Payne. A Honda 90 and a Yamaha 125 enduro were the entry-level machines, but she soon graduated to the more serious mounts of the day, including Bultacos, Maicos and Rickman-framed Zundapps. She was the first officially recognized women’s MX champ in America and even raced overseas. And then, almost as quickly as it had begun, it was over.
“I didn’t even really know what motocross was when I started riding,” she recalls. “Some friends told me about motocross, so we went to a race. There were two other girls, and they put us in with the minibikes. We raced up the hill and then back down, and I remember all of the mini riders passing us on the downhill.”
Eager to learn more about this new sport, Nancy and her MX friends would soon have the incredible opportunity to get schooled by the best. In 1973, six-time World Champion Joel Robert was invited to host a motocross school just for women. Cycle News covered the event, which was also held at the Dunes.
“Robert seemed a little shy and somewhat ill at ease with so many ladies hanging on to his every word,” wrote CN, “but as soon as the girls mounted their bikes and donned helmets, they took on a more familiar appearance and he regained his composure.”
It didn’t take long for the champ to transform from bashful teacher to the knuckle-whacking “penguin” from The Blues Brothers. Before long, Robert had “picked up a slender branch to smack the gloved hands of riders who were not using their throttle, brake and gears properly.” When that failed, he began “using a small log to threaten riders who were not in proper form.” When a World Champion speaks, you listen, or you find yourself up a creek without a paddle.
Every classroom has that one kid who pays attention and actually benefits from the lesson. In this motocross school, “Robert specifically mentioned how impressed he was by Nancy Payne’s improvement during the class. Nancy was quite enthusiastic about the techniques she had learned and felt that she was cornering much faster than before. Besides the mechanical aspect of what she learned, she felt that the class taught her to use her head more when racing and gave her some added self-confidence.”
One year later, it would be a very confident Nancy Payne who would use her new skills to become National Powder Puff Champion, a two-day event that combined a racer’s best results toward the number one plate. She was also picking up good results against the men in local races. Unfortunately, she also picked up some bad advice from her (now ex) spouse.
“He worked in the industry,” Payne says, “and he made some connections with the Maico distributor in Holland. We wound up moving there, where I raced for a month.” The month ended, the marriage would end soon after, and Nancy Payne retired from motocross. A short, but fun and fruitful run.
“I remarried, and we moved to Arkansas. I tried racing again when I was in my 30s, but by that time I was a mother. I hurt my ankle at a race, and I remember not being able to take care of my son. I realized I just couldn’t do this anymore.”
A happy grandma, she now lives in South Carolina. It’s been 35 years since Nancy Payne rode a motorcycle and 55 years since she butted heads with Steve McQueen.
“When I was done yelling at him,” she recalls, “he just looked at me and grinned. He patted me on the top of my head and said, ‘Well, I knew you could handle it.’” A movie star always knows talent when he sees it. CN
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