Local Racing Promoters - Top Of Their Game

Ask promoters in short-track racing to name the top promoters in the country, and the same names keep popping up. In no particular order, they are:

* Tom Curley, Thunder Road International Speedbowl in Vermont
* Steve York, Magic Valley Speedway in Idaho
* Robert Lawton, Boone (Iowa) Speedway
* Charlie Powell, Florence (South Carolina) Motor Speedway
* Lynn Phillips, Talladega (Alabama) Short Track
* Jody Deery, Rockford Speedway in Loves Park, Illinois
* Chuck Deery, LaCrosse Fairgrounds Speedway In West Salem, Wisconsin

And a few other names crop up here and there, too. There's Roger Slack at The Dirt Track at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina; C. Ray Hall at 81 Speedway in Park City, Kansas; Gray Garrison/the Pinilis family at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and Bob and Nadine Strauss of Lakeport (California) Speedway.

Humpy Wheeler, the president of Lowe's Motor Speedway, checks off a bunch of top short-track promoters. Curley and Powell are on his list; so are Emmett Hahn and Lanny Edwards, who do the annual Chili Bowl Nationals at Tulsa (Oklahoma) Expo Raceway; Howard Commander of Lebanon Valley (New York) Speedway; and Mickey Swims at Dixie (Georgia) Speedway.

Curley has some top promoters on his list who face particular challenges but still fill the grandstands.

"Lynn Phillips at Talladega [Short Track] has bizarre conditions," Curley says. "They have no population in the town, and still they do well. It's unbelievable."

And the Strausses, of Lakeport Speedway? "They've been very successful in the middle of nowhere,"Curley says.

Lawton gets a lot of respect because his Boone Nationals are a gathering place for dirt track racers and fans and an almost-legendary spot in Iowa. Hahn's Chili Bowl in Tulsa is well known, too.

"[Lawton] is one of the most successful promoters, and he does almost everything opposite to what I believe," Curley says with a laugh.

But it works.

"The Deerys have always been some of my favorites," Wheeler says. "They do a wonderful job."

Chuck Deery and Tom Deery, the president of DIRT Motorsports, are Jody Deery's sons. Tom Deery isn't a promoter, although his company runs facilities around the country and sanctions various racing series. His brother, though, gets plaudits as a promoter.

When told that her name keeps cropping up among the great promoters, Jody Deery said they're being kind. She says that the Deery family was the great promoter, not her, and it started with her late husband, Hugh, who acquired Rockford Speedway in 1964.

"My husband, he was a character, an innovator," she says. "He never stopped thinking about ideas. We made a good team. I had to do a lot of sweeping up of his ideas. Somebody has to make sure things are all in their place.

"He [Hugh Deery] always believed, and it's more true today, that we don't race, we entertain."

She says that one of Rockford's best races was a crazy figure-eight trailer race.

"We'd find trailers, boat trailers, whatever, put them behind cars, and go figure-eighting," she recalls. "But you can't have a clean pass. You have to hit somebody, and the last trailer still trailing wins."

Dale Earnhardt and Jimmy Spencer would have loved to run in those races, and apparently, the fans love them, too.

York says that Magic Valley also has trailer races. The main thing in any promotion, he says, is to have fun. Magic Valley will have a penny gold rush with 10,000 pennies. It'll have boxcar races in which children will run a short lap around cones and make a pit stop to wipe off their goggles and change shoes. Then they'll run another lap. He guarantees that fans will have a good time, and so far, no one has called him on it.

Powell, the 1996 RPM Promoter of the Year at Summerville (South Carolina) Speedway, says that his best promotion has been Faster Pastors, in which the speedway finds preachers from local churches to race and get their congregations involved with the races. Other top promoters say they have also gone the divine route in promoting races, and they say that, occasionally, you'll see a race car sitting in front of a church sign promoting the races.

"Praise the Lord and pass the pastor in the red No. 44-X," you might hear a racer say. And naturally, the car will have donuts on the doors and a mashed bumper or two.

"A top promoter is one that does something that opens the gate and brings people in," Powell says. "Some promoters, they have to have another job. They just open the gate, and that's the reason they have to have another job. They didn't do anything to make money with the track. Promoter, that word says it all."

Curley, who partners with track owner Ken Squier at Thunder Road, says he's had his mountains and valleys as a promoter. He says it's hard to promote, even when you're a top promoter.

"There's no question that the industry is struggling," Curley says. "When you finally hit bottom is when you usually make adjustments, change course. I feel a renaissance coming on now, but it'll take a while."

The magic formula, if there is one, Curley says, is to rein in costs for the track, racers, and fans.