Motorcycle racing pioneer Ed Kretz, Jr., son of inaugural Daytona 200 winner Ed “Iron Man” Kretz, died September 8 while out on a motorcycle ride. He was 81 years old. Kretz was reportedly out for a Sunday morning motorcycle ride, when he suffered a heart attack and apparently pulled over, leaned against a tree and passed away.
Kretz, Jr. was an AMA Grand National Championship flat track competitor of the 1950s and 1960s, and although he was revered as a TT and roadracing specialist, he also was a leading off-road rider in the 1950s, having won his class at the Catalina Grand Prix in 1956. But his biggest career win came in 1955, when he rode a Triumph to victory in the prestigious Peoria TT dirt track race.
Kretz, Jr. was born in Pomona, California, in 1932. Motorcycling was always a part of his life. He grew up going to races with his famous father and worked in the family-owned motorcycle dealership in Monterey Park, California, from an early age. When he began racing at the age of 16, he did so on one of his father’s Indian Scouts.
“My dad never pushed me into racing,” Kretz, Jr. once said when asked about growing up in the shadow of his father, who was known as the “Iron Man” for his amazing stamina in grueling events on the primitive motorcycles of the 1930s and ‘40s. “It was always something I wanted to do. My dad coached me, but I don’t think I had it any easier or harder than anyone else out there. We were all trying to do the best we could. I never felt that my fellow riders looked at me any different just because my name happened to be Kretz.”
Kretz, Jr. had a successful amateur career punctuated by a couple of unique highlights. While riding in the 1950 Daytona 100-mile amateur road race, which was partially run on the sands of Daytona Beach, he led all but the final half mile of the 100-mile race, riding the same Indian on which his father won the Daytona 200 in 1937. The bike’s engine seized with half a mile to go on the Daytona beach course and he coasted and then pushed the bike to the checkered flag, ending up in 12th. He then went on to beat a field of top experts in a 50-mile road race at the Santa Ana Naval Blimp Station, riding a Triumph. Kretz battled with established AMA national star Johnny Gibson and edged Gibson at the finish. He would go on to win the amateur race at 1950 Laconia (New Hampshire) Classic.
In 1951, as a rookie expert, Kretz, Jr. scored his first podium with a third-placed in the Peoria TT National. It was a preview of things to come for the young Southern California rider.
Kretz missed a few seasons of racing while serving in the Armed Forces in Europe. He returned to full time racing in 1955 and scored his one and only AMA national victory in the Peoria TT in September of that year, riding a Triumph. His best years as a professional came in 1956 and ’57. In 1956, he scored a pair of top-five national finishes (both at Peoria) and finished tied for sixth in the AMA Grand National Championship standings. He also took victory in the 200cc class at the popular Catalina Grand Prix, riding a Triumph Cub, that same year. He was again a top-10 rider in 1957 and scored his fourth career podium finish at Peoria.
While not racing the national circuit, Kretz was a leading off-road rider and once scored a top-10 finish in the famous Big Bear Endurance Run. He also won numerous early club road racing events on the West Coast. He was one of the first in America to race the Honda 250cc, four-cylinder Grand Prix machine in the early 1960s. Kretz scored wins on the then practically unknown Honda and wrote a review of the racing machine for Cycle World magazine in 1962.
By the early 1960s, Kretz and his wife, Elaine, had a daughter and he began to wind down his racing career. His continued to compete in West Coast off-road races, but retired from racing AMA nationals after the 1962 season. When his father retired, Kretz took over running the family’s successful motorcycle dealership. He sold the dealership in 1985 and later he and his wife moved to Colorado to be close to his daughter and grandchildren.
When inducted to the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2002, Kretz continued to be involved in motorcycling. He served as Grand Marshal at the Pikes Peak Motorcycle Hillclimb and the Laconia Vintage Road race in the early 2000s. He occasionally rode his old Indian and Triumph racers in parade laps of racing events, toured on a Honda Gold Wing and was a regular in the popular Colorado 500 off-road ride.
Kretz, Jr. is survived by his wife, Elaine and their children.
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